Starbucks and implied dishonesty.

The following article was in The Daily Telegraph today.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7949440/English-professor-thrown-out-of-Starbucks-after-objecting-to-corporate-language.html

It got me thinking, not only about Starbucks, but also about the sort of corporate doublespeak that we are continually exposed to. They are as good an example to dissect as any, without wanting to seem as if my spleen is being vented specifically at them.

The rise of Starbucks was at least partly due to good timing. The Cafe Culture idea was ripe for implementation in parts of the world where it was relatively new. In the U.S.A. it was to be found in a slightly louche purlieu, with implications of liberal, academic even slightly revolutionary patrons. Simultaneously the plastic and neon generic model of diners and McDonalds was losing any attraction it might once have had. The idea of a place to sit and meet, drink coffee and to do so in a "clubbable" environment was perfectly constructed and timed.

In Europe there were different considerations. Personally, I can only question the sanity of someone that would seek out a Starbucks in France, Germany, Italy, Spain or above all Austria. Here. the Cafe Culture is established almost to perfection with enough variations in the model to ensure the match is right for almost any individual. The U.K. was another matter - with a vacuum that needed to be filled as the loathsome British Cafe (pronounced KAYFE) was and is hugely overdue for a mass extinction event.

Then it got silly - Starbucks opened within sight of each other. This was not going on unobserved even in the country that spawned it - I remember an episode of The Simpsons in which Homer goes to a Shopping Centre (no I will NOT call it a Mall - that is where The Queen lives!!!!) where every shop-front is a Starbucks and when he goes to the loo, there is a branch inside the bog itself!

The implied dishonesty in the title is a subtle force. First of all is the hint of individuality and quirkiness that we are meant to take from the Starbucks environment. Very individual, very quirky and terrifyingly identical in every respect. Who could honestly say that they couldn't be led blindfold into one and identify it immediately? Then there are the poor minimum-wage immigrant kids behind the bar who are not permitted to vary from the script. This alone is a great shame as most of them could enrich the experience enormously with their colourful and fluent use of the language, albeit that the language in question is probably Albanian. I have friends who have worked hard for many years to call themselves Barristers and although I do appreciate it is meant to be jokey, the "Barista" pun still sticks in my craw. Why not "Coffee Priests"?  "Caffeine Rabbis"? "Imams of the Sacred Bean"? OK - a weak objection, but one I stand behind.

Professor Rosenthal's objections resonate with me more than usual as I always ask for a small, medium or large coffee in this or similar establishments. I am astonished that Trading Standards laws have not enforced straight english in such cases (and I am astonished it has not been made a capital offence in France).

Butter, Jam, Bagels? The thought (or rather lack of thought) process that goes into making the poor servers have to ask the questions (my understanding is that the optimum is to try to sell three other items according to staff training manuals) is just plain greedy. So here we have the perfect synthesis of a software license where you just have to tick the box to say you have read the agreement (which makes War and Peace look like a short story) and the sort of telesales rubbish that disturbs much of our days with unwanted phonecalls.

To recap then - a faux environment that is meant to say "neighbourhood coffee house", a rigidity of product and language that could easily be regarded as "take it ir leave it" - but which we are not meant to see because the kid behind the counter calls us "guys" and a plethora of  marketing tricks that insult our collective intelligences.

Reading the above, I can see how it might be regarded as somewhat OTT in the specific case of Starbucks, but this is now everywhere. We, the consuming population, are being conned to the limit of the law in so many ways and what is worse we are being conned into believing we want or enjoy it. The original newspaper article was about language and that is where I will end. We have a rich and varied mother-tongue in this country, as of course do the other beknighted countries subjected to the same sort of treatment in the Telegraph article. It is laziness (worldwide around 90% of those with some English speak "English English" rather than "American English" or a variation clsoe to) combined with a belief (which I believe to be at the core of this dishonesty) that "A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth", to quote Dr. Goebbels.

Of course Starbucks is not going to rot the fabric of civilised society, but enough companies or individuals behaving the same way will.

Dum Spiro Spero