It’s a beautiful morning as you traipse into the nearest coffee shop for your essential caffeine buzz. Your mind is a little foggy because it’s void of stimulating drugs. Everything is much too peaceful for what’s about to happen: the order, and worse yet, the pick-up. No one is sure when or how it happened, but a coffee order has become a natural social judgment.
The order: I step up to the open barista; I don’t let her apron fool me; I fully acknowledge her as a judgmental coffee elitist in proletariat disguise. I force myself to ignore the fact that she thinks my complex order is completely cracked-out. She takes it without even glancing up, thank God.
The pick-up: I am now in a congregated crowd surrounding the circular out-put table where one glorified drink is placed every few seconds. This is the worst part of my day. The barista loudly shouts the exact order—with each exact detail. If you think that coffee orders don’t reveal anything about you, think again. My palms grow sweaty, and my foot tapping increases. Maybe I don’t even need caffeine anymore. The barista barks out several drinks, and I can tell who is going for that beverage before it even lands on the serving table.
“VENTI CARAMEL MOCHA FRAPPUCCINO!” Woah. That girl must be having a rough day. A pink-faced girl slugs up to the pick-up counter and the wide cup is grasped by her little fingers.
“GRANDE HALF-CAF SKINNY LATTE!” What a lightweight. Life must be rough for someone who is scared of both caffeine and fat. A small girl wearing black running shorts and athletic shoes steps through the crowd and takes off with her pony tail bouncing behind her.
“DOUBLE SHOT OF ESPRESSO!” European. A slender man dressed in a black turtleneck, sunglasses (even though it’s cloudy out) and leather shoes takes his double shot without noticing any of us. I wish I could be like him.
“VENTI COFFEE WITH STEAMED SKIM!” High-maintenance college student. A girl with the new Marc Jacobs tote bag, which is jammed with textbooks, reaches in for her gallon-sized coffee. Enjoy that steamed foam, princess.
“TALL HOUSE COFFEE, REFILL!” Poor and plain. Maybe house coffee is confused with “classic,” but I think the rest of the crowd was thinking plain and passive. A bearded 20-something draped in flannel modestly takes his used travel mug; wow his eyes are beautiful... but all he got was a refill.
“TALL SKINNY VANILLA LATTE!” OK. Get a mind of your own. I look for the Ugg boots and the North Face. There she is, fumbling in her Longchamp bag as she accepts her drink.
“TALL AMERICANO WITH A SHOT OF VANILLA AND SOYMILK!” All eyes are on me and my unthoughtful lurch forward. Damn, I should have slowly, nonchalantly slunk up to the table so people would have forgotten my ridiculous order by then. Could the way I approach my order change the judgments being made about me? Most likely no. The only way to move beyond coffee judgments is acceptance. I accept that I am a control freak down to my coffee order, and maybe this public display is actually freeing me from the closet I’m hiding in.
E-mail your coffee order or pass on your own secret judgments to jcschaefer@wisc.edu.
