Tall, Grande or Venti........OR ELSE !!!!

College English professor Lynne Rosenthal was threatened with arrest yesterday when she caused a nasty scene at a Starbucks on Columbus Avenue at 86th Street. Rosenthal's offense? Refusing to submit to Starbucks' corporate-speak, which requires customers to purchase "Tall" or "Venti" coffees. But Roshenthal is fed up with the chain's irritating idiom, and the Post reports that on Sunday she decided to make a stand. Over a bagel.

Granted, Rosenthal's first mistake was going to a Starbucks for a bagel when she was on the Upper West Side. But after ordering her multigrain bagel, she was peppered with the irksome question, "Do you want butter or cheese?" And that's when she snapped. "I just wanted a multigrain bagel," Rosenthal tells The Post. "I refused to say 'without butter or cheese.' When you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want. Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a stickler for correct English. I yelled, 'I want my multigrain bagel!' The barista said, 'You're not going to get anything unless you say butter or cheese!' "

But Rosenthal refused to submit, and would not leave. So the manager summoned the NYPD, who told her she could either exit the Starbucks or be arrested. "It was very humiliating to be thrown out, and all I did was ask for a bagel," says Rosenthal. "If you don't use their language, they refuse to serve you. They don't understand what a plain multigrain bagel is." An employee says Rosenthal called a barista an asshole, a word that should also be incorporated into the company's corporate vernacular.


http://gothamist.com/2010/08/16/cops_eject_starbucks_customer_who_w.php

I hate it when the only choices start with medium or large. Excuse me, but those are comparative words, and to use them you need to start with "small".

Among the reasons I don't go to Starbucks is that I am extremely uncomfortable with their codes, cannot figure out what in hell people are saying, and all I want is a simple cup of coffee with cream and sugar. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so.

my Seattle relatives are fluent in Starbuck-ese.

dg

And then there should be cups near by you could point to the size you want.

Short (not on the menu or normally displayed) - 8oz
Tall - 12oz
Grand - 16oz
Venti - 20oz

Then there's an area with sugar and cream.

(Except an Iced Venti drink is 24oz)

by not buying the overpriced coffee at any of those places.

I have absolutely no palate for or appreciation of any coffee beyond my daily cup of Maxwell House Instant.

I still enjoy a good Mexican or south American coffee. I just buy beans at an indie shop, but I don't visit coffee shops really since I stopped working in them 6 or do years ago. :)

to get an iced tea. I asked for a small tea, and was told they only have medium and large. I said naming one of them 'medium' implies more than two sizes, one of which should be smaller than medium. I finally asked for a tea in the smallest cup they have for cold drinks.

might have been a Wendy's, but I can't recall.

They had three sizes of soda, but started with "Large", as in Large, Extra Large and Swimming pool.

I asked for a "medium".

"I'm sorry sir, we don't have a medium".

"You have three sizes, right?"

"Yes".

"If one is successively larger than the next, then you BY DEFINITION have a "medium".

I got an "extra large" I guess. Fucking pissed me off.

Fuck Starbucks and their dopey, stupid fucking "venti" bullshit. Give me a fucking cup of your overpriced, over roasted coffee already, god dammit.

It's not a cup, it's a tankard, or perhaps a vat of some sort.

Starbuck's food sucks.

Although the best New York bagel I ever had came from New Jersey:

You might as well be in Ithica, as far as bagels go.

and Barney's Greengrass are over there. You can find a better bagel than at Starbucks, that's for sure.

WTF?

That is a huge waste of police resources. He/she should be fined for not being able to handle the situation and for stupidity.

She refused SO THEN he called the Police.

The customer should be fined for failing to leave when asked.

You have a right to think Starbucks (or any location) sucks.
You have a right to never eat there.
You have a right to blog about it, protest about, submit grievances to the govt about, even start a religion about it.

You don't have a right to refused to leave private property when asked. It is called trespassing.

or communication skills. Or listening.

The customer was not wielding a weapon or making physical threats. Couldn't they just "get" the customer instead of bringing in the cops over a minor upset?

Two parties one broke the law and you are upset over the law abiding party.

To each his own I guess.

without jumping through their stupid linguistic hoops?

dg

I mean it is a starbucks for crap sake. They all are EXACTLY the same, they train all their employees the same, they all have the same menu, they all have same "lingo". If you don't like starbucks ....... DON'T GO TO STARBUCKS.

