size doesn’t matter.

Starbucks is ruining this country.

Everyone thinks they need to have a clever name for their sizes these days, and it’s because of Starbucks. If you live under a rock and, therefore, have never been to a Starbucks, let me tell you about them. You can order drinks in a “short”, “tall”, “grande” & “vente” sizes. Since “grande” means large in Italian, you’d think that is the largest size but you’d be wrong, it’s “vente”, which means twenty in Italian and gives you twenty ounces of delicious coffee. (I’ll admit, many of Starbucks’ blends are quite good.)

I am of the opinion that if you walk into a place and say “I’d like a large [whatever]” then they should give you the biggest size of whatever it is you’ve ordered. At Starbucks, however, if you order a large coffee, even if you do it in Italian by ordering a “grande”, you’ll get the second-to-largest size, which makes no sense.

So, you’re probably thinking, “Okay, Hogs, fine, Starbucks has weird sizes, whatever. People have been bitching about this for years.” And yeah, that’s true. I don’t go to Starbucks that often anymore, especially since I discovered that Caribou’s pumpkin spice coffee is better than theirs, so I don’t have to deal with their fucked up sizes very much. But Starbucks is so bloody popular that people try to order “grandes” and “ventes” in places thataren’t Starbucks,or there are other places that have weird sizes because Starbucks made it popular…which means that even when I’m ordering coffee at a normal establishment, the barista has to ask if, when I order a “large” if I really mean “large.” (I do, it turns out.)

Barista: “How can I help you?”
Hogs: “I’d like a large dark roast coffee, please.”
Barista: “Do you mean a grande?”
Hogs: “No, I do not. I mean the largest cup available filled with dark roast coffee, please.”

It shouldn’t be that difficult and I’m not going to play this game anymore. I’m going to call people on their bullshit because this is America, god dammit, and when I say “large”, I mean “large.”

This is your brain on (large) Hogs.

UPDATE: My friend Joseph, who wasn’t sure if he should comment here or on Facebook, where I posted a link to this entry, posted this, which I had never seen before and, which, I found amusing, so I post it here for your enjoyment.