down the plug

I am making a stand today. I am avoiding Starbucks. I know they’ll be worried.

It is something that I have thought about before but today it was in the news so I chose this moment to make my one man boycott.

You see Starbucks have been wasting the amount of water most small countries use. In fact we're talking 23.4 million litres. Every day.

Every time you go in there you see taps that are left running constantly. Look at the wee sinks that they put the spoons and thermometers in between uses – they are placed in constantly running water and in a world that is seeing the value of water more and more it is ridiculous.

Of course it seems less of a priority in this wee country as I type this while looking at the rain streaming down the windows of the seemingly more ethically aware Ground. If there is anything we have an abundance of it is water. But that isn’t the point. If it were the point then the fact that the Starbucks shops in drought affected countries such as China, Australia and Romania are also leaving their taps running would be horrendous.

I don't often urge you to read the Sun but take a quick pop over and read the full story. It still pains me slightly that this is an issue I have noticed but never fully appreciated until I spotted it on a tabloid newspaper front page. Maybe I need to do a bit of work on my observational skills before goin back in the classroom.

So maybe Starbucks won’t miss my custom today; and maybe we won’t find a way to share the surplus rain we have in Ireland with the rest of the world any time soon, and maybe I need to look at some of the waste of which I am guilty – but until I can feel a little better about my extra hot latte I’ll be spending more time in Ground.

sucker of the week

Does it make me gullible that I want desperately to be the customer of the week? Have I been too easily suckered by a ham-fisted corporate tactic?

I don’t care – I want to walk in there and see, “Customer of the Week, Mr C. His favourite drink is a grande soy latte, extra hot, extra shot, with a hint of irish cream in his own designer thermal mug.” It would make me happy.

But would it make me go more often, persuade all my friends and family and random strangers to spend their hard earned cash on over priced coffee, and take free publicity shots for my blog? Undoubtedly. I’m naïve and susceptible to cheap promotional devices. Does that make me a bad person?

it snowed today - in my car

It's odd how events can build up detail by detail to a somewhat unexpected eventual effect.

Take today for instance. I bought a Starbucks latte - not unexpected so far. It was too hot to drink immediately so I set it on my dashboard and set off. I drove below a flock of starlings that made a mess of my car if you know what I mean. I drove to a drive thru car wash to clean it. For some reason the car wash wasn't working so I decided to drive round to the front to inform a member of staff. The windows had steamed up while I was stopped and I couldn't open them because they were covered in... well... So with my vision impaired I drove - bumped into a kerb - my coffee went all over the dashboard, the seats, the floor. I cried.

Luckily i had wipe things which I was able to use to clean up the dashboard and upholstery things for the seats and floor. Unluckily some of the coffee had gone down the vents and I couldn't get at it - so I left it to dry.

My car smells of stale coffee (It wouldn't even have been so bad if it was Costa Coffee - I like the smell of Costa Coffee)

The thing is, once I returned to the car after a while and the coffee in the vents had dried, I turned on the engine. Air came up through the vents and with it little flakes of dry soya milk floated up and around the inside of the car. It was a beautiful moment. Unexpected, slightly icky, but very very beautiful.

who's strange now

Here I am, as usual, sitting in Starbuck with my post-school coffee (differs from my pre-school, breaktime, post-drama lesson, LSU meeting, and lunchtime coffees in that I pay someone else to make it for me) The place is humming and the staff are looking more than a little overworked. School kids are leaving their trademark mess behind them and tables are overflowing with empty mugs and half eaten muffins.

In the midst of all this madness there is a woman walking round between tables clearing them and leaving everything in a tidy pile by the coffee bar. While the rest of us seem happy enough to shove the previous occupiers of our table’s leftovers to the side she is squeezing round us balancing eight venti mugs, three plastic cups and a sandwich cartoon on her fingers. She doesn’t work here, she isn’t even a customer – she just came in to lend a hand clearing tables.

As she lifts the cups from my table she looked up and asked what I was writing about – I told her – She smiled “They’re always busy at this time of the day.” She cleared the table next to me… and left. Her job here was done.

How awesome is that? A true servile attitude. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover she went straight over to Ground or some other coffee shop to start all over again. And always with a smile. Isn’t it sad, however, that my first instinct as I watched her was that she isn’t all there? Isn’t it sad that we have gone so far into a self-interested existence that we would rather wallow in some one else’s latte smeared mess while looking disapprovingly at overworked staff than do someone else’s job. What, are we scared of the barista union?

irony

Definition of irony: Getting so frustrated at lack of wifi spots in the town that you go and pay for access at Starbucks only to find, on your return to your car, that you are parked in a free wifi spot.

Starbucks - I'll be getting my soya lattes to go from now on.