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| Make mine a soya skinny venti hazelnut coffee frapp with cream and an extra shot, please |
Like many others, I am in the unfortunate position of being stuck in a bizarre love/hate relationship with Starbucks so I figured it was time to take a deep breath, air our differences and embark on some much needed relationship counselling to sort out our problems.
Ok, so let’s start with the good:
You have brought me so much joy. We hang out together loads, you’re reliable, consistent and you play weird but calming ethnic-y-meets-jazz-meets-blues type music while I’m reading stuff for tutorials. You’re always there with a comforting latte when I’m having a bad day or a double espresso when I am on the verge of an examstressrevisionoverload mental breakdown. You have been tolerant of my incredible neediness and whinging. I have been tolerant of the fact that you are seriously expensive to be in a relationship with and a bit on/off with the quality of your coffee.
You have given me that amazing piece of plastic that is my Starbucks card which entitles me to more of your love and you spoil me ENDLESSLY with free shots, syrup, soya, cream and wifi. In short, you treat me like a total princess and I am pretty sure that if you were a real person, things would be working out GREAT between us (most of the time anyway).
However I am now going to have to focus on the bad because there are some things you do which really get on my (coffee) beans and we need to talk before our relationship goes awry, mister.
1. Why do you have to put those massive jars of waffles and cookies in front of the counter!? You know I have serious hand-eye co-ordination problems and it’s already quite hard for me to swipe my card (which you constantly encourage me to use by giving me rewards) without dislocating my shoulder because of the funny angle at which you place your machines.
Adding extra obstacles in the form of huge-ass glass jars is NOT helping the situation. Also, I end up feeling like an incompetent fool when the kindly barista behind the counter has no choice but to swipe for me. You don’t make this easy for them either –whenever they have to reach around the assault course that is the counter to help me swipe, it reminds me of an octopus tentacle cautiously wending its way around plants on the seabed, afraid of disturbing the little creatures living in the sea foliage. WHY?!
2. Your food is atrocious. Other than your delectable blueberry cheesecake which is like heaven on earth times a gazillion squared, your food is laughably bad. Well, I’d be laughing if I didn’t spend virtually ALL MY FREE TIME round at your place eating your lame food because I’m too lazy to get it elsewhere. I swear your menu has hardly changed since we first started out other than the occasional, uninspired seasonal add on. Don’t get me wrong, I love cheese and marmite and I love the fact that you have all the desperately boring/standard stuff but seriously, get creative with food and innovate otherwise I’m going to have a filthy, passionate affair with Pret and THEN you’ll be sorry.
3. STOP TRYING SO HARD. Seriously, you’re really cool and I really dig the fact that you’re taking advantage of your global dominance and making an effort to be helpful and stuff but come on now. Stop trying to shove the ‘Fairtrade/Charity/Aren’t I good?’ thing in my face. Yes, it’s nice and great that you have a CSR programme and that you do a lot for charity. It’s also fantastic that you’re all Fairtrade now, but making out you’re saving the world, bean by bean? Shut your face and just give me my latte.
4. You’re so samey. I know you’re a chain and you want to be comfortingly samey same-same everywhere you are but I think it would be cool if you let your customers/baristas have a small say when it comes to interior décor.
Here’s a suggestion: Instead of using the same blandgraphicminimalistshape crap a bunch of randoms from a creative design team have crafted to hypnotise people into buying more of your crazy coffee beans, how about using some local artwork? I’m not suggesting that you fill your coffee houses with awkward, badly proportioned oil paintings of nekkid ladies and Tabby the cat done by the local WI but there are a LOT of super cool, up and coming artists around in major cities and it wouldn’t hurt to maybe showcase some of their work, would it? Plus if you’re so into the whole ‘using my superpowers for good’ thing (which by the way, I find totally hot) surely you could give it a try? Just sayin’
5. Toffee Nut Latte is for life, not just for Christmas. Only you, Starbs, could be enough of a tease to create one of the most tear-inducingly yummy drinks in the whole entire world and then totally screw me over by making it only available during the seasonal period. I’d be totally cool with that normally but when you let the people across the pond have TNL ALL YEAR ROUND, it’s just not fair. I love slowly licking those little toffee sprinkles off the foamy cream top. Sometimes, it’s the highlight of my day, you hear me?!
On the other hand, you probably can’t deal with the fact that I:
1. Make picky, headache inducing orders which don’t make sense (soy with cream, skinny with cream…hey I just like cream, ok?!)
2. Have to order things extra hot and demand that things are stirred for me (I’m a delicate flower and stirring is complicated and dangerous)
3. Get all angst ridden when you run out of soy (lactose intolerance, blame my ancestry)
4. Am clumsy and often scald myself/spill stuff everywhere/generally break your shops because I have problems with coffee-in-hand walking/life in general (I’m so sorry, will you still love me? Please?)
I’m pretty sure there are at least a few more years left in our relationship. That’s if you consider my suggestions and start getting your act together. Plus I love you enough to give you a cutesy ole nickname and that’s a sign of HEFTY COMMITMENT, Starbs.
