I love Starbucks…
Earlier today, I decided to reward myself for a particularly generous gesture made to a friend, with a treat from Starbucks coffee shop, a tall skinny latté and large slice of lemon cake. I cannot pretend that this is an entirely rare occurrence because it isn’t; I like to reward my personal triumphs - however small they may be - with little treats. I must confess, that since Starbucks opened in my town, the treats have become easier to earn and more frequently awarded than they probably should have been. I used to try to excuse my weakness by pointing out that I always drank my latté’ skinny but then I started buying the cakes. The cakes were intended to be an occasional lunchtime indulgence. However, as I am being completely honest I will admit that, as I recall, only one slice of lemon cake has ever made it past elevenses, and there are odd days when I’ve bought two slices and my latté was not so skinny.
In my town, Starbucks is small. I’ve seen larger Starbucks in airport lounges and on railway platforms. My Starbucks has two two-seater settees, one three-seater settee and five tall bentwood chairs and that is pretty much it. There is almost always a queue, and if the queue consists of more than six people then come rain or shine the seventh eighth and ninth queue outside. Therefore, as I walked along the High Street and approached my Starbucks, I was pissed off to see that there were at least ten people waiting in line. It wasn’t that it was raining or even cold, the sky was still blue and the air was still fresh, but queuing outside a shop, worse, queuing outside a takeaway first thing in the morning. Forget the time it takes, it’s just so demeaning, so bloody desperate. If Starbucks hadn’t been the only supplier of their particular lemon cake and coffee, I might have taken my four pounds an eighty-five pence and marched straight to the Columbian Organic Coffee Kingdom, or whatever it’s called.
Reluctantly, I took my place in line and wondered if Starbucks has a customer suggestion policy, they certainly should have. Just standing there for those few minutes I came up with half a dozen solutions to their more obvious deficiencies. Simple ideas ranging from employing only Japanese women who, in my experience, are always smiling, efficient, and wonderfully polite, to placing Starbucks kiosks outside Starbucks coffee shops so that we who are forced to queue can at least get a decent cup of coffee while we wait.
When my turn finally came, Colin, a young and sometimes surly lad with a country accent who has worked in the coffee shop for some time, smiled at me from behind the shiny Gaggia coffee machine while wiping down the froth-making-doobreedangler. Without any prompting at all (which quite took the wind from the wings of my intended whinge) Colin apologised for keeping me waiting so long and then asked me if I wanted my ‘usual’. I felt pretty cheesed off by his choice of words. Firstly, because I wanted Colin to be at his most arrogant and obnoxious best so that my irritation with the Starbuck Corporation could be properly vented; I enjoyed a good whinge, and after the time I’d spent queuing, I deserved a good whinge. Secondly, how dare he suggest that I have a ‘usual’, I am a spontaneous, imaginative person… I do not have ‘usuals’. Favourites maybe, even preferred items but not ‘usuals’, ‘usuals’ are for the hard of thinking regulars of the Old Nags Head.
Unfortunately before I had the chance to make my objections clear to Colin he was already wrapping me a large slice of lemon cake and calling for a tall skinny latté’. I smiled back at him and said thank you.
I love Starbucks
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