First of all, let me openly admit that I don't know jack-shit about ordering coffee anymore. I've never really liked coffee; I'm a tea drinker, and a purist at that (black with occasional honey added in). However, as a former assistant manager at Dunkins, I know how to make make a coffee. Or, so I thought.
When it comes to flavored ice coffees, I like caramel followed by pumpkin followed by peppermint followed by chocolate chip cookie dough. Disgusting, I know, but to me coffee is like vanilla flavoring and is better served as a mixer. My daughter has taught me how to properly order flavored iced coffees and, more importantly, how to drink them without getting a straw full of pumpkin spiced sugar.
I've had a long, rough day after a long, rough week. I'm exhausted and I still need to get to the hairdresser so she can help me grow out my hair with style to cover my newly gashed face.
I want an iced coffee.
No. I need an iced coffee.
I stop in at Starbucks because it's on the way to the salon. I check out the menu. I have no flaming idea what a pumpkin spice latte is, so I ask if they have anything iced with pumpkin. The barista insists that she can make either an iced latte or a regular iced coffee with pumpkin.
Perfect I'll take the regular iced coffee with pumpkin.
I order a small, which is a tall. But the girl grabs a big-ass cup. I say, "No, I want the smallest size you have." She holds up a Dixie cup and insists that this "tall" is really only seventy cents more so I should take it. Um... what the hell kind of bait-and-switch shit is this? I just want a goddamned cup of iced coffee.
So, I say, "Well, sure, then. I guess so. Make it regular."
As she is writing on the cup, she nonchalantly says, "We make all our coffee black. Cream is on the counter."
Um, say what? You said you could make a regular ... what the ... I mean ... Hold on a sec. Did she just tell me I'd have to make my own coffee? Oh, no, she didn't. Wait. Yes, yes, she did. She is tricking me into buying a huge coffee, sold as a "tall," which is the smallest size except if I want a Dixie cup, for which she is going to charge me somewhere in the vicinity of $7, and, to top it all off, I have to make my own frigging coffee?!?!
That would be a big fat fucking NO.
I tell ya what, Starbucks barista. How about you hand my that empty cup, and you open the cash drawer, and you pay me to make my own huge-ass cup of pumpkin iced coffee.
I look her square in the eye. She is absolutely serious about this. Honest to gawd, I just ordered a regular pumpkin iced coffee, just exactly like she told me I could, yet now she is merrily assuring me that she is not, under any circumstances known to man, going to serve me a regular pumpkin iced coffee.
A black pumpkin iced coffee, yes.
Regular? Fuck no. No fucking way.
Apparently, Starbucks doesn't roll that way. Black coffee matters! Black coffee matters! I'll bet she's even wearing the tee-shirt that says so.
Thank goodness for Dunkin Donuts, that's all I can say. It's a slightly longer drive, and I have to go through the traffic-jammed intersection twice (once there and once back). I walk in, I order a small regular pumpkin iced coffee plus a pumpkin donut because now my blood sugar is low from being all pissed off at Starbucks, and my entire order comes to three dollars and loose change, half of what I was being charged for whatever the fuck sized Starbucks coffee that was supposed to be that I would've had to make myself.
I end up drinking about half of my pumpkin iced coffee because I'm too busy getting all gussied up at the hair salon, but it doesn't matter. It's my coffee and it's exactly the way I want it and, best of all, I didn't have to make it. Boom.
