Jaded blue-collar coffee anti-elitism rears its ugly head

The BBQ Pit
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Oh, I have no problem with anyone who " Just loves their Vente Caramel Machiatto." But I have a lot of trouble finding Italian substitutes for small medium and large in a country where almost no one speaks Italian to be anything but low comedy. I won’t ask for a medium when I want a small at McDonald’s, so why would I feel differently about pointless pretense in a foreign language?

However, the actual reason I didn’t go to Starbuck’s when I did drink coffee is that I didn’t much care for the coffee. The annoying verbal habits would have faded into background irrelevancies had that not been the case.

Tris

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Well, Starbucks in particular is pretentious, and plays up the snob angle of espresso while actually being at the lowest common denominator of coffee. I do find their drink sizes funny, but as I mentioned earlier I refuse to memorize the names.

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I never heard of the Gay Menu.

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Every once in a while the only place to get coffee is Starbuck’s. I don’t get all stupid like the idiot in the OP, but I’m lost in a place that sells silly coffee-flavored drinks, so I usually ask in a manner such as this: “A black, American coffee in a cup that this size.” I’ve got to point to the size of the coffee because I don’t know their stupid, foofy words that mean small, medium, large, or extra-large in standard English. I ask for American coffee because that’s what it’s called. It’s the style of coffee. There are lots of styles of coffees, many of which I like, and most of which – other than American coffee – are even available in Starbucks. I don’t come off with a bad attitude, though, but it’s obvious that I’m lost in their fake, artificial world (so lowbrow of me!).

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I don’t get why drip coffee is suddenly called American coffee, but “a black, American coffee in a cup that’s this size” would be understood perfectly fine, and, hell, be a pretty good way to express your frustration with the culture you don’t identify with, right? Without the need for condescending editorializing.

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Coffee with milk, as used by Americans, is drip coffee to which cold milk is added. Usually the amount of coffee exceeds the amount of milk by quite a bit so the fact that the milk is cold (or room temperature) does not matter. Latte is espresso (a very concentrated coffee made fresh for each customer) mixed with steamed milk. The amount of milk exceeds the amount of coffee so it is important that it is hot. Steaming also adds foam, which many people like.

If you ordered “coffee with milk” at Starbucks and they gave you a latte, you probably would not be happy. To avoid this, they used the term “latte” which is what it is called in Italy. I guess they could have called it “concentrated coffee made fresh, mixed with steamed milk” to avoid using any funny foreign words like espresso or latte, but what the fuck do you care what they call it since you don’t even go there you twit.

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Sorry. My own username is somewhat ambiguous,too, so I know it can be a bit irritating (or, at least, disconcerting) when posters guess wrong. In future interactions I’ll be sure to remember you’re a dude.

Again – I think this is more praiseworthy than not. I always think it’s cool when I run into someone who has a high regard and respect for his or her job. This is actually what I would consider a healthy kind of elitism. You see it a lot in the military, BTW, with one specialty or another considering themselves ‘better’ than others. This isn’t the case only with Special Force types, either, but with regular jobs that, to an unbiased eye, seem more or less equal. Sailors who serve on submarines vs. aircraft carrier sailors, for instance. Or supply types vs. enginering types.

::laughs:: Well, I’ve been a housewife for over 20 years, so I’m quite familiar with the experience of having my chosen profession disrespected. I don’t think I’ve ever been compared to a fast food worker, but I have been called a parasite… That was kind of upsetting.

Yeah. Using my own drink of choice wasn’t the best example. I’ve never been in a coffee-house that didn’t have lattes on the menu. The previous thing with ‘misto’ vs. ‘cafe au lait’ would have made more sense.

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It doesn’t bother me, though I find it amusing that people seem to assume i’m a female Starbucks employee when I start a pit thread about something that happened to me at work. Funny how that doesn’t happen when I post in threads about sports, masturbation, drugs, etc. Come to think of it, this could be the basis for an interesting psychological study in perception of identity on the Internet.

FWIW, you have a very specific and female image in my mind, as I work with a Jess and just broke up a couple of months ago with a Jessica. I didn’t even get how your name was supposed to be ambiguous until I thought about it for a minute.

My parents were Navy cryptologists, so maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye!

Not by your officemate, I hope?

Please, don’t think I was attacking you–your word choice was actually perfect for illustrating my point, which was directed particularly at Lightray.

