The Commoner Just Wants Her Green Tea Latte

I was at Starbucks this morning.  I go to Starbucks every morning that I work.  It’s a little treat to get me out the door.  One of my New Year Resolutions is to give myself MORE treats so I have to do this.  Even if it means that I’m totally annoyed by half the people in there I do it anyway.

But today I found a new level of annoyance at my local Starbucks.  You see Starbucks has started a new blend of coffee called blond roast.  The very fact that they’ve named something blond with the implication that it is somewhat less bold or flavorful as the other I guess brunette, or ethnic roasts like breakfast, italian, or mocha locha is offensive, wrong, and politically incorrect.

  Blondes how do you feel about this? Are you okay with the implication that you are somewhat less of a coffee than the other offerings?  I would be very upset if I were blond-but most commoners aren’t naturally blond-really they aren’t- test that theory.  There’s a lot that could be said about this. I’ll stop here.

So here I am on line hoping I don't have to make small talk with anyone (thank you IPhone for making me look busy) hoping I can just get my tall, non fat, unsweetened, green tea Latte and get to work.  I'm also hoping to not build too much bitterness toward the people lounging around reading the paper when I'm trying to get to work-although honestly I would never spend my off time sitting in a Starbucks.  When I'm wondering why this line is moving so slowly.

 Today I realized that for the second day in a row for more than once there's a certain conversation going on that's holding up the line for sure.  Let me backtrack... here in California you try not to drink the 7-11 Coffee and we have no Dunkin Donuts so even if you want a regular plain old coffee you will either go to McDonalds or Starbucks.  These people just want coffee-they don't want a latte, or a mocha, or God forbid anything soy.

Well this conversation goes something like this

"I'd like a tall coffee  with room for cream."
"Which roast would you like blond, breakfast, or verona"

(can't really remember the blends but you get the gist.)

Now the coffee drinker who probably orders straight coffee to avoid these types of conversations is confused and a discussion which will take no less than 7 minutes ensues about the different roasts the flavors, the blends, the boldness, and follows with a confused coffee drinker and a tasting.  I'M NOT LYING!!!

At this point I'm rolling my eyes, tapping my foot, glaring, posting about my frustration on facebook, late, angry and cranky for the next hour.  This is not my intended reaction to my morning tall, non fat, unsweetened green tea latte-but it is the reaction that I have.

I don't blame the innocent coffee drinker, I don't blame the barista-I BLAME STARBUCKS who apparently had a New Year's Resolution of it's own-take the one simple thing they sell and complicate the living daylights out of it.

So Commoner here's a warning-if you hear someone ask innocently for a tall coffee -run up to them and shake them and tell them -FOR GOD"S SAKE MAN get the tall double chai soy mocha lacha latte -save yourself and my sanity.  The rest of the working commoners will probably applaud you.