Dear Starbucks:
Thank you for always being there for me. On a day like today, when the rest of the world takes a break because it is July 5th and they can, thank you for realizing that it is no longer a holiday and being ready to serve me my decaf, non-fat, vanilla latte. Thank you for adding whip cream as an added treat, not because you got my order wrong, but because you knew I'd need the extra sugar rush to get me through the first hour of the day.
Thank you for caring enough about the sensitivity of my skin to always shield me from the heat of my latte by encasing the cup in it's little brown insulated ring. Made only from recycled paper because you like trees almost as much as you like that I come through the drive-in on most days that end in "y" with spare change for little box outside the window. You also love my potted plants enough to put your used coffee beans on the counter, so that I might take your trash, thus ensuring that your Baristas will not be forced to leave their posts to dispose of said garbage. Instead, they will bravely man the large machines that could have only been engineered by NASA in order to serve those of us willing to spend half our paychecks with the 2,345 possible combinations of coffee, espresso and tea (and now fruit smoothies).
Thank you, Starbucks, for refusing to use ordinary sizes like small, medium and large, but instead give pompous titles that make us regulars feel cultured, while intimidating those nubile consumers with words like Venti and Grande. I feel like I belong when I can rattle off an order for coffee using 25 descriptors like: Decaf, skinny, extra-hot, no whip, splenda, 2 shots, low-foam; all to describe one drink. And like a friend I've known for years, you understand every word.
Thank, you my sweet coffee paradise, for staffing your corporate-neighborhood coffee houses with people who wouldn't dream of working anywhere else. After all , outside of your strategically artistic walls, where would a magenta-haired, fairy-tattooed, skinny jean wearing man with holes in his earlobes large enough to hold my snack-sized donut, find employment? While he rocks out in his mother's basement at night, singing songs about the evils of capitalism and the death of originality; during the day, he wears the green apron worn by thousands of men just like him all-across this great land. That apron, like a beacon in the night to us weary wonderers seeking cookie-cutter culture at $4.25 a cup.
Thanks again Starbucks for realizing that today is no longer the 4th of July. You celebrate our great nation every day, by ensuring that my caramel machiatto tastes the same whether I am in Tennessee or Texas, Maine or Mississippi. From sea to shinning sea, the green aprons are there, swaying to Tracy Chapman or Miles Davis, serving the American dream, Venti and fully caffeinated.
