I am not much of a coffee drinker. I don’t have anything against coffee. I just don’t drink it. Mostly it’s because the coffee world has its own special language and apparently, I don’t speak it. It used to be you walked in and got a cup of Joe. Now you get a lean grande latte with sprinkles. I have absolutely no idea what the hell that means. Does anyone have any idea what that means?
Recently, I was in a Starbucks and I order something simple, a hot chocolate. The Barista asked me what size I wanted. The Barista, I have learned, is the name for the person who actually pours your cup of coffee. I believe it comes from the latin words, “I used to be a Vice-President at a failed dot.com.” Anyway, he asked me what size I wanted and I said “small”. “We don’t have small,” he said. “We have tall.” “I don’t want a tall”, I said. “I want a small.”
“Our tall is small,” he said.
“This makes absolutely no friggen sense,” I thought.
“So what are your other sizes,” I said.
“We have Vente and Grande,” he said.
Good, two words in a language I don’t speak.
Having had this experience, I have started to learn more about coffee. For instance, I have learned that the word “latte” is French and it means, “I just paid way too much for a cup of coffee.
The other thing I recently learned is that in whatever language Starbucks is speaking, there apparently is no word for “free refill”.
When I was a kid, every place advertised the bottomless cup of coffee. Starbucks has adapted this slightly. At $4.00 a cup, they now believe in the bottomless bank account.
I think the reason they are able to get such high a price for a cup of Joe is because they have a machine that makes really cool sounds. It sputters. It spurts. It is really, really interesting. I really want one of these.
Frankly, though, I don’t think it does a damn thing. I think it’s just the entertainment you get when you spend $4.00 for a cup of coffee. Hell, it’s a lot cheaper than a movie. Go to the movies and you pay $10, plus the popcorn, and of course the $4.00 cup of coffee.
Starbucks also offers about a million varieties of coffee. For instance, when I was in Starbucks, the Barista asked me if I would like to try the caffeine free espresso. Which led me to reply, “What’s the friggen point?” I thought the reason people drank coffee was to get a buzz. $4.00 a cup and no buzz? Again, I ask, what’s the friggen point?”
Starbucks also sells a lot of things that are not related at all to coffee. At Starbucks, you can buy greeting cards. You can buy books. You can buy CD’s. Last week, at Starbucks, I got a latte and had my refinanced my house all at the same time.
Which I only really needed because I had to pay for the latte.
There is one advantage to the Starbucks method though. I heard last week a robber held up a Starbucks. Apparently, they were able to capture him when he ordered the Barista to put all the money in the bag and the cops were able to show up before he had decided on the Tall, Vente or Grande bag.
I have just learned that in Indonesia, they have a coffee which sells for $250 a pound. Apparently it is so expensive because of how they make it. They take the coffee beans, feed them to animal and then extract the beans from the waste. For this, there are very rich people in the world willing to pay $250 a pound or roughly $20 a cup of coffee at retail. This, I believe, is God’s way of telling you, that you make way to much money.
Copyright 2004 – 2008, Glenn G. Millar
The Millar's Tale 
Starbucks
Now I’ve been down to McDonald’s
I’ve been to your Burger King
I’ve ate at the supermarket deli
It’s not a real big thing
I’ve been to the Dominos Pizza store
I’ve eaten at Chicken-Cluck-Cluck’s
But the strangest restaurant in the USA
Is the coffee shop named “Starbucks”
At Starbucks the sidewalks
Go out into the street
So if you decide not to go in
Cars will run over your feet!
Enter and you’ll need a bunch of cash
For nights there are for costly caffeine
And the days are used for sleepin’
But pots of coffee are always boiling, topped with swirls of steam.
The coffee they have at Starbucks is exotic
Some is brewed from a monkey turd
Who would’a ever have thunk?
But haven’t you yet heard?
There are actually people out there
Who will spend perfectly good money
Forty bucks a cup for stewed monkey shit
If it weren’t so sad it would be funny!
