I'm swearing off Starbucks.

So, I'm strolling along Eglinton and Yonge with my cousin and his girlfriend. Comes up that Jess and I could use a coffee so I partake in the glory of coffee shops - and chances are that their fave place is Starbucks, which is all over the goddamn place it seems and directly in front of us.

Just a few seconds before closing time. The woman (tho I think they have names for'em) behind the counter was lookin' annoyed - it was closing time and all she needs is a few more people to make her day last longer than it should.

Mind you, I go to Timothy's and Second Cup all the time. I know their inner workings, how they blend their coffees and how they account for products sold (by # of cups). I like to have my sugar surrounded by just a bit of Irish Cream with copious amounts of milk - or as someone's put it, I rape the coffee.
I'm no stranger to coffee places.

I walk up to the counter and spiel out, "A regular Irish Cream if you please".
She looks at me.
"A what?"
"You know, a regular. A medium."
"Sorry sir, but we don't use those terms."
I look perplexed and babble an "Excuse me?" as she points to a small model demonstrating their variety of sizes.

Now, this is a work of modern capitalist yuppy-driven art. I have to give it to them, it makes you feel like you are in a coffee special haven where they just barely picked off the beans from the plans and are dying to squeeze it through water so they can ecstaticly quench your need for overpriced caffeeine.
A small has now been metamorphesed into a Tall.
A medium (or as Timothy's has it, a regular) is now a Grande.
A large is now a, I kid you not, a Venti .

Tall, if I remember correctly, means weak coffee. Or in other words, it's goddamn tall. Diluted. A lot of water. Big.
Grande, in portuguese at least, means Big. Pequeno, normal, grande. That's how it goes.
Venti means twenty. That's right, twenty. Or, "Pansy Italian word for a lot", depends on how you see it", since all Italians are pretty boys.

So somehow I have to pick between 3 big coffees. I grunt, point at the Grande and utter "Grande Irish Cream then".

She pauses and asks me if I want it mild, smooth or bold.
I stare at her, confusion and amazement furiously displayed across my face.
"It's a bloody Irish Cream."
"I know sir, but we don't flavour our beans, we add shots to them".

I stare at her.

"Just give me the strongest."

Two dollars and twenty-five cents later I'm holding a Grande cup of mildly warm last-minute brew of what I'm told was Irish Cream but fuck as hell didn't taste like it. And I've had plenty of last minute brews; instant coffee seemed like a better alternative in all it's glimmering reassurance. At least you KNOW instant coffee is gonna taste bad.

Whats the moral of the story?
Somehow I got suckered into choosing between 3 variants of the same word/cup, 2 synonyms and an understatement that revelead itself as a bad coffee for more money than a large (as in biggest) usually runs at my local place.

That and I read into things with a Marxist mindset a hell more thant I ought to - so this whole yuppy-go-lucky newfound glory actually disturbs me.

Boycott Starbcuks.

--
+kronix is the man.
*moglenstar however is also a very MANly MAN (*points to new avatar)