They tell me that social life these days is all about getting the most friends on your FaceBook file. Not that you know most of them (in any normal meaning of the word) from Adam or Eve, or even care who they are; as long as you can parade their names and faces as being ‘yours’. Even today I received an email asking if I wanted to be ‘Linkedin’ with a chap in Coventry. Nothing strange there, you reply. My home town, old friend? Well, yes and no. The chap married a childhood/family friend about 45 years ago and I’ve never met him! Would I like to learn more about him and share my thoughts? Er, not really, but thank you for asking. (I think.)
Then there is the latest Starbucks gimmick – asking customers their names. “Hello, I’m Sherry and I’m your barista today. What shall I call you?” I shall of course now avoid Starbucks even more studiously than before, since I would be likely to disappoint them on several fronts. a) I just want coffee, not a weird beverage with a life history and geography thrown in. b) I prefer to be anonymous (people tell me I am, effortlessly). c) I hate American chumminess which seems to demand that we are all welcomed like immigrants at the Staten Island depot. It’s a cup of coffee FGS! d) Every other customer below the age of 50 will be studying their ipod/ipad/laptop/notebook, making even more cyberfriends and ignoring the aromatic reality of a coffee shop where normal people meet in person.
O tempora, o mores!
Boadicea's Chariot 
Janus – please don’t label all of us youngsters under 50 as obsessed with such matters – I don’t have anything beginning with i!
I do agree with your absurd coffee house culture. I insist on being awkward by ordering in my local Costa Coffee a “coffee please, no frothy stuff”
When they say, “oh you mean an Americano?”
I reply, “whatever you call it – place place coffee made from beans in a cup and then add cold milk – don’t give me a jug to add it myself”
They don’t like it. I can’t wait to be asked my name!
Q: “What shall I call you?”
A: “Sir!”
You got there before me, FEEG. This is why I prefer shopping in Waitrose and John Lewis, where the standard mode of address to me is “Madam” and why we prefer a greasy spoon to these trendy Starbucks and Costa places.
Ha! Or ‘Anything you like as long as you make it snappy.’
Akshully, that’s the order to give in a Brisbane restaurant – “Bring me a crocodile steak. And make it snappy.”
Starbucks, whose establishments I studiously avoided in Blighty, should adopt the working practices of almost any Portuguese café, particularly the rural ones.
You walk in and are greeted by a curt “Diga!” – literally, “Speak!”, or more colloquially, “Yes, what?”, at which point you order your chosen brew. This can range from a tiny, half-full cup of nerve-janglingly strong wake-up lotion often taken with a small brandy to offset the caffeine hit, right through to a more soothing meia de leite , a half-and-half milky coffee.
Judging what I can buy off an oil drum barbie at any weekly market compared with the mass-produced McBucket of ‘Flame-Grilled’ O’Burger (one of the geatest marketing scams IMHO since Beaujolais Nouveau), I doubt the Starbucks offering would come anywhere near the real McCoy. Certainly outlets are rare as hens’ teeth here and long may it be so.
OZ
Any thoughts on how Starbucks baristas should address, HM The Queen, the Duchess of Cornwall or the Duchess of Cambridge?
Starbucks sells that filthy free trade crap. Which has now become traduced into how the biggest commercial coffee companies get rid of their worse grade beans. The whole thing is a total scam.
Not to be touched with a bargepole.
Tried a costa coffee en route home and that was just about as filthy, glad to get back to my own kitchen.
The Welsh are inestimably BAD at coffee, and the English not much better. Not that the Americans are any better, it is always made too weak,, but you can at least buy a far better range of beans here at reasonable prices than you can in the UK and grind them yourself. I cannot understand why no supermarket in the UK offers bulk self dispense beans. Here in my local supermarket I have a choice of just over 30 varieties and manufacturers.
You know, the better USA places never try on that fake chummy shit, not acceptable, its a bit of a lower class thing. None of the shops or restaurants I use would dream of approaching their customers in that way, they are much more polite than in the UK, but NOT chummy.
Real human friends work very well in Wales as long as you are able to drink endless cups of dark brown exceedingly stewed tea that has sat on the Aga for a day or two!
As for machines, best ignored, like their keepers.
I forgot to ask earlier. WTF is a ‘barista’? The warmish-liquid-peddling equivalent of a burger flipper or wha..?
OZ
Christina – Promise me you’ll never change. 😀
OZ
No bloody chance OZ, far too late for that!
Can you imagine the horror of turning into some poofter liberal in one’s old age?
Rather get Alzheimers!
But, CO, can’t you at least say what you REALLY mean? 🙂
I gather from the DM and other informed sources that a barista is what you have to call a person (Scouse accent here) wot asks your name and eventually brings the order. Good word for a limerick?
For cringe-worthy details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barista
It is my view that coffee aficionados have become, in recent years, every bit as irritating as the oenological fraternity who have for years spouted their fatuous opinions on their favourite subject. The amount of pretentious bollocks spoken about and the even greater amounts of money spent on wine that most such people would struggle to distinguish from a decent plonk, is staggering. With coffee, it is the thousands that get spent on galumphing great espresso machines that occupy half the kitchen work space and require a degree in mechanical engineering before any effluent will emerge from their groaning digestive systems. Add to that the passionate descriptions of custom varieties of coffee beans that have been harvested from the droppings of a Papua New Guinean octogenarian virgin and blended with beans from Kenya which have been expelled from the nostrils of Masai warriors in must, and you can see how it all gets a bit tedious.
sipu just love your no 13.
And all so hideously true.
An interesting aside to this is that real bargains are to be found in varietal coffees and wines that are ‘out of favour’ with the ‘luvvies, yippies and yuppies’. Crap Chardonnays you wouldn’t throw over your enemy’s car are twice the price of a delightful Viogner.
Equally, central American coffee a damned sight cheaper than Kenyan and Indonesian, but no cachet dontchaknow?
CO, ‘varietal’?? You’re going native, girl!
God am I losing it Janus?
Varietal grape stocks?
How else are they described in Europe?
Has Alzheimers set in already?
CO, just kidding. It’s just that I always imagine words like ‘varietal’ being drawled USA-wise.
Don’t do that Janus!
Bad enough getting over this flu which has left me excessively fuzzy brained as it is!
It’ll be your fault if I fall off my twig with the horror of it all !!!