Proper Coffe Etiquette

I am not sure why but it really annoys me when I am sitting in Barnes and Noble and I hear people talking on their cell phones and calling this a Starbucks!  It simply does.  I just heard it...a few seconds ago!  There is not comparison.  Barns and Nobel does not take any Starbuck cards or honor any of their specials.  The service is not the same.  The staff at Starbucks treat you and your cup of coffee special.  You know you have been served by a REAL barista at Starbucks. Not the same at the book store  where any clerk can ring you up.

Maybe I am a coffee snob.  I think I might be leaning that way. The staff here at my local Barnes and Nobel are very quick to point out that they are not a Starbucks I any way, shape or form.  That is okay thought.  When I am coming here, I might not  have coffee as the focus. It is normally books with coffee being the after thought. In addition, there simply are not enough outlets here for all the people who want to use their laptops.  Not the case in the newly remodeled Starbucks now equipped with a plethora of outlets. 

Even the clientele of people are different.  The book store is normally filled with students with overstuffed backpacks dressed in emo or punk or drunge.  The Starbucks patron is normally  older, trendy and on way to some very important business meeting who must have that skinny soy latte! 
While the coffee brand is the same and served at both places, the feel, the service and customers are in  different leagues altogether.  I am sure.  I am sure, I am a coffee snob.  Please don't call the café at Barnes and Noble, Starbucks!  It is not proper coffee etiquette!



My Life in a Coffee Shop

Snapshots In My Time...Of My Time.....Hauntings.

It seems I live at the local Barnes and Noble and I am not sure it is such a good thing. I think I have no social life except for me and the web. It seems to be my most consistent friend. I have many other friends but I think that the web had infiltrated and become in intergral part of me. I think I actually get withdrawals if I cannot get to it at least once a week.

What does that say about our world. I have also plugged into Facebook and Twitter. Even moreso that my child! So I spend my free time drinking coffee and eating the occassional brownie or cookie while I surf, blog, twitter and facebook. I know there are things I could be doing at home like cleaning and organizing closets, but what is the fun in that?

Coffee Wars Continue

Snapshots In My Time...
Of My Time.....Hauntings.

Well, there seems to be no end to the coffee wars here at work. What is the thing to do so that you do not have to make another pot of coffee for our office....leave 2 cups. Never take the last 2 cups. We all have to have travel mugs so that the carpet does not get messed up. So leaving 2 cups will fill one travel mug. This morning I made 2 pots. Someone had left the last 2 cups and I took in when I came in, so that was the first pot.

The big boss filled his mug and just left the pot. I guess we little minions can't tell him to make a pot. I made another. And can we say how disgusting it is to hear someone slurping coffee???? Who drinks like that? Only one person in this office and today I could take it no more. I told her to stop slurping her coffee. She then asked me if I had a problem with her. I told her no. I had no problem with her. I told her I had a problem with her etiquette. She just looked at me. She slurped on. The war continues.

Coffee Wars

Snapshots In My Time...
Of My Time.....Hauntings.

For the past week the coffee wars have raged in the office. It is the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. It all began about a week and a half ago when someone in the front office drank the last of the coffee in the pot and did not make a new pot. The time was about 9am so coffee drinking was in full force by all. The women in the admin office went to the break room and saw that and it was on. Next thing I see is them walking around the office with the empty coffee pot acusing everyone, one by one of drinking the last cup and not making a new pot. The cultprit was found out and since that day, if the coffee gets low, most people go around telling everyone that there is enough for about 1 more cup before a new pot will need to be made.

Well, then the entire process of how you make you cup of coffee has become part of the war. Who is it that carelessly leaves sugar all over the silver tray for others to clean up? Noone confesses to this so people now watch every one when they leave the coffee area and women swarm in to see if there is sugar on the tray....if so that person is called out. Then, who is it that leaves the coffee dingleberries in the sugar.....not rinsing the spoon before putting it in the sugar causing drops of coffee to harden into hard, tan balls in the sugar? Who is not rinsing the spoon? Who is not turning the spoon over so that coffee or water does not pool in the middle of the spoon? Water will cause clear coffee dignleberries in the sugar. It is just plain ridiculous.

Three hours of each morning is spent calling out in the halls, or from office to office on the status of coffee levels in the pot, who was the last in, who just got a cup, who rinsed the community stirring spoon, who did not, who let the coffee dingleberries in the sugar this morning and then the clear ones? Will it never end?

You would think we had no work to do. We are all consumed with the status of coffee. My god! What is this world coming to?