Welcome to Starbucks, home of the Starbucks, can I take your order?

I wasn’t going to post again today, really, I wasn’t. I was going to focus on work, however hard it is to do at the moment. (Hey, you try wrapping your head around software specifications and business requirements when you’re getting over an ear and vocal cord infection. Don’t judge until you’ve done it, okay?)

However … I saw this and I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I just couldn’t. Nope.

English professor a poor study in Starbucks vernacular

Java junkies and people who like to eat at java spots take note: Apparently there is a right way and a wrong way to place your order at Starbucks Coffee.
Seriously, it took this long for people to learn this? I can’t tell you how many people I’ve introduced to Starbucks and had to order their drink for them because they were a little intimidated by Starbucks-ese.

A college English professor from Manhattan tells the New York Post that she was booted out of a Starbucks on the city's Upper West Side for incorrectly placing an order.
That’s her side of the story. I’m sure no one else will view it that way. But you know, if it helps her sleep at night, then by all means, do what you gotta do.

Lynne Rosenthal says three police officers forcibly ejected her from the coffee bar at 86th Street and Columbus Avenue after she got into a dispute with a counterperson.
I really would have loved to have been there for that one. I’ve been to a lot of Starbucks in my life (including the one at the Louvre in Paris), but none have I longed to be at more than this one, at this moment.

Rosenthal says she ordered a multigrain bagel but became enraged when the counterperson responded, "Do you want butter or cheese?"
The nerve of the barista. Take her out and shoot her.

"I just wanted a multigrain bagel," Rosenthal told the Post. "I refused to say, 'without butter or cheese.' When you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want. Linguistically, it's stupid."
You just wanted a multigrain bagel, that’s nice. I’m proud of you. Congratulations, do you know how many people in this world don’t know what they want? So you’re ahead of the game on that one.

But seriously, she was asking you if you wanted condiments for it. When you go through the Taco Bell drive-thru and they ask if you want any Hot, Mild or Fire sauce do you get pissed off too? “If I wanted the sauce, taco-boy, I’d have asked for it.”

Or what about if you’re at your favorite diner and you order a cup of coffee and they ask if you want cream or sugar? “No, I don’t want cream or sugar, I want coffee. Did you not hear me? Oh, and 1950 called, they want their poodle skirt back.”

I mean, linguistically, she’s retarded.

Rosenthal said this is not the first time she's bucked the Starbucks system.
Surely you jest. This sounds like pent up anger to me. Either that or she desperately needs to get laid. Of course, that can’t go over well, can it?

Him: “Sweetheart, would you like me to kiss you first?”
Her: “Did I ask you to kiss me first? Just do it.”
Him: “Uhh, no. Nevermind. Forget I asked.”

In the past, she's pointedly ignored the restaurant's coffee sizing system that includes "tall" or "venti" and instead placed orders for "small" or "large."
Okay, for some people the tall, grande, venti thing is hard to grasp. But for people who work at Starbucks, they are just attuned to ringing up a tall when someone says small, a grande when someone says medium, and a venti when someone says large. I don’t think she was making the point she thought she was when she “bucked the sizing system.” Wow, some people think they are so much more important than they are.

The bagel incident was the last straw for her.
"I yelled, 'I want my multigrain bagel!' "

Rosenthal told the newspaper. "The barista said, 'You're not going to get anything unless you say butter or cheese!' "
Alright, now, I will admit this much here – the barista was in the wrong for yelling back at the customer. Though, if I was her manager I would have given her a hug rather than writing her up. I mean, I understand her frustration. She wasn’t trying to up-sell, she was simply asking if she wanted butter or cheese on the bagel.

Had she not asked, just handed the bitch the bagel and she had, in fact, wanted butter and/or cheese with it, I’m sure she would have gotten pissed because she wasn’t asked if she wanted butter or cheese.

Poor barista was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. Someone give that girl a raise.

A Starbucks employee who witnessed the bagel blow-up blamed Rosenthal.
"She would not answer," the employee told the Post. "It was a reasonable question."
Good, glad to know there are some people out there who can think rationally. Obviously not college professors in New York, though.

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And this photo has nothing to do with anything (except the obvious gratuitous use of Starbucks logos), but it's freakin' cool and I had to use it.