However once she decided to fly off the handle and become verbally abusive the manager had a right (and obligation) to ask her to leave. She chose NOT to and that point became a criminal. Period. She continued and the manager called the Police to enforce the law.

Maybe it is trivial however if she had escalated from verbal abuse to physical violence and the manager HADN'T called the Police people would be saying "the warning signs were there if ONLY he had called the Police".

Morals of story.
1) If you don't like starbucks ....... (drumroll) don't go to starbucks and expect it to "not be Starbucks".
2) When asked to leave by management if you refuse in most states that is criminal trespassing.
3) If you commit a crime even a "trivial" one expect the Police to be called to enforce the law.

unless she said the Magic Words. Anyone with half a brain cell could have figured out from what she said that all she wanted was a bagel & to refuse to sell it to her unless she said "butter" or "cream" (notice "neither" isn't an option) has got to be one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.

dg

to refuse service...etc."

So, um, end of discussion. Their store, their rules. She doesn't like it, tough fucking luck, get a bagel somewhere else.

forcing people to take butter or cream with their bagel? :wtf:

dg

They were making her say no butter or no cream. Maybe not the best procedure for bagel-distribution, but again, their store, their rules.

And if someone doesn't like it (and the massive personal inconvenience of being forced to specify "no butter, etc." on the bagel) the grown-up thing to do is to take the business elsewhere, not throw a big entitlement temper tantrum in the store and then on the internet.

Instead this freak decided to make some kind of Five Easy Pieces type scene out of it.

Someone orders a bagel, it's standard for the employee to say "would you like butter or cream cheese?" A lot of customers didn't know we even had butter or cream cheese. It's on par with a burger joint asking "would you like fries?" A simple no, without the freak out would have ended the whole thing.

she understands the use of the word "neither."

especially in NYC, for the love of god. Like there aren't a hundred thousand coffee and bagel shops to choose from?

:shrug:

Originally Starbucks had a "short" and a "tall".

They then added the "grande" (Italian for "big"), larger than the "tall".

They then stopped putting the "short" on the menu, although they still sell it (sort of like how most fast food chains now have something like "medium", "large", and "egregious" as their 3 sizes).

They then added a 20-ounce version, called the "venti" (Italian for "twenty"). Somehow a lot of people got in their head that they just made up an Italian-sounding word, but it's just the Italian for the number of ounces in the drink.

So, you have a (no-longer-advertised) "short", a "tall", a "grande" (ie, "big"), and a "venti" (ie, "twenty") sizes.

Like you're going to be sodomized with a baguette by a mime if you're forced to say the nasty European words.

I've never had a problem.

Boo fucking hoo.

If I'd been the barista that woman's ears would still be burning.

I strongly suspect her refusal to say 'butter or cream cheese' was the real issue as far as the baristi go.

Some people make a mole hill into a mountain, here is an idea...don't go into a starbucks, they suck and hopefully will go out of business.

she didn't want butter or cream. At least to those of us who are fluent in English, which apparently the barista & her supporters are not.

dg

After "I just want a bagel", the conversation should have ended. The 'coffee server person' egged her on.

Or 'no thanks' or 'nope'. They threw out an eazy trap and she fell for it and got what she deserved. Sorry, hit the skids...NEXT.

:yoiks:

She needs to get a freaking life. Don't like Starbucks, don't go there. Simple problem solved.

And secondly, when a private business asks you to leave their property, don't bitch and moan to the news about how you got arrested after they called the cops.

NYC Jewish Bagel Starbucks!

Maybe for two or three Yom Kippur's.

I'm not particularly a fan of Starbucks either, but this person sounds like a twit.

;)

http://www.theonion.com/articles/william-safire-orders-two-whoppers-junior,3351/

How do people get through their days being so uptight and pissed off all the time?

out of their chair when the phone rings also get startled easily. People like that worry a tremendous amount, all day long over everything.

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for proving my point.

I asked for a LARGE plain coffee..half hot water-half coffee:)

They probably laughed at me all day :) Coffee that's strong enough to crawl out of the cup, is not for me, but they were the only place open:)

I routinely ask for one coffee & 1 empty cup when I order coffee at a chi-chi coffee place..even if they charge for the empty cup..

Is Starbucks in business to sell products & make money or not? How else could a barista refuse to sell something unless the customer said the equivalent of "Mother, May I?"

dg

Only because the person I was with wanted to go there. My first visit will probably be my only visit ever.

