“Do you mean Tall?” the female Starbucks cashier asks me on a Monday morning before school when I order a small coffee.
This is where it begins for those of us who don’t frequent Starbucks.
“We have Tall, Grande, and Venti,” she continues. I take a breath and point like a Neanderthal at the smallest cup and grunt, “coffee.”
She forges my signature with a sharpie on the cup and I trade her two dollars for it. I turn around to exit and take a swig out of the cup.
“My god!” I express. There was no cream or sugar in the coffee. The cashier assumed I liked black, harsh-tasting coffee, since I’m one of the ignorant, Marlboro Red-smoking cave people that still uses the ancient word: small.
I turn around and return to the counter to ask for some sweetener, but she has returned to her iPad. “Excuse me,” I say loudly, soon realizing that my voice is no match for her iPod.
I try to use telepathy, but without an iPhone, I look like a complete lunatic— and all before my Monday morning coffee.
I approach from the other side of the counter and knock on the glass startling her enough to make her look away from the iPad.
I ask for the sugar and she points toward the cream and sugar bar and asks: “Would you like some whip cream?”
“Whip cream!?”
I turn toward the sweetener and walk away.
It was now an appropriate time to question if this young lady knew what coffee was. Had she ever noticed people drinking a boring, dark, hot beverage without a straw or M&Ms? Had she ever served a cup of coffee without drawing her future tattoo on the side?
I exited quietly, never to come back or find out.
