Screwing with the baristas.

I hate tip jars. The f**king things are everywhere these days. Next time I go to the proctologist, I half expect to see a tip jar lying around (and if anyone would deserve it, it’s a guy who spends his day sticking his finger up people’s asses). Somehow, over the last ten years, tip jars just saturated our society.

Now, I don’t know about you but, for me I’m a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to these things. Waiters, waitresses, cab drivers, bell captains, redcaps, maitre-ds are all people who get my tips. If you’re working the counter in a Baskin Robbins, a 7-11, a dry cleaner, etc. well... you’re just s*it out of luck in my book. It’s not up to me to make up for the fact you’re getting paid sh*tty wages. Hell, I worked a ton of sh*tty jobs myself in my time, suck it up.

You don’t tip the checkout person in a supermarket, you don’t tip a receptionist in a doctor’s office, it just isn’t done - throwing a plastic cup out in front of people, dumping your loose change into it and hoping for the best is nice enough but, don’t expect me to feel guilt.

Starbucks, is one of those places where you find the innocuous tip jar. It kind of makes me chuckle in some ways because I’ve read Howard Schultz’s book and seen him on TV speaking about creating a certain atmosphere in his stores. He goes on at length on how Starbucks was trying to copy the whole expresso bar experience he found in Italy but, funny enough I can’t seem to remember there being a single tip jar in any of the many expresso bars I visited in Rome.

Maybe I would be a lot less reluctant to tip if I wasn’t getting socked with a $3 plus charge for a cup of coffee. Chances are though, if all I’m buying is a cup of coffee and it’s costing that much I’m thinking about where I really should be spending money instead of pissing it away so cavalierly. Geez, somewhere there is some retired executive from the Chock Full of Nuts chain who is just banging his head against a wall watching what has been going on with Starbucks over the last decade.

So, part of the whole ‘experience’ in some of these Starbucks is being asked your name by the counter person when you place your order.

Now, maybe it’s me but, I don’t want to build a personal relationship with La Baristas. The coffee bar is not my modern day equivalent of Cheers and I am not f**kin Norm. So, it doesn’t happen often but, every once in awhile you hit one of these places where they do ask you for your name when you order your coffee.

And... I f**k with them.

Look, like I said I don’t want a personal relationship, just give me my damn overpriced coffee to go. I don’t want it to take a half hour - WHICH IT SOMETIMES DOES EVEN WITH THAT CRYPTIC STARBUCK SPEAK!

I’ve been in places where the cash register even prints out your order over by the expresso machine but that still doesn’t speed the process up - so asking me my name while I stand around like an idiot isn’t going to make me any happier. Today’s choice was Agamemnon, sometimes it’s been such jewels as Ulysses or Socrates. I just like giving them a mouthful or a real handful to write. It stops ’em dead in their tracks, like a deer caught in headlights, they don’t know what to do!

Sometimes it’s just fun to see if they can get a name like that out of their own mouths, ‘What was that?’

‘Agamemnon.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes, really.’

‘C’mon that’s not really your name!’

‘Okay, Jason.’ (still not my name - thinking about Friday the 13th at this particular moment)

‘Okay. Jason. What was that name again... from before.’

‘Agammmennmmonn,’ I even have trouble getting it out of my mouth.

She chuckles, I chuckle and still shrouded in mystery go to the coffee bar to get my exorbitant drink. When La Barista asks, ‘Jason, do you want room for milk?’ It is all I can do to keep from totally losing it.

As I walk away, coffee in hand, I imagine one of the ladies hovering around the bar for their triple, nonfat, giganto, mocha, icerino with whipped cream saying to her friend, ‘He didn’t look like a Jason.’

And she’d be right.