As everyone knows, I work hard. All the time. I'm very diligent. So, the other day while I was working my butt off (kind of like I'm doing now), I happened across some blogs on the CBC website. One in particular caught my attention...
Food Bytes
Mega coffee, ASAP!
Monday, November 10, 2008 03:49 PM ET
by Tara Kimura, CBCNews.ca
In the new movie Role Models, the frustrated character Danny delivers a sharp rant against the rebranding of small, medium and large at Starbucks.
Danny – as portrayed by Paul Rudd – orders a large black coffee. When the server tells him a venti is large, he replies: "No venti is 20." He proceeds to bicker with the barista and his girlfriend, charging that only Fellini would order his coffee using Starbucks' terminology.
In an interview at the New Yorker festival last month, Rudd discussed his disdain for the trendy new monikers. Rudd explained that for him, the new cup sizes are on par with the phrases "been there done that," "ASAP" and "24-7."
"What is wrong with small, medium and large?" he asked. "Nothing. [The new labels] just make the world a worse place."
He also noted the demise of small, medium and large has not been limited to the U.S. One coffee shop in England uses Mega for its large designation, he said.
"There are such inconsistencies with language. I'll take a mega coffee?" he said.
What are your food packaging pet peeves?http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/foodbytes/2008/11/mega_coffee_asap.html
And here is my reply, which it wouldn't let me post on the site for whatever reason. So I'm posting it here.
All last year, I worked at a cafe on the Bow River in Calgary. Our sizes were Medium, Large and Extra Large, which even I, as an emloyee, hated. Regular customers knew that by ordering a large they really were getting a medium, but whenever I didn't recognize them I always worried that I wasn't giving them the size that they really wanted.
The sizes we sold were posted quite visibly though, as is usually the case, so I personally think that customers have no one to blame but themselves for size mix-ups.
One thing that threw me off a bit though, was when someone would come in ordering a "tall". In Starbucks-lingo, that's a small and I always assumed that that's what the customer wanted. On numerous occasions, however, I was wrong: they wanted a large.
Also...Starbucks has ruined the Macchiato. A real macchiato is espresso "marked" (that's the meaning of the name) with foamed milk. A few times, someone would order a macchiato and I would make them one. A real one. Problem: What they REALLY wanted was a vanilla latte with caramel sauce in a criss cross on top. Starbucks-style.
I have to say though, in the GRAND scheme of things, is it really that hard to read the board of coffee drinks when you walk into a cafe, figure out how their sizes work and then order whatever size it is that corresponds with your need for caffeine. Jeez.
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