Tonight I had a woman at work who ordered this: "a petey vanilla or whatever that thing is". She had to stick her finger on the glass to point it out to me. She seemed like a nice lady, just a nice lady who needs to get out more, maybe read some books. The word was "petite", by the way.
I get this a lot. If you look at the word mocha, do you read it as "mosha" or do you understand the hard "k" sound? The worst drink to understand is the "caramel machiato" and there are several ways to mispronounce this. I could list them but I'll leave it for your imagination!
Close to the menacing machiato is the Vivanno smoothies. For some odd reason most everybody calls it a "Viv-i-anno" adding that "i" from nowhere. It sounds like the name "Vivian". To the credit of the public, our menus tend to have very small print and I don't understand why they have to be so tiny. People have to extend their neck like E.T. over the counter in an attempt to read the mysterious words behind my head.
For the record, many people don't know what language we use for the drinks. Most will guess incorrectly that it's French up there, but other than the "petite" vanilla scone (which doesn't have a place on the menu, it's written on a card in the pastry case) I can't think of many French words in use. The language is Italian, in fact a barista is the person who "tends the bar" even though we aren't serving alcohol, and there's no bar.
This is what goes through my mind whenever another person struggles with the language, I just don't earn enough and have enough time to spare to explain to every person the correct way. However, if someone is curious enough to ask me I gladly explain.
Just for fun, my old boss had a few nicknames for some popular drinks. Out of spite they were the "Icky Chippy Chip" (aka double chocolatey chip) and the "Miley" (vanilla bean, I guess because she is so white?). A typo appears on our register for the caramel machiato, leaving out the second "a" with "machito".
In case you haven't figured it out yet, I work behind the counter at a Starbu cafe', although I work for another company called Tarjay. They right my shecks so I can pay my bills and poot fud on my taybull.
The moral flexibility of a 20-something
13 years ago
3 comments:
Haha, I bet you do get a lot of "what's that.. that.. tall thing that's.." questions. Funny, we just got camamel macciato (I can say it, not spell it) the other day to spice up some coffee. I used to wonder why Starbucks named its items the way it does. Is it for the mystique of it all? The atmosphere? Someone their words are a bit more refined than "yo, I want a big black coffee, no cream." Somehow, they made coffee fashionable. Same with those yogurt and cupcake places... weird names, high prices, and a decorative atmosphere.
Hmmm, perhaps Italian makes things more expensive? I do know the CEO (I think his name is Schultz) modeled Starbucks cafes after the European cafes he discovered while traveling there some 40 years ago.
We didn't have coffee shops like that in America and he saw an opportunity to make money by offering a variety of coffee drinks, including espresso, to a culture that was used to plain, cheap, coffee.
I'd like to know where the frappuccino comes from, somehow I can't believe they would be popular in Europe. The frappuccino is just glorified milkshakes that may also have coffee in them. They're yucky sweet and bad for you, so naturally they are our most popular drinks (coffee by itself is least popular).
Thanks to McDonald's cashing in, many people now order them as "frapes" (frap-ay). Me, I love black coffee!
I'd like a frapay, please. And, some fries with that. It's weird that McDs is doing the whole 'premium salad,' fruit smoothie, coffee thing.
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