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I’m sorry, but no amount of arguing is going to convince me that making an espresso drink takes more skill than making a hamburger or a cocktail.

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Well, it’s not necessarily drip coffee. It just means coffee made with water. It can be drip, perked, diluted espresso, steeped. Just black coffee. Pretentious people will ask for “cafe americano,” and actually, it’s not really all that pretentious now that I reconsider.

Asking for “a black, American coffee in a cup that’s this size” isn’t any means of expressing frustration; it’s a means of ensuring that I’m not going to end up with a coffee without some absurd, sweet, flavor-hiding soft-drink syrup mixed in. That’s nothing to do with unfamiliarity with some pseudo-culture; it’s love of a bean!

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“Cafe americano” specifically means espresso diluted with hot water, and it’s an altogether different (and nastier) beast. I don’t understand why anyone would drink it. Espresso goes bad in 10 seconds unless you mix it with milk or something thick like chocolate sauce. Water doesn’t hold it. All it does is water down the taste of the espresso. Want to be a Real Man, a Real Ox-Wrestling American? Drink 8 oz. of pure espresso like one of my regulars does.

I’m trying to meet you in the middle, here. Apparently I went in the wrong direction. What I’m trying to say is I wish the customer in the OP had ordered the way you apparently do.

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I’m not sure either – maybe it’s as simple as ‘fetus’ reading like ‘female.’ But, for whatever reason, I’ve been thinking of you as a girl!

::laughs:: Could be! As I said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that kind of elitism – it can make you a better worker, IMO, and it’s very appropiate to take pride in what you do. My son is a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy now, working with the Marines, and it’s both funny and cool to see him consider himself so obviously superior to ‘blue side’ Corpsman (Marine Corpsmen are ‘green side.’)

God no! It was here on this board, as a matter of fact, and not really directed at me in particular. Although I am ‘open’ about my status as a housewife and I had been participating in the thread where the remark was passed. I really was offended – enough so that I mentioned it to my husband and he was very offended, too, on my behalf. So it’s all good!

[Hijack] – where in San Diego do you work? I was born in San Diego and lived there, off and on, for over 20 years.

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I live, work and go to school east of the city limit and west of the 67. I’m not too comfortable being more specific on an Internet message board. Where in the area did you live?

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I understand – I’m fairly familiar with the general area you’re speaking of. In fact, I suspect I could guess where you go to school.

I’m actually pretty familiar with San Diego period. I was born at Balboa Naval Hospital and grew up in the Clairemont area; my mother was raised in Harbison Canyon – an unincorporated village about halfway between El Cajon & Alpine. I was (briefly) stationed at the Naval Training Center downtown. When my husband was stationed in San Diego, we lived in Rancho Penasquitos, up above Poway. During those years he was stationed on Miramar, on several different ships, and on Coronado. My brother’s lived in Santee; in Chula Vista; and in La Mesa. We had close friends in National City; Imperial Beach and Ramona… And we rode our motorcycle all over San Diego county.

My husband did his GE undergrad courses at Mesa Community College; I did mine at Miramar CC… I would have gone on to SDSU, if we had stayed there instead of retiring to Virginia when my husband got out of the Navy. I miss it there sometimes.

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Man, some of you folks are killing me. I shudder to think how the the tone of this thread would be different if you were talking about wine.

Starbucks names are not pretentious. There, I said it.

The venti crappucino is no more pretentious than any rebranding of a commonplace, easily substitutable product and selling it at higher cost. How many brands of wacky “vitamin water” and “detox” tea products are on the market now?

Do they all have retarded names? Pretty much. If their names were commonplace, people would pay commonplace prices for them. “Water” is typically free. “Vitamin water”, boiled water with a few micrograms of ascorbic acid and salt, is $2.00. Obviously, this is successful marketing.

What is truly pretentious is believing that unless a coffee product had a frou-frou Italianate name, it could not be good coffee. I do not think anyone is suggesting that here.

I am am unrepentant coffee enthusiast. I spent days looking for the single best cup of coffee in Rome (and I am confident that I found it). I take the temperature of the water and use a digital scale to measure my ingredients. The difference in flavor and texture between Sulawesi and Pacific coast Colombian coffee does not usually elude me in blind taste tests, though I have a long, long way to go before I master coffee. Like I said, I am just an enthusiast, barely proficient.

