On Campus

Don’t hate me because I love Starbucks

Hate me because I’m a Venti Bold

The coffee is great. And the service is friendly. All the workers in Starbucks are like characters from a book, with fully developed personalities.

Unlike in Tim Horton’s, you don’t just make your order, hand over a couple of dollars, and take your coffee. In Starbucks, you interact with the workers. It’s an… experience. If you go to Starbucks often enough, you probably learn each other’s names.

Yup. Very stressful.

The workers even learn your coffee preferences. The third time I went to Starbucks, the person behind the cash recognized me and said, “Venti Bold?”

They don’t know that my order choices are limited by what I can pronounce. Or willing to say out loud. Meaning, I can choose between a “Venti Bold” or a “Pike Place Roast.” There’s no way in hell I’m ever going to ask for a “Grande” or a “Sumatra.”

I feel like a phony every time I order a “tall” coffee. I’m just not cool enough to pull it off.

Maybe if I had been born in Toronto, wore black thick-rimmed glasses and a Burberry scarf, I could legitimately order a Grande Guatemala Antigua Medina.

Then explain how it’s finely balanced with soft flavor notes of dark cocoa and cherry. And that I enjoy the silky-smooth mouthfeel, with its cocoa-powder texture that lingers in the finish.

Yeah, I know. I just slapped myself.

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