Let me warn you now. This is a long one…

Wherever I work, I find myself fiercely loyal to my employer for, in some cases, absolutely no reason. When I worked for CapitalOne, I would see commercials or print ads for Providian or Bank of America and find myself swelled with revulsion. As an employee of Borders, I would walk defiantly past any Barnes and Noble that crossed my path. Even now as a part of Boxcar Comics, I look at other collectives from time to time as if they’re hollow groupings of heartless people, steaming when they jump on an idea we’d had but never implemented or were a little slow in getting to. Such is how my mind works which I suppose was good for my past employers, but a little silly on my part.

I spent five years working on and off in coffee shops. The first was a small business called Gargoyles for which I was the second employee, working alongside the owner and the girl who used to babysit his kids. It was really an amazing experience and the lessons I learned there have carried over into a lot of parts of my life. I think perhaps some of that has to do with the half-meant threats tossed my way. “If you let the grinder run out of beans again,” my boss would say, standing menacingly over me, “I’ll shove this pencil in your ear.” He would then proceed to stand there, sharpened pencil in hand, as I filled the hopper with more beans. I knew he wasn’t really going to introduce graphite to my poor grey matter, but the importance of keeping the hopper filled resonates with me now. Not that I currently have any hoppers, but you see my point. It wasn’t just the hopper, either. I was painfully bad at making backup pots of coffee and customers would find themselves patiently standing by the counter for a few minutes as a fresh airpot was filled. I always felt that was kind of the flavor of a place like Gargoyles. My boss, naturally, disagreed, believing that Gargoyles tasted more like full airpots and hoppers that are never empty.

Part of what I loved about my experience there was the small business aspect of it. I watched the owner go from working 18-hour days in one room to actually taking vacations and coming in a couple days a week to see how things were going. In time the business expanded to a second adjacent space and the owner bought a shiny copper roaster, making the coffee there in the front where everyone could see. I appreciated what he had built, this fantastic little empire. Seeing it happen without the backing and benefit of a corporate entity. And as I watched the process, I started hating a little outfit called Starbucks with the intense hatred most people save for people who mug family members or do unnatural things to their pets.
I started working at Gargoyles about 11 years ago and even at that point, Starbucks was like the Little Engine That Could, strangling America and forever changing a “large” into a “venti” in the official pop culture lexicon. I would see a Starbucks cup and scowl, proudly proclaiming that small business is the way. Corporations are sellouts. There’s no way a fascistic conglomorate could train a legion of eager wannabe baristas about the importance of crema or the right balance of foam to steamed milk.

In the end, Gargoyles was bought out by a local Val-Pak-type merchant who made the owner an offer he couldn’t refuse. Had he been a single guy who could afford to sleep on a cot in the back if need be, it would have been different. But he had a wife and three kids to support and I don’t blame him for that decision at all. It was, in a way, a blow to my hyper attitude (probably based more on caffiene than morals) about small business. Especially as I’ve watched Gargoyles change from a “Hey how ya doin’” coffee house to a “Welcome what can I sell you” business in the passing years. I go by from time to time trying to remember what the old days are like…but there’s not enough left to recall anything.

Embracing Starbucks is something that’s only happened in the last year or so as I’ve watched many smaller coffee shops close under the thumbs of circumstances beyond their control. In the small town where I live, there were three in the downtown area. One was the dominant java source and continues on to this day, but the other two both found themselves forced out of their buildings by landlords who raised the rent to prohibitive amounts in order to get some new blood into the spaces. They both got my business fairly equally and the third, larger shop got my business occasionally, mainly because it was open later and if there’s one thing I don’t do well, it’s mornings.

Starbucks lives on around here. In about an hour, I could probably hit five or six Starbucks all in one trip and this is a small town. One of them has a drive through and, well, that won. Any place that can accommodate my laziness and my intense love of coffee is going to win. They even add my cream and sugar, and they do it with a smile.

I was at Target tonight buying some household goods and remembered on my way out that there’s a little Starbucks stand tucked over near the entrance. I don’t know what Starbucks executive was wandering through his local Target thinking (because this is how I think upper-level Starbucks people think) “IneedcoffeenowbutI’minastore. WHATDOIDO?! BUILDONENOW! AAAAAAAHHH!” Whoever that crazy, bean-addled suit was, I salute him or her. I was able to swing by and get what has been a regular drink of mine for years. Which brings me to forced semantics.

In “the industry” a cup of coffee with a shot of espresso in it is referred to as a redeye. Always has been, as far as I know. I mean, not always…I doubt the Cappuchin Monks sat around their newly discovered concoction believing it should be called such, but bear with me here. Because I’m an utter caffiene junkie with a tolerance through the roof, my usual is, and this is how I order it, “a redeye with an extra shot.” Sounds simple, right? Well, apparently not. In ordering that recently, I’ve been corrected no less than three times by confused baristas who say, “No, no…that’s a blackeye.” A stunned pause from me. “A what now?” “A blackeye is a cup of coffee with two shots of espresso.” Mmkay.

When I stopped at the coffee stand at Target tonight, I used the phrase for the first time. “I would like a venti blackeye, please.” The barista, Veronica, pushed some buttons and then asked me what type of steamed milk I wanted in it, firing my confusion like a rocket through the ceiling. I made the same face I would have made if she had recited the pledge of allegiance backwards while hopping up and down on one foot. “I…uh, it’s just coffee with two shots of espresso, right?” I dared. “Yeah, people order all sorts of crazy stuff and call it whatever. It would be so much easier if nothing had names at all.” She then got halfway through pumping the coffee before a wet, gasping sputter informed us that, in fact, they were out. I got to order the drink by what I consider to be its proper name and I got to wait around while a new pot brewed. Veronica reminded me that sometimes in a corporate setting, people can inject their own belief about what the taste of the place was. Veronica was a Gargoyles chick. I have a sneaking suspicion that if I’d crept behind the counter and checked, I would have found an empty bean hopper.

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