Every morning I make my daily pilgrimage to Starbucks. I don't go to an cute, little, independent coffee shop because they've all been gobbled up by the "A Starbucks on every corner" concept. There are none. (That I've ever seen, anyway. And most of the little coffee/pastry places downtown usually tout the fact that they "proudly sell Starbucks coffee.") So, every morning I make my daily pilgrimage to Starbucks, and it sucks. Not because the coffee is bad, because it's actually not that bad, and not because you have to deal with the "everyone trying to squeeze through the one open door without touching the other unopened door" thing, and not because you also have to deal with the people who walk two abreast through that one open door, and you know that girl saw you and was only pretending to be spellbound by her companion's conversation while looking straight ahead as she literally ran you over…not because of all that, but because the Starbucks I happen to pass on my way to work is the world's slowest Starbucks in existence.
There's always a line out the door, and it's like the money-taking, coffee-pouring, order-chanting barristas are all thumbs. I have my $1.35 ready and waiting as soon as I get through the door, but it takes these people five minutes to pour a simple cup of coffee and press 3 buttons on a cash register. They always have to fiddle with the timer, or the frilly little coffee filters, and sometimes they have to take great pains to tip the coffee urn so that you get just the right amount of grounds in the bottom of your cup. How satisfying it is to finish a perfectly nice cup of coffee with a great big mouthful of grounds as you take your last sip! Once you get past the obstacle of paying (and stifling the urge to yell "Just take the money! Just take it and push the buttons later!"), you need to patiently wait behind the people at the milk-and-sugar counter who feel that just because all of the different sugars and sweeteners and cocoa dust and cinnamon toppings are there, they need to put each and every one of them into their hot beverage. I once saw a man pour close to a third of the sugar in a sugar container (y'know, the glass ones?) into his coffee cup, then stir it, then put in a packet of Sweet 'n Low, stir again, then some powdered cinnamon, and then I had to leave because not only was I growing old waiting, I was getting grossed out. I mean, I've heard of extra sweet, but why bother with the coffee at that point?
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