The Subjective Lightness Of Being: My relationship with Starbucks is like that of an Ex I can't let go

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

My relationship with Starbucks is like that of an Ex I can't let go

I had a bitch of a night's sleep last night. This led me to run late in heading to work this morning. That, in turn, led me to not make myself coffee at home. I got to work and decided to go pick up some near work. Where do I head? Starbucks. Fuckin' Starbucks. After that last coffee blog, you'd think I'd avoid that place. Can I get away with saying I went there because of the convenient location to my work?

I get in line. I place my order. Simple order, actually. Venti mild drip. This is pretty much the only thing I order there. The last I checked, they served mild brew until late morning. This morning, however, I am told they aren't brewing it. But they have Verona.

Great. Verona. I don't want Verona. My stomach doesn't want Verona. But that's what they are offering me. And to make the deal even sweeter on their end, they tell me Verona is good with chocolate. Ok. I know. I went through the hours of Barista training when I worked there. But see...my stomach doesn't want chocolate as much as it doesn't want Verona this early in the morning.

I asked the guy why they weren't brewing mild drip. He responded saying that they are implementing new standards to make the coffee even fresher and now will be rebrewing the coffees every 30 minutes.

Seriously.

Seriously?

This is where that new training and re-evaluating brought Starbucks? Instead of charging less for their crappy coffee, they're just going to rebrew the coffee even more frequently?

Now for those of you who don't know, the old technique was that once an hour is up after a pot of coffee was brewed, they would dump the remaining coffee into the sink and brew more. I never agreed with this. I don't get who decided that coffee goes bad sitting in a pot after only an hour but whatever. Their coffee already tastes burnt so it isn't like this'll help avoiding that taste. But now I'm thinking this will contribute further to wasting water and I don't find this to be a good solution.

But whatever, I ordered the Venti Verona and proceeded to do my best in masking it's over roasted flavor. It did the trick as coffee should, but quality...well I wasn't drinking it and thinking how great this coffee was in quality.

I went there this morning out of convenience. Walking there, I thought to myself that I was being a hypocrite. I drank with hypocritical apprehension. Tomorrow, if I forget to brew coffee before leaving to head to work, I think I'll try McDonald's coffee. I mean, I bet it's cheaper and tastes better.

So, Starbucks, stick that in your pipe and smoke it.