A couple of days ago I stopped by a starbucks, one of the ones inside target. Starbucks always throws me off a bit here. They call me sir without a smirk, are pleased me choices, happily ask if there’s anything and thank me. When I tried to tip the lady gushed but said that they were technically Target employees and couldn’t accept a tip. Because the local starbucks always throw me off my game I didn’t have any snark on the tip of my tongue. Next time I am going to ask what the tip jar is for though.
Oh, and I had a scone. That was disarming, she smiled and said she liked whichever one I chose. It gave me flashbacks to this starbucks near Pikes Market in Seattle. Most of my snark-bucks tales happened at my local 7 of 9 Clackamas snark-phucks (Yes, after the hot borg chick on one of those star trek spin-offs, and because there were 9 starphucks in walking walking distance, in clusters of four but the second cluster of four was also a strip center with a Safeway that had a starphucks in it.
Anyhow, Pikes Market.
“Oh, and I’d like a blueberry scone too please.”
“A Skon?” he said (sorry, spelling it phonetically with the British pronunciation.).
I went through a whole snarky speil that I’m sure was hysterical about water closets loo’s and other British pronunciations, like asking him his work schedule (I don’t even know how to phonetically represent pronouncing every letter in schedule, I mean it already is phonetic, it’s American that goes something like skedwell). He just looked blank, well, with a smirk tattoed on, but blank, at all the loo Water Closet stuff. He corrected my schedule with skedwill.
That’s what I expect from snark-phucks where the customer is always wrong, once he said skedwill I said give me a fucking scone. It was a long time ago and one of many such encounters so I don’t remember anything verbatim except a punk ass pierced ghost white seattle snotty starphucker correcting my Skon.
Shit, on bad days or bored days I’d go to a starphucks just to have one of those encounters. All over the northwest they insist, for instance, on calling a breve a breve latte. I’ve heard the rationale a thousand times, it’s a bit like asking for a milk non-chocolate milk. Here the one time I asked for a breve the lady politely asked what that was, I told her, and she thanked me and said she was going to try it too because it sounded good. Again, thrown for a loop. Walk into a NW starbuck and ask anything, ask what pi is to 14 digits. They won’t say I don’t know, they’ll say something like 3.14 and you know the rest or just make up another 12 digits and when you say that’s fifteen they’ll say, no, it isn’t.
There was a place in Portland, a chain, eventually absorbed by starphucks, called coffee people. The motto was Just coffee no Back Talk. It’s a silly motto unless you’re in a town competing with snark-ducks.
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