At Starbucks the music
Has inspirational ways
For Saturday and Sunday
Are decreed as listening days
And Monday, Tuesday then Wednesday
Are saved to rest your ears
That don’t leave much time for FM radio
And that system can’t be feared!
The CD’s you buy at Starbucks
Are very, very rare
No one has ever heard of them before
Listen only if you dare!
Music pumps out of the player
Right into your brain
And don’t think it’s the least bit scary
To figger you’re goin’ insane!
Now if you’re headed for Starbucks
I’d be glad to show you the way
I dis-remember the directions
So the route I can’t rightly say
But there’s one on every street corner
And two on every street
You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one
Their marketing can’t be beat!
Those women who avoid Starbucks
Are as hot as the hinges of Hades
But their behavior leaves you to question
Of whether they should be called “ladies”
But other women just sit there, sipping their lattes
Like it’s their very own personal store
They are lonely and afraid and tired
Just waiting for a man, maybe something more
And the gentlemen who avoid Starbucks
Are all similarly well-endowed
And they’ve a certain special characteristic
Curious to define but this I vow
Let’s just say in a delicate way
That whatever they start to do
They can continue to do for hours
Perhaps that gives you a clue
Vente and Grande and
El Macho Mucho Grande
I’m not sure which one I have
But I can do “it” to beat the band, eh?
My new lady will tell me tonight
She won’t be disappointed.
We’ll roll around some and have some fun
And it certainly won’t hurt that my joint is double jointed!
The weather around a Starbucks is always fine
No snow or rain allowed
Not even much wind, just a warm gentle breeze
And in the sky, hardly ever even a cloud
And while the rest have springtime gales
Starbucks is under it’s own umbrella
If you venture out you won’t get wet
In a word, at Starbucks you’re one lucky fella!
Now Starbucks is named for
Two mountain lumps of brown
That grace the place on the counter
Where the barista sets the coffee down
The hill named “Star” is sparkling roasted coffee
And “Bucks” is chocolate wrapped in foil of gold
As long as you can pay you can order what you wants
At least that’s the story I’m told
The coffee they have at Starbucks
Is supposedly the best in the whole nation
You take a cup to get you up
One more for a hallucination
Another cup will cure the gout
And another makes it certain
That with your gal you won’t run out
Of steam if you go beyond flirtin’
Starbucks coffee, most don’t know
Is harvested by habits
A queer little animal, seen only by baristas
It’s a cross, you know, between a horse and rabbit
They crawl among the bushes and harvest only the very best beans
No larger than a good-sized pup
But smarter than you’d think
No good for ridin’, but a damn cinch to saddle up!
If you go to jail in a city with a Starbucks
Not as bad as you might think
For in each cell it’s strange to tell
Piping hot coffee piped into the sink
Each cell with a whipped-cream dispenser
And a variety of flavored liquors
To add to the coffee while you serve your sentence
Only so you won’t get bored!
The schools they have for Starbucks baristas
Offer lots of neat diplomas and prizes
For learning to steal your money
And talking you into larger sizes
Getting you to buy those gift cards
You’ll have to refinance your mortgage though
To actually afford to go into that store
Because everything in there costs a lot of dough!
Starbuck’s brave baristas, of course
Are just those regular fella’s
They don’t dare get close to their habits
Their boyfriends might get jealous
They have lots of important things to check
Make sure all the women wear expensive furs
See to it that all the goods in the cafe is pricey
Ensuring the espresso machine continually purrs.
Now, you can talk about your McDonalds
You may talk of Burger Kings
And Pizza Hut and Wendy’s
Have lots of tasty, edible things
Yes you can eat at the deli, or the cart along the street
But at the risk of seeming a schmuck
The one that’s by far the strangest to me
Is the coffee shop they call Starbucks
Coffee
Is a curse
For those blessed
With more money
Than sense.