chrishansenhome

Let's be clear at the start: I patronise Starbucks. I like the fact that wherever I go, whether it's Shanghai or Marblehead or central London, I get a predictable cup of coffee using a vocabulary that I understand and that the people who are serving me understand. I do not make any representation that a Starbucks coffee is gourmet coffee, that it is exceptionally good, or that there are no coffee shops and local cafés that make a better or tastier cup of coffee.

However, there is an academic in New York City who disagrees with this. She patronises (or perhaps, after this incident, patronised) a Starbucks in Manhattan. She got into an argument with a barista over the way she ordered a bagel. The article from the New York Post under the link details what happened next. Suffice it to say that the professor will probably have to source her coffee and bagel from another coffee shop. Personally, I'd recommend the bagel wagons that dot the cityscape of Manhattan in the morning. The bagels are plump and tasty, the wagonistas understand what a plain bagel is, and you get your coffee small or large, black, with or without sugar, in a blue Greek-themed cup.

I gather that Starbucks has exited Australia. Many Starbucks outlets in other countries such as the UK have closed while the company consolidates and concentrates on sites that are most profitable. I fervently believe that there is a place in the coffee pantheon for Starbucks. There are also places for local coffee shops. In Marblehead Starbucks has opened a local shop in the building in which my father and brother worked for many years. Down the street and around the corner, there is the Atomic Café providing coffee, lunches, and WiFi. Two visits to Marblehead ago I had a need for WiFi as my brother had not yet gotten online and had stopped his broadband service when he and my (now former) sister-in-law separated. I went to Starbucks, ordered a coffee, and sat down, only to find that the WiFi (newly provided by AT&T) was on the fritz.

Later that day, at lunchtime, I went around the corner into the Atomic Café, ordered a Reuben sandwich and soft drink, and curled up in a chair in the corner to eat and use their WiFi. Locally managed and serviced, their WiFi as well as their kitchen worked perfectly. There is a lesson for Starbucks in that, I think.

As for the language required to order in Starbucks, I suspect that the professor has not patronised many Starbucks outlets in countries outside of the United States or in places where English is not the local lingua franca. Uniformity of language means that, wherever one goes, one can order a small, medium, or large coffee, or latté, or mocha, iced or hot, with full-fat milk or skim milk, without having to furiously page through your language guidebook to figure out how to do that. There is some worth in that, and even English professors would probably acknowledge that there are more important battles to fight concerning the English language than stubbornly refusing to use Starbuckese to order a coffee.