Mumford Creme
Oh, I meant to mention my total language fault on Sunday.
I had some time to kill. Our house was being held open by our
realtor, so the cats were safely ensconced with E’s family, and with E
working weekends now, it was up to me to entertain myself in Sugar Land.
After a brief spin through Best Buy (finally ticketing myself aboard the
Wilco train, after years of hearing from everyone how underappreciated
they are), I landed at a nearby Starbucks.
I don’t really go to Starbucks very often; I claim it’s because of
the perilously over-roasted beans, but at least half of my dislike of
the place stems from the bizarre Catholic Mass of special phrases,
secret handshakes, and dry little biscuits one encounters when
patronizing the place.
I just get nervous when it’s my turn to
order. People who know me (and that would be you, gentle
reader) know that I am given to becoming flustered, and the Starbucks Coffee
Complexity Protocol only makes things worse.
Sample internal monologue: “Tall.” No, wait, that means small. So,
“medium”. Wait, there’s no medium. “Grande” then? Does that mean
“Large”? Oh, crap, did I want half-caf? Half-fat? Fat-calf?
Lean-calf? Seven years of famine? FUCK!
So, back to Sunday. There was a gaggle of high school kids in line ahead of
me, so I had plenty of time to plan the whole conversation. “Grande
coffee, regular.” Simple, right? By the time I got up to the counter I
would be ready, dammit.
Barista: Uh, hi.
Dan: Hi. I’d like a grande coffee,
regular, please.
Barista: OK. [She
turns away to fill a cup with steaming, used 5W-30, then looks back over
her shoulder.] Mungferkleen?
Dan: (perplexed) I’m sorry?
Barista: (confused
at DAN’s non-comprehension) Mumford
Creme?
Dan: (leaning forward now, wondering what the hell
is wrong with his ears) I’m sorry, I still didn’t quite
catch …
Barista: (clearly tired of
Special Needs Hour) Room. For. Cream.
So there you go. I felt compelled to take my coffee and go hide in my
car. I place much of the blame here on the Starbucks personnel, for
whom the call-and-answer of coffee service has taken on a sort of
macrosymbolic semantics; there are no longer English sentences exchanged
over the cash register, but strings of larger StarbucksLanguage packets.
Exacerbating the situation, native speakers of this perverse pidgin are
no longer able to supplement their linguistic espresso-shots with
traditional English, so a clarifying “Would you like for me to leave
room in your coffee cup so you can put cream
in it also?” is impossible to offer.
Also, you know, I tend to have a hard time chunking sounds into words anyway.
I can pick a bassline out of a song on a department store PA system, but
I can’t understand a familiar voice in a crowded room. It’s like I have
a hearing deficiency right in the middle of the spectrum (rather than at the
top or bottom as is far more common). So, you know, I guess I’m also to
blame for the Mumford Creme Incident.