Tag Archives: etiquette

Starbucks: Rules of Engagement

4 Replies
  1. If you are in the drive-thru lane and ordering more drinks than there are people in your vehicle, then you should be inside the store. The drive-thru lane is not for people like you. It is for people who are both in a hurry and able to be served quickly. Practical considerations regarding the interior upholstery of your car and the liquid and often sugary nature of beverages from Starbucks should further dissuade you from abusing the drive-thru lane in this manner.
  2. If you are in the drive-thru lane and ordering drinks for only the people in your vehicle, but there are more than four people in your vehicle, then you should be inside the store. The drive-thru lane is not for people like you. See above. It may also be helpful to note that if there are more than four people in your vehicle, it is likely that at least one of them needs to use the restrooms inside. Why not take the opportunity?
  3. If you are inside the store and ordering more drinks than can fit in one of those stiff paper drink carriers (i.e., more than four) and it is clearly a Starbucks “rush hour” (e.g., any weekday morning between 7:00 and 9:00), then, while you think you are being nice by bringing coffee to everyone in your office, you are clearly oblivious to the presence, needs, and emotions of the people behind you in line. You need to cut back on your generosity or change your timing, or your co-workers need to be getting their own drinks at this or another Starbucks or similar coffeehouse.
  4. No matter the circumstance, you should never be ordering drinks for other people at Starbucks unless you are intimately familiar with both all of the usual options regarding the particular drinks you are ordering and all of the preferences of your absent companions regarding those options.
  5. If you find yourself at Starbucks purchasing drinks for a party not present at the point of purchase or on site, do not, under any circumstances, contact the absent party via mobile telecommunications device. Recognize that if the absent party is so picky about his or her drink that whatever you bring back will be rejected unless absolutely perfect, then that party is either so insufferable that he or she does not deserve to have a drink brought back to him or her, or that party failed in his or her duty to correctly instruct you on how to order his or her drink. The risk of an improperly constructed beverage falls to the party who failed to properly instruct his or her point-of-purchase proxy.
  6. Finally, if you are not going to Starbucks yourself, but are instead sending someone to Starbucks for your drink, so that person will soon find him- or herself in one of the scenarios described above, then your duty as a polite member of civil society is either to be intimately familiar with all of the usual options regarding your drink and to properly instruct your point-of-purchase proxy beforehand, or to recognize that you have assumed the risk of an improperly constructed beverage, or to go get your drink yourself.

Thank you. That is all.

The Hyperventilating Left

11 Replies

Not that long ago, it was the right that was angry and the left that was, at least comparatively, polite.

Hahahahahahahahahahahhahahaha…

*whew* I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time. Since when has the Left ever been polite?!? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not patting the Right on the back here. In case you’ve forgotten, both sides piss me off. However, what I’ve noticed in my blogosphere travels, is that while both sides can be rude, obnoxious, and insensitive, it’s overwhelmingly those on the Left that use crude, filthy language to make their points.

"But after years of being the targets of inflammatory rhetoric, not only from fringe groups but also from such mainstream conservative politicians as Newt Gingrich, the left has gone on the attack. And with Republicans in control of Washington, they have much more to be angry about."

[…]

"To what, effect, though? Do the hundreds of thousands of daily visitors to Daily Kos, who sign their comments with phrases such as ‘Anger is energy,’ accomplish anything other than talking among themselves?…How about the 125,000 or so daily visitors to Eschaton? Or the thousands who visit Rude Pundit, the Smirking Chimp or My Left Wing?"

"Put another way, can one person sitting alone in a living room, typing her fingertips numb on a keyboard, make a difference?"

Not to me they can’t. They can’t change my mind on any issue if I won’t listen to them, and I won’t listen to them until they stop foaming at the mouth and cursing every other word.

"…O’Connor [of My Left Wing] describes a trip she took to Washington last September for a rally against the Iraq war. It was a ‘buoyant’ experience, she says, ‘exuberant,’ right up until the moment that the speakers onstage began yammering about things that had nothing to do with why they had gathered."

"Free Palestine? Free some death-row inmate? End global warming? ‘That was when I just freaking lost it,’ she says. ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ she remembers screaming into a bullhorn."

Now, there’s some anger I can identify with. It drove me nuts when the anti-war protest of ’03 in Pittsburgh was hijacked for women’s reproductive "rights". I hate mission creep.

"Meanwhile, over on Eschaton, Dave is writing, ‘As a matter of fact — I do hate Bush!’ On Rude Pundit: ‘George W. Bush is the anti-Midas. Everything he touches turns to [expletive].’ On the Smirking Chimp: ‘I. Despise. These. [Expletive]!’"

That kind of purile ranting might be good for rallying other Lefties, but it’s not going to help them change minds or motivate folks (like me) in the middle. Give me intelligent, reasoned explanations of your points and I’ll listen. Go all Exorcist on me and you’ll get plonked.

If any of you frequent Lefty blogs whose authors aren’t rabid, let me know.  Don’t worry about plugging blogs on the Right.  Being a Christian blogger already puts me into contact with more Righty blogs than I can stomach.