Coffee kills kittens

When I was a kid, I was afraid of anything that might be the slightest bit good for my health.  I avoided eating anything green, soy, or low-fat like it was poison, which was very difficult given my mother's persistence in buying food rich in vitamins and hiding it in my sugar.  She would cook broccoli into my brownies and carrots into my cake!  The nerve!  In retaliation, I decided I would mask everything even remotely good for me in sugar.  Every morning when I got a bowl of Chex, it was saturated in enough sugar that looking at it made one feel the onset of diabetes.
     "Are we having corn tonight mother?  Could you please pass the sugar?  No...just give me the bag."

You may be wondering to yourself, "Joshua, dear sir, what does this have to do with coffee?"  Well, I've noticed a growing trend in the coffee industry that harkens back to my days as a kid cracked out on sugar.  I believe that many people think coffee is good for them.  So, in keeping with their childhood rebellions, they want to cover the nasty coffee up with large amounts of unhealthy stuff.  A large, extra-sweet, carmel, vanilla, hazelnut, and white-chocolate mocha isn't a drink; it's unresolved childhood angst.

The obvious solution to this pandemic is to conduct a massive campaign aimed at helping coffee drinkers confront their personal aversion to eating healthy food, but I think there is a subtle solution that should not be ignored.  We should just make everyone think that coffee is really unhealthy.  Think about it.  Cigarette boxes have pictures of black lungs on the front that tell you "beware of the smokey death contained in this package" and people love them.  Humans are actually very self destructive.  If the front of every coffee shop in America had a picture of a cracked-out hobo with brown teeth that read, "this is your life on coffee and -plus- coffee kills kittens," we would be fighting the customers off with a stick.  So the next time you're in a coffee shop, don't cover up the taste of your coffee with sugar or excessive amounts of milk.  Just remember that coffee kills kittens and I promise it will satisfy your sadistic craving for sugary death.  Heck, it's so bad for you that you might even want to quit smoking just to balance things out.

I'd like my coffee venti-sized

Memo to all coffee shops:  please decide what drinks are what.  I already have to remember the difference between an "Annihilator" and a "Kahlua Kicker" and I don't like having to figure out if your cappuccino is the same as the one across the street.  Don't even get me started on a Macchiato.  Do you really need your names to be in Italian?  Sure, I know venti means 20 but this is the United States and I only speak English!

Okay, maybe I'm being a little harsh.  I know that coffee is obviously not something any one company invented and that drinks and terminology evolve with different shops and different cultures.  I also know that if somebody wants to call a latte a cappuccino and a hot chocolate a mud pie then that is his or her prerogative.  But if I went into a steak house, ordered a rare steak, and they came back with roast duck, I would be somewhat upset.  Why can nobody seem to get this right?

I think that, as a barista, I can help to resolve this question.  There are, despite what much of our experience says, accepted standards for most coffee drinks.  The problem is not the lack of standards.  The problem is a lack of knowledge on the part of many baristas.  The sad thing is that it's not even their fault.  Think about the coffee shops in your area.  I'm willing to bet that many of them employ high school and college-aged kids who are trying to pay for school or their winter formal tux.  I'd also bet that the extent of their training in coffee was three or four hours of manager-shadowing as they're flung into a bar shift with little preparation.  Given all this, I'm impressed that they know a latte from a strawberry smoothie.  Would you expect that the chef at your favorite dining establishment to be trained from scratch in three to four hours?  Unless your favorite dining establishment lets you "supersize" your dinner, then you're probably glad the chef has an education or a sizable amount of experience to draw from.

If you order your hamburger done "medium well" and the person behind the counter says "we can't do that" or asks "what does that mean?" then you are probably at a fast food restaurant.  If your barista can't tell a macchiato from a mocha then you might consider finding a coffee shop with properly trained baristas or, if you don't mind the confusion, you might consider drastically lowering your expectations.  All that said, I'm still upset about the venti thing.