Why is it that 80% of the time I order at Starbucks, my order is made wrong? Now, am I ordering a grande half-caf mocha frappucino with extra caramel and extra whip with a spleen? Just for the record, you will NEVER see me ordering ANYTHING with more than 2 adjectives. And people ordering more than that for a beverage should be shot on sight. So what’s my drink of choice that tends to absolutely BAFFLE the hired help?
A Venti black iced tea with one Sweet and Low.
Let’s go through the ingredients and materials needed for such a mind scrambling conundrum. First, you have the plastic cup. Second, the ice. Third, the actual pre made iced tea and finally, the most cryptic part of this, the packet of Sweet and Low.
For all you math majors out there, that’s four parts making up the whole. And rest assured, up to 75% of that concoction will be made wrong 85% of the time.
25% THE CUP: Now this is the LEAST amount of error I have encountered. They usually just grab the right sized cup and write the contents on the side of it. So I have full assurance that if I were to ever order JUST the cup, I would be certain that my order would be filled correctly 100% of the time. But unfortunately, an empty cup does not a good beverage make. And so comes the mind blowing variables.
25% THE ICE: Ranking close to the odds of THE CUP, THE ICE is usually filled correctly. Sometimes, they skimp on the ice and it is melted before it even reaches the pick up counter. But blame that on the off chance the tea was just brewed and is still hot or just an incorrectly filled cup with ice. But either way, it’s a low percentile of error.
25% THE TEA: Yes, this accounts for 50% of the errors. I get passion. I get green. I get half lemonade-half black. And the combinations of black, green, passion and lemonade in every imaginable mixture. I think I even once got ALL of them in one cup. I felt like a lottery winner that day!
25% THE SWEET AND LOW: Now THIS is where it ALL falls apart. And for the record, I used to put the packet in myself, but a barrista with a sweet smile and the ability to forever change the wiring inside my skull convinced me to just mention the Sweet and Low when ordering and they will add it. So I did and things went smoothly for a little while.
I am one of the few people who can taste the difference between Equal, Splenda and Sweet and Low. I know my artificial sweeteners like nobody’s business. Equal is too mild. Splenda tastes like, well, the best comparison is sweet metal. But Sweet and Low actual tastes sweet without an aftertaste or being artificial.
Now for all of you who are about to rail on me screaming that Sweet and Low has been known to cause cancer in lab rats and it says so on the packet, well, wake up! That was eliminated long ago because they found that the levels of saccharin needed to give those rodents cancer was the equivalent of feeding humans a gallon of it per day, mixed with an IV drip of it every other hour followed by a saccharin enema. In other words, 1 packet of Sweet and Low each day has about as much cancer causing crap in it as say, bottled water.
The barristas give me Equal. They give me Splenda. They give me TWO Sweet and Lows. They give me a Sweet and Low with their classic stomach churning sweetener. It’s when they do that that I almost hurl on the spot as it’s like drinking Log Cabin syrup straight out of the bottle. One historically horrific time, they actually made my drink wrong THREE TIMES IN A ROW!! THE SAME GUY! I mean that either takes a whole lot of dope smoking or just a desire to fuck with the customers.
So now, mix it all together and you see why the variables for such a simple drink can absolutely blow the minds of people like myself. 50% of the drink has about 123 combinations thereof and so I roll the dice every time I order my Venti black iced tea with one Sweet and Low. I guess the easy answer is to just step up to a REAL drink with 12 adjectives like most of the patrons do, but that would be my interpretation of selling out and I am not a sellout. Selling out will be documented by me either sitting at Bux writing a screenplay, highlighting passages in a Bible or talking loudly on my cell phone hoping everyone in earshot realizes I am doing business with muckety mucks who are probably getting their orders wrong at the other Starbucks across the street. But before that will ever happen, I will be ordering a grande half-caf mocha frappucino with extra caramel and extra whip with a spleen. And then, I will expect for you to shoot me on sight.
