Coffee? Or Café? Or Tangent?

I was never much of a coffee drinker in the US. I never really liked it. Well, when I was in college and working on finishing a paper at the last possible minute, I would drink Nescafe with sugar and cream, and I kind of liked it. But I think technically that’s not coffee – that’s just a bunch of chemicals dumped in water with sugar. And at 4 AM, anything other than the paper you are writing seems pretty good.

Then with the advent of Starbucks, and their cacophony of coffee concoctions coupled with chocolaty creations creating a cuisine of complete calorie contamination (sorry, I got carried away), it was easy to find some sort of drink with a ton of caffeine that hid the flavor of coffee pretty well. (I hear they even are trying out a new Dulce de Lecce Frap!) But, on the other hand, I could never figure out how to order what I wanted and seemingly always walked away with some slight difference than what I had in mind. “Venti java chip frappucino light, no cream.” Hell, it took me the ten minutes I was in line to remember how to say that. God forbid someone was talking to me while I was in line! But then Ana introduced me to black tea. Well, to be fair, like many things, she introduced them to me, and I ignored it until someone else introduced it, and then I presented it to her like it was new. And she patiently reminded me that she had suggested I would like it long ago, and I blew her off in my dismissive “I don’t like change” sort of way that I’m trying to shed with the subtle change of countries. So then I started ordering “Venti iced soy chai latte.” I think. (See, I don’t like change, so I ordered the same thing every time, but rarely got the same thing.) But a) what the hell is venti? (I’ll come back to that) and b) I think I was paying like $27 (ok, maybe that’s pesos) for a drink. Granted, it was an excellent excuse to get up from my desk and walk around for a little while, maybe stopping in IT for a bit to talk about futbol before coming back to make debits equal credits. But still, one could seriously buy lunch for the price of a venti anything.

And it was that realization that led me to the discovery that I could buy a liter of chai tea for less than the price of a venti anything. And a liter of soy milk (ok, soy milk isn't that cheap), and I have iced chai lattes in my thermos to take with me to work every day for a week. Sure, it wasn’t the same, but I have to admit I liked the idea of not giving my money to Starbucks. Not sure why, exactly. I know why I don’t like Wal-Mart, but I am not sure why I don’t like Starbucks. OH! It’s the obnoxious manner in which you have to learn another language to get a drink. And their insistent denial that a “small” is a “tall” when in fact they have a “short” that they don’t tell you about, so when you say “I want a small coffee” they give you a tall even though you really want a short. Kinda´ reminds me of Bill Clinton – they change the meaning of words, and tell you they don’t have what they do in fact have and everyone who speaks English even remotely well knows that by small you mean “I want the one that is less big, or does not contain as much, or is of a lesser quantity.” But not at Starbucks, where small does not exist. Things are only short or tall. But that’s OK, because they like short people, too. Good thing they don’t make the short people hide and pretend they don’t exist, like their short coffees.

And here’s a little secret. Starbucks really isn’t all that good. It’s just marketing. Sure they have their concoctions that are like adult candy, and it’s a nice place to go and read the paper or chat or keep the kids entertained for 15 minutes while you guzzle caffeine to keep you alert enough to prevent them from stabbing themselves in the eye with the plastic fork they found on the floor next to the trash can. Wait, should they be putting that in their mouth? But the best part about your child taking his hands filled with chocolate from the sponge cake and face covered with whipped cream from the hot apple cider (actually, I would bet most parents who take their kids to Starbucks in Washington make their kids eat the veggie sticks with cheese, so in their case they are smearing the soft cheese all over the place) is the reaction he invokes in all those people who are working on their laptops at Starbucks with their annoyed face that someone would actually bring a child to a Starbucks. I mean, people are working here! And they have a point – I mean, Starbucks is practically an adult playground. Without the strippers. And the alcohol. And the whole “no minors” thing. And the fact that they actually have drinks intended for children. And healthy overpriced venti snacks. And overpriced short organic milk.

Somehow this turned into a tirade against people who are or have been annoyed that Ana and I brought Isa to Starbucks, blended with a brief commentary on the upper middle class obsession with paying too much for healthy snacks for kids. It’s supposed to be a whimsical commentary on drinking coffee in Buenos Aires. There are no healthy snacks for kids in Argentina. Nor are there any Starbucks. Coincidence?

And another little secret. Venti is Italian for “ridiculously oversized,” which at McDonald’s is called “Super Sized” and outside of the US, is called “Family meal.” But I’m not going on that tirade. This would become a venti commentary.

But here, in Buenos Aires, I drink coffee. Not with chocolate and ice and enough sugar to make a Snicker’s bar envious. Just a simple cortado – which means cut, because it’s a strong coffee/week espresso cut with milk. And I do add a little sugar, but a reasonable amount. I am by no means a coffee aficionado. I don’t know the difference between Colombian and Hawaiian. (In terms of coffee, I mean. I am fully aware of the difference of Colombian and Hawaiian pineapples, waves, music, language, political leaders, and people.) I only know that Argentines prepare their coffee differently – I think it has to do with the roasting or something. I really have no idea. Maybe they put crack in it. But probably not a venti shot of crack, just a short shot.

Anyway, since I’ve started working, Argentines have asked me about US coffee as we sip our cortados and mull over accounting issues. And this is the point of my whole story. (I bet you never would have guessed that.)

In my office, we have this fantastic coffee machine where you put your little espresso cup and push the button, and it grinds up your coffee beans, does whatever one does to make a cortado, and pours it into your cup. So we all have our nice little espresso cups, well, there are actually jarrito cups – about twice the size of an espresso – and quietly work our way until the end of the day when everyone leaves in a mass exodus to go do whatever it is they do for 5 hours before they eat dinner. And some very nice person or elf or magical being mysteriously and surreptitiously cleans all the coffee cups for tomorrow. (Which is kind of how I like to think of the coffee beans and water as well, because when it blinks and says it’s empty of some ingredient, I go away and come back later to see if it has magically found what it needed. And it usually has. God knows I’m not educated enough to figure out how to operate that thing…)

But some of my clients don’t have the fancy coffee machines that magically refill themselves. So, they do the obvious. They call the café on the corner and ask them to deliver cortados for everyone. And a little while later, a nice man (actually, he seems a little grumpy this week) arrives with a tray and a few cortados, maybe some media lunas (that would be Spanish for croissant, which is French for “fancy bread you Americans can’t make”) and we pay him, and a little while later he comes back for his cups.

One could argue that this is horrible because now you don’t have a reason to get up from your desk, walk to Starbucks, and stop by the IT department on the way back to talk about futbol. But first of all, we are in Argentina, so there is no Starbucks. Secondly, we are in Argentina, so you don’t need an excuse to socialize. Thirdly, we are in Argentina, so everybody talks about futbol. Not just the guy in IT. But more significantly, the whole water cooler culture doesn´t seem to be the same here. People do a whole lot more chatting and socializing here, but from my experience, it just doesn’t take place while they are working.

Now excuse me, I have to call the IT guy. But he’s from Independiente, so I don’t want to talk to him about futbol. He clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about.