So I have absolutely no fucking clue how anyone can call a bland, overpriced, mass-marketed, and fundamentally pedestrian product as Starbucks coffee pretentious on account of its mildly stupid names. Starbucks coffee really does not pretend to be anything other than it is: a quick service beverage for people who do not care all that much about what they drink.

I don’t mean to make any value judgments here: we do not have time enough in our lives to master every little thing that we do, especially something so fundamentally impractical as coffee. But let’s try to think a little more clearly on what is and what isn’t pretentious.

Incidentally, a caffe latte in North America and a caffè e latte in Italy are completely different things.

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If I’m reading you correctly, and we’re all in agreement: Starbucks is the opposite of pretentious, the McDonald’s of the coffee industry, as ostentatious as a bag of generic BBQ pork rinds from the checkout of a Piggly Wiggly—whence comes the 'tude from certain of their baristas? (Not singling out the OP in particular, just speaking from personal experience.)

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You’re probably right, too. Considering that I’m 20, there aren’t many options…

I grew up in UC, right by the Governor exit from the 805, and hopped down Genesee into Clairemont for burgers (EZ Take Out by the Home Depot, somewhere near Balboa Ave) or donuts (Krispy Kreme) or just to take a vaguely scenic route to the freeway. I’m familiar with Harbison Canyon, though I don’t believe I’ve ever stopped there. I went to high school on the NTC while it was being destroyed by developers and rebuilt as a tribute to some historic San Francisco naval base. In the last year I’ve lived in Mission Valley right by North Park (one of those fancy apartment complexes near Fenton Parkway with the parents), Serra Mesa, in downtown Lemon Grove, and in Spring Valley near Rancho. I almost lived in Santee, but it’s not really my scene and I’m glad I didn’t end up there.

Tell me more!

Holy shit! I don’t work at Starbucks! I’ve never worked at Starbucks! Maybe I need to say it three more times:

I don’t work at Starbucks.
I don’t work at Starbucks.
I don’t work at Starbucks.

Does everyone get it?

(FWIW, much as I loathe everything Starbucks stands for, I’ve never had other than a pleasant experience with the people who work there, even if I tend to think of them–probably unfairly–as a sanguine, vapid army of clones.)

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No, unless there’s been quite recent develpment that I somehow missed. This a persistent rumor and common belief, though. Perhaps the confusion arises because from about '84 to '87 some of the Starbucks founders owned Peet’s before selling off their share Starbucks.

Who said Peet’s was the best coffeehouse in any major city? It is, however, much better than Starbucks in beverage quality and in their focus on bean and leaf sales, not to mention the lack such abominations as strawberry frou-frous that contain neither coffee nor tea. We can’t all live a convenient distance from the best coffeehouse in whatever metropolitan area we call home. I prefer to go to an independent if it’s at least as good and not much more inconvenient than Peet’s, and I’ll go out of my way to get to a Peet’s rather than settling for Starbucks.

My point in bringing up Peet’s is that (1) they are a coffeehouse with full espresso based drink service that manages to keep their brewed coffee fresh and (2) their menu uses an English name for a drink that typically goes under a French name.

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No one. See? I said you can’t tell me that, and I was right. :smiley:

You won’t get any argument over here. If I get dragged to a big chain, I’d rather it be Peet’s than any other one. (But if you include relatively small chains, the Living Room is where it’s at.)

Eh. I can’t fault a coffeehouse for catering to the no-coffee, no-caffeine crowd. Personally, I don’t ever drink anything that doesn’t contain caffeine or alcohol, other than water (maybe Powerade if I’m doing a lot of physical exertion)–I consider it a waste of time, especially considering my currently enormous caffeine addiction–but if someone who doesn’t like coffee or tea gets dragged to a coffeehouse and wants a berry smoothie, they should get one. I figure that’s not too different from getting a soda at a bar.

I don’t, but I still go there every weekend. (The fact that it’s the only 24-hour coffee shop I can find in the area helps, of course.)

Though I’m not the arbiter of coffeehouse choice, that sounds like a fair policy to me. A lot of students here frequent the Living Room and avoid Starbucks, which is about the best one can hope for at a commuter campus in a too-commercialized suburb overrun by upper-middle-class white kids in lifted Ford behemoth-trucks.

Fair enough.

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Ye gods! Second in the Pit in pageviews, sandwiched between a thread about zany Christians and the tiny rants thread–and beating the next best twofold. Whoda thunk?