The entire concept smacked with pretentiousness. I didn't even enjoy the coffee because of the discomfort I felt.

Sorry, lady.

You could get just a plain small cup of coffee in a simple corner drugstore or diner for a dime or a quarter (depending on when and where you lived)?

This "Starbuck-ese" is a ridiculous sign of the times.

and wouldnt not have had to submit to butter or cheese

what really getting the bitchin in this article, but not caring enough to really read it either

And I'm going to call the sizes Dribble, Squirt and Gush.

And if you don't use my "size words", NO COFFEE FOR YOU.

"Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a stickler for correct English."

Yep, she's a prick.

Seriously, who gets that spun up over a begal? Granted, buying a begal at a Starbucks in NYC SHOULD be a criminal offense. Sounds like a case of Ms. Entitlement running into a wage-slave that had had enough of that shit.

I hate the Grande, Venti shit too, I just order small, medium or large. Once or twice I've had the order-taker repeat my order back to me in 'bucks-speak' but I just repeat the small, medium or large.

Tall Grande or Venti...Whoever decided to call sizes these terms at Starbucks corporate central should be slapped with a cast iron glove.

I don't drink coffee so I am not in those stores most of the time, but they do have some ice cream drinks that I have gotten before, and although overpriced, they are good.

But on the rare occasions I go there I never use their size terms, I say "large" or "the largest size" or "medium", if someone doesn't understand that I would ask to speak with the manager, but they usually understand what I mean.

and I'm very thankful that I have a Dunkin Donuts nearby (their coffee is nectar of the gods), but if I did and it's true that you're required to use words like "grande" and "venti," that would keep me from coming back. I can't judge the Rosenthal incident without having been there, but my first inclination is that the customer is right in situations like this.

I worked there for 3 years and we always took orders that weren't in the lingo, ie small, medium, etc.

I've been told that they do, but again, I'm not a Starbucks customer. I appreciate you clearing that up for me, because I honestly didn't know. When I had a job that required being on the road for over half the year every year, it was always Starbucks coffee that was served to me on planes and I developed a real antipathy for the brand, so I have never walked into any of their stores.

:)

I worked there for three years and then I managed an indie coffee shop. I got coffee shopped out. Though I still go to an indie store occasionally for beans, I love Mexican High Grown coffee. Yum.

The first wave of staff were pretty much your cliche, central-casting hipster Starbucks employees and it showed in their - and the manager's - attitudes. Refusing to serve someone who asked for a medium, or throwing them out of the store, etc.

They learned how the world works on that front pretty quick and the stick isn't so firmly wedged now, but the place almost didn't last a month. It still has a mediocre reputation at best; one of its Canadian equivalents across the street's been consistently healthier.

I was moved around by the district from stores with a lot of leads to not enough, and were never like that.

I did have some shitty customers though. I think that's standard in any retail type area. This was back when they had real espresso machines not that push button crap. Lol

Probably usually in situations like my town's, where it was the first Starbucks in the area to open and was mainly staffed by prospective fanboys, which I suppose are blissfully rare if anything.

Who flips out of shit like this...?
Too bad she couldn't use the energy for some thing more useful

My favourite fast food joint, Harveys, implemented a policy of "GREET, GARNISH, GRILL, GRATITUDE". Used to be I could go in, order a burger, pay for it and when it came off the grill say "mustard, relish, ketchup, tomato" and they'd wrap it up and I'd be on my way. Properly handled, they didn't have to say a damn thing.

I have a hearing impairment which makes noisy restaurant environments irksome at best and a nightmare if you have to negotiate something complicated. Some Harveys are situated in Home Depot hardware stores which are even noisier.

For a while there, I'd go in the store, get babbled at, I'd mime "can't you hear - deaf as a post", get screamed at, I'd say my usual thing to order, more getting screamed at, then they'd grill it up, garnish it, and then they wouldn't give it to me. They'd babble some sort of crap, I'd shrug to say "I have no FUCKING idea what you're going on about", they'd wave it in my face and babble more crap. Apparently I wasn't doing GRATITUDE right so they wouldn't give me the damn burger so I'd end up storming out. Eventually I just gave up going.

Not sure what happened, but I ended up going back, the signs were gone and everything was back to normal.

hubby ordered a medium latte.

