Just another Sunday at Starbucks

After a rainy Saturday, which was spent cleaning out the furnace room and which ended perfectly with homemade chicken soup and apple crisp at a friend's house, I woke up to another grey and blustery day. Bill and Penelope had their usual snuggle on the couch, while Zander and I snuggled in the recliner and I tried, with little success, to read the Styles section of my beloved Sunday New York Times.

Soon it was time to do what had to be done. Groceries. Cleaning. Planning for the week. I don't know why I thought 11am on a Sunday wouldn't be busy at the supermarket, but it was. To cope with the chaos of the busy store and the many frantic and harried shoppers, I hummed Aviici's Wake Me Up repeatedly until I reached the check out. Then I followed my bliss to Starbuck's and Chapters for some reading material and a coffee. Unlike most of the patrons, I actually paid for the magazines before taking them to the attached Starbucks to flip through them.  This Starbucks is quite possibly the world's slowest Starbucks. While waiting, I amused myself by feeling superior when the barista mispronounced doppio. Dopey-oh.  I secretly loathed the stout and thin-haired woman ahead of me who prissily announced that she had a "special request".  Four double espressos in venti plastic cups with huge amounts of ice. Who were they for?  And why did she need six lids?  What seemed like two days later, my latte appeared. By this time, I had adopted a crossed arms, annoyed stance. Maybe I didn't pronounce the double "t "adequately and they thought I asked for a "late".  I  bitchily corrected the barista when he called out "Tall latte for Shauna".  Here's what my cup looked like. Shano? Really? 

Though I, like my brother Todd, am a devoted Starbucks customer, I do have my little pet peeves. It irks me that "latte" has come to mean "caffelatte".  In italian, latte means milk.  So, by saying "tall latte", you are actually ordering a large milk. Italian is used kind of haphazardly in the Starbucks lexicon.  English for tall; Italian for grande and venti (which means twenty, as in twenty ounces). Anyway, even if it annoys me that latte was misused, I started doing it too. Then a couple of years ago at a Starbucks in Hong Kong, a wonderful thing happened; my world was set right again. I ordered a tall latte and guess what I got? A tall glass of hot milk. I felt like doing the slow clapping thing and murmuring in admiration, "Well played, Hong Kong, well played".  

Anyway back to this morning's Starbucks.  I lucked out and got a little table to myself.  I read my mag, enjoyed my coffee and looked around. There was an elderly man flipping through a Cosmopolitan magazine in one of the easy chairs, there was a pair of women next to me discussing some dude and his lies, there was a little girl in her Sunday dress (sequins!) kneeling on the chair and deconstructing a muffin while her parents chatted, and there were so many people working on their computers at the long wooden table that it looked like a computer class. Just another day at Starbucks.