MountainMornings

My sister Kay has me hooked on the grocery store version of Starbucks Frappuccino Mocha Light, in the little blue top 1.12 L glass bottles. I keep them in the fridge for an emergency boost of caffeine. In fact, this morning after yoga I popped a top and am still sipping its delectable, milk-shaky goodness.

My favorite Starbucks drink, at their brick and mortar store, is an” Iced Grande Dirty Chai Tea Latte with coconut milk!”  Granted it’s literally tea, but still with a shot of espresso!

When did it become normal to pay $5 for a cup of coffee? As a kid, I remember coffee costing less than a dollar at the local Woolworths. The Flapper made “instant” coffee, with those brown granules and I still wonder how people can drink that stuff. Kay and my brothers carried on her tradition of hot instant coffee first thing in the morning, so we’d have to import our own whenever we visited.

I’ve always been a Starbucks fan, especially when the Rocker started working at one during high school. His first day of work was supposed to be 9/11/2001, but they closed early that day on the Jersey Shore, like so many businesses and schools. One of the perks (get it?) of having your teenager work there after school was a free pound of coffee every week! And they also started the Rocker on a 401K plan, as a part-timer, which was awesome.

We are surrounded here in the Music City with some off-the-charts local coffee shops. You almost need a degree in botanicals to order to order a cup of Joe in most of them; but, if you’re a coffee connoisseur, and you like to know which country and sustainable farm produced the beans and where and how they were roasted etc, then you’d be in heaven around our townhouse. We can walk to three amazing local coffee shops -“Cascara (Coffee Cherry Tea) / Spiced Butter / Maple/ Sassafras & Sorghum Bitters / served with Askinose Chocolate + Black Licorice Square” anyone? –  complete with lots of man buns, but our nearest Starbucks is a drive across town.

Yesterday we landed in an East Nashville coffee shop that has walls full of bookshelves holding board games! It was cold and rainy and there were lots of people sitting around playing games while drinking coffee, and get this, they were actually taking to each other! No necks craned down to the blue light of a cell phone.

Our only Starbucks complaint so far has been the typical “Old Person” refrain – “Why can’t these young people find a library to study in?” All the people taking up a perfectly fine table plugged into their computers doing “work,” so that Bob and I have to perch on a tall window seat overlooking the parking lot. It’s not bad, but it’s also not comfortable. Sometimes I’ve actually wanted a manager to kick some person out, you know that guy who finished his drink a long time ago and is just sitting there on his phone taking up space, but I’m a good ole Catholic school girl, so I never say anything.

In fact, I’ve never witnessed anyone being kicked out of Starbucks, not even when those gun-nuts were trying to make a point by open-carrying into the Cville store. I want to believe that the Philly store’s manager was an anomaly last week, “Waiting While Black” should NOT be a reason to call the police, or give anyone the boot.

“…police received a 911 call around 4:40 p.m. on Thursday from Starbucks employees saying that “two males were trespassing” and “refused to leave.” According to Ross, the two men did not order food and had asked to use the bathroom, but Starbucks policy does “not allow non paying people from the public to come in and use the restroom.”

I’m looking at the Silver Lining here. The manager was fired and training in bias and customer relations should benefit every worker, not just baristas. I’m willing to give Starbucks a second chance, the CEO apologized and my chai tea awaits. Although the “Sweet Caroline” I had across the street – a dark chocolate, hazelnut and amaretto cappuccino – was to die for before the Nashville Ballet!