Musings on a Friday

Greetings friends. I am not sure if this is being felt by anybody else, but the last three days have been fully strange in the little, bitsy realm I call my life. Perhaps it is the cosmic energy shift created by 1,000,000,000+ Catholics repenting on Wednesday, or maybe left over energy from the new moon? Regardless, the last few days have had an inexplicably aggressive tone to them, leading myself and some of my acquaintances to ask "huh?" Well, I hope wherever you are, you haven't been feeling the same bad joojoo I have. Anyways, it's Friday, snow should be falling in the mountains and life could certainly be much, much worse.

Today the espresso machine at the Starbucks next door to my coffee shop broke, leading a slew of under-caffeinated and bitter customers through our door. Good for business, bad for morale. As I was helping the helpless, who for the most part lacked the basic communication skills necessary to order coffee beverages in a language other than Starbucks jargon (don't even get me started on a sizing system where the smallest size is "tall"), I began to think about what it was that I truly despised about these people. They were coming into my store, regardless of their motive, and spending their money to help fund my paycheck and support a local business, even if it was just the once. The fact that they were only equipped with the vocabulary sold to them by a corporation's brilliant marketing campaign is not entirely their fault - do we not all submit to some form of consumerist propaganda or another? I, for one, am a complete sucker for GAP jeans. But the part I found to be the most fascinating is that while under a normal coffee rush where customers are often bitter after having to wait 10-15 minutes in line before we can help them, these Starbuckians seemed as if nothing at all was out of the ordinary about waiting in line for so long just to buy a cup of coffee. My assessment of the situation is that they are, for the most part, so used to waiting in line next door that it just makes sense to them that they wait and wait and wait for us counter staff to fulfill the little nitpicky requests of everyone in front of them. These people had been conditioned to wait patiently for their daily caffeine dispense and, opposed to our usual customers who have questions about the gluten-free flours we use and random inquiries about the dairy content of our asparagus soup, the Starbuckians walked up with cash in hand, ordered their drinks and then stood aside so the next customer could get their fix. It was strange. I felt almost culture shocked by their presence and awkwardly alright with their upfront approach to the business of getting coffee. I'm not saying that I would advocate the bastardization of European coffee culture that Starbucks represents, but I suppose my skin isn't crawling quite as much as I'd expected by the end of the day. I'm not sure what it all means, but that having been said, I would just like to remind you all that true friends don't let friends drink Starbucks.

For those of you interested in the fight against Starbucks and often find yourselves on the road (particularly if you have one o' them confangled iFone thingys), here is a really cool website that "delocates" you to an independently owned alternative based on zip codes. Pretty cool...