Is that grande or venti?

Medium...

What is it?

Medium...

But...

Medium.

Bra what do you want?

A medium latte. What is so hard to comprehend?

Is that a grande or a venti?

So we went on this for fifteen minutes... finally the manager went... ok, and made a grande in starbucks speak.

and decided to exercise my energy making life miserable for some unsuspecting schlub making $10 an hour, then pretend to be acting in the service of some grand principle or some such bullshit".

If she's such a stickler, she at least ought to be clear about what her complaint is...

She sounds like a complete dolt to me, and I doubt the counterperson's response was exactly what she claims.

Get your bagel, pay, get on with your day. Not snap at a barista, make a scene, and get escorted out by the police.

Bud's Coffee
Saturday, May 31, 2003
Listen


(GK: Garrison Keillor; SS: Sue Scott; TR: Tim Russell; FN: Fred Newman)

GK: ……after this message from Bud's coffee.

(ESPRESSO MACHINE)


GK: I'd like coffee.

TR: Espresso?

GK: No, just coffee.

TR: Coffee of the day?

GK: Okay.

TR: We have Columbian Supremo, French Savant, and the Rawalpindi Rain Forest Blend.

GK: Any of those is fine.

TR: How about the Rain Forest Blend?

GK: Fine.

TR: Regular, grande' or venti.

GK: The biggest one.

TR: That'd be the venti.

GK: Fine.

TR: You want venti?

GK: Whatever you call it. The big one.

TR: They're all big. Grande is big, too.

GK: I want the biggest.

TR: The venti?

GK: Sure.

TR: The Venti.

GK: Yes.

TR: Why can't you say it?

GK: Just give me one.

TR: I need you to say it.

GK: I don't want to say it.

TR: Then I can't bring you one if you won't say it.

GK: Fine. I'll have two regulars then.

TR: Okay. Two regulars coming up. (COFFEE GRINDER)

GK: I'd like milk with that too. (ESPRESSO ROUTINE WITH BIG GASPS AND BURSTS OF STEAM)

TR: Café au lait?

GK: No, just milk.

TR: Or cappuccino?

GK: Just with milk.

TR: Whipped cream on top?

GK: No.

TR: Chocolate?

GK: No.

TR: Flavoring?

GK: No.

TR: We've got anis, butter brickle, chocolate, Dutch chocolate, eglantine, French vanilla, gorgonzola, hazelnut, iodine----

GK: Iodine?

TR: Iodine. Juniper. Kumquat. Licorice. Maple, Nutmeg. Orange. Pumpkin. Quince. rhubarb, Saffron, Toffee. vanilla. walnut. Xtra-walnut, yellow walnut, and zucchini.

GK: No, thanks.

TR: Don't care for any?

GK: No, thanks.

TR: Caf or decaf?

GK: Caf.

TR: Extra caf?

GK: No.

TR: Whole, skim, or 2 percent?

GK: Whole milk.

TR: Paper or plastic?

GK: Paper.

TR: Plain or colored.

GK: I don't care.

TR: Sugar?

GK: No.

TR: Here or to go?

GK: To go.

TR: You know if you ordered venti, you'd pay about half as much as ordering two regulars.

GK: I'll have the regulars.

TR: Just say venti.

GK: I'll have the regulars.

TR: You don't have to say it loud.

GK: Never mind.

TR: You can whisper it.

GK: Regulars.

TR: Think of a combination of five letters or numerals for a PIN number.

GK: A PIN number? For coffee??

TR: How about venti?

GK: You know, there's just too much involved in getting a good cup of coffee. I think I'll just go to Bud's. (BUD'S COFFEESHOP THEME)

SS: Hey. How's it going?

GK: Not so bad. You?

SS: Can't complain. What can I get you?

GK: Cuppa coffee.

SS: Coming right up. (POURING) There you go. Made it fresh this morning.

GK: Where's Bud?

SS: Dead.

GK: Oh. Long ago?

SS: No.

GK: Oh. Suddenly?

SS: Yeah.

GK: Too bad.

SS: Yeah, you could say that.

GK: Bud's Coffee Shop. You know what you get. Coffee.

SS: You hear the one about the two penguins on the ice floe?

GK: Bud's Coffee. Seventy-five cents. All day for a buck and a half. Ask about our weekly rates. (MUSIC BUTTON)

© Garrison Keillor 2003