Author: Mike Eaton

I was at D.C.’s Reagan airport early in the morning a couple weeks ago and stopped to get a cup of coffee at the airport Starbucks. Now, before I get a bunch of crap for either hating on Starbucks or for buying Starbucks, let me clear up a few things…

First, I do buy Starbucks. As far as quick coffee choices go, its the best option out there. Tim Hortons is pretty much horrible on all fronts. From their cardboard breakfast sandwiches to their burnt dishwater coffee-like beverage, they excel at nothing. Oh, and if you fancy some onset adult diabetes, get one of their Iced Capps, which would send a hummingbird into cardiac arrest. McDonalds coffee isn’t good either, but at least the price tag is commensurate with the expectation. It’s kind of like the gas station coffee you get when you fill up. You aren’t sure who made it or how long it’s been sitting there, but you can get a gallon of it for a nickel as long as you are a part of the gas station rewards club.

Second, I’m a conundrum of a client for Starbucks. I buy it, and I like it, but I’m angry about it. It bothers me that Starbucks has pretty much pilfered Italian sizing terms and used them to promote a coffee shop started in a state that is as far as you can get away from Italy while still being in the U.S. (Hey geography nerds, I know Hawaii and Alaska are farther away from Italy than Washington. I’m not counting those two states, so shut up.) The story is that Howard Schultz visited Italy and loved the coffee bars so much he wanted to introduce the terms into his business. Fine. But what has happened now is that he has trained an entire generation of baristas to only recognize those pretentious terms. What I find funny about this is that you can’t go in and order a “medium” anything, because the medium size is called “grande,” which actually means large… even though it is the medium size of the three sizes you can order… In a nutshell, Starbucks has successfully forced society in general to adopt a different language when ordering coffee, in a completely different sizing standard than I learned as a kid. Bravo.

The third and final thing ties back in to the first sentence, before I took a side trip down rant lane. Airport pricing. I had this moment when I was getting coffee at the airport where I was amazed that the price for a cup of coffee at Starbucks wasn’t any more expensive than it is anywhere else. Everyone who has ever been to an airport has said or thought, “Boy if these people had any idea how much this bag of M&Ms cost in the real world, they would feel like criminals.” I mean, I had a headache that evening and willingly paid 8.99 for some Advil , and that was only because beer (the other painkiller) was 13.99. After being briefly happy that the price of a cup of coffee wasn’t inflated, it hit me. Starbucks has applied an airport pricing structure to their entire business model, making an airport markup completely unnecessary. They have successfully implemented a pricing structure that has created the feeling of joy when you go to an airport and pay a non-marked up $4.95 for a coffee you had to order in another language.

To wrap up the financial portion of this hypocritical b*tch-fest, here is a funny thought about coffee and your retirement…

I run numbers pretty much constantly. As a Dave Ramsey Master Financial Coach, I frequent Dave’s website to use his investment calculator and mortgage payoff calculator. At the bottom of his investment calculator page, it lists several small things you could give up to make a huge difference in your financial future. One of the suggestions is to give up your daily cup of drive-thru coffee. He lists the savings per month at $128.

Even Dave Ramsey, the king of “Live like no one else now, so you can live and give like no one else later,” assumes a cup of coffee will cost you 4.25 PER DAY!!! Congratulations, Starbucks! You have desensitized an entire population of people to paying a silly amount of money for a cup of coffee.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, a $4.25 cup of coffee invested per day starting at age 30 will get you to about $267,000.00 by the time you are 67.

Put a different way, that $56,000.00 lifetime Starbucks contribution could land you almost 5 times that amount in retirement. Put that in your red-eye soy-milk caramel macchiato pipe and smoke it.

Afterthought… Again, I like Starbucks, and will likely die a little poorer for not foregoing my couple of trips per week to that corporate caffeine addiction distributor.

This time of year, I enjoy the peppermint mocha that might be the only reason Starbucks exists. I even have Starbucks peppermint mocha creamer at my house, and when I offered it to my sister when she was visiting, she said, “No thanks, I’m not 10 years old.” She will likely be the topic of future posts…

Anyway, twice in the past two weeks I have been out getting supplies for the shop and have thought, “You know what would brighten my day? A peppermint mocha.” Both times, they have been out of peppermint. What in the ever-loving h*ll, Starbucks? It’s Christmas time. In my mind, you have two jobs. Peppermint mocha, served by someone that would never be able to decipher that I mean “Grande” when I say “Medium”.

I’ll bet it smells amazing for a square mile around a Starbucks that inexplicably is set on fire…

My spouse and I were sitting in the first session of a two day marriage retreat sponsored by the U.S. Army. The point of the retreat was to learn how to communicate well, and how to put that into practice often. Apparently the military sees the importance of healthy relationships as crucial to the emotional stability of soldiers that are entrusted to carry deadly weapons. I get it. The last thing I want to do at work is get shot by some millennial with access to an M-16 because they don’t like to get up early in the morning. To be honest, I had approached that weekend with ulterior motives, only agreeing to go to this retreat because it would get me a fully paid weekend away with my spouse. Talk about working the system.

Anyhow, one of the first activities the facilitators had us do in this first session was take the Love Language quiz so we could better learn about how our spouses need to be communicated with. In case you don’t know them, here are the love languages that can be assigned to you after a random stranger makes you fill out a 5 minute questionnaire.

1. Words of Affirmation – In a nutshell, this love language explains that you are insecure enough to constantly need your partner to tell you how wonderful you are. This can be in the form of a note, or can also be as simple as listening actively when your partner is speaking. Now, I don’t know about you, but my spouse once told me a five minute story about a yogurt. There is a limit to how much I can fake interest in a story that is as long as it is boring. I don’t always have the most interesting or relevant anecdotes either. I’ve seen my spouse look at me intently during conversations and I know I’m on the verge of being smothered later in my sleep. This love language lends itself to a situation where you fulfill the least of your responsibilities and yet expect lavish praise and accolades for….taking out the trash.
2. Physical Touch– This is the “non-verbal use of body language and touch to show love” love language. It was automatically assumed by my spouse BEFORE THE TEST that this was my love language. It wasn’t. At first I was offended, because the Physical Touch love language walks a fine line between being a hugger and a being a rapist. If your spouse assumes that this is your love language, you can bet that they are either annoyed that you are constantly groping them, or annoyed that you are constantly touching everyone else. Neither is good. The only way your spouse isn’t annoyed is if they too have Physical Touch as their love language. Here’s a shocker for you, if both you and your spouse are “Physical Touch” people, then you might not be annoying each other, but you are annoying all the rest of the world. You might think that it’s wonderful and freeing to stand in a two hour line for a roller coaster and make out, but believe me, the rest of us want you to stand up in that front seat right before the coaster goes into the tunnel.
3. Receiving Gifts – This language is based on receiving gifts, and someone expressing gratitude when you give them a gift. Look, most of us are good at this until we “Seal the Deal”, and lock down that poor person into a life of un-fulfillment. Reality is, life gets busy, and I occasionally forget our anniversary 4 times in a row, or buy you something food related and eat it in the car on the way home and decide to not tell you I was thinking about you before I got hungry. The side of this language that really gets me is that they expect you to be super excited when they get you a gift that you could never use or have never wanted. Again, I’m lacking in the “fake it” skill. No I don’t need a shirt from the Bahamas so I have to explain to everyone that I have never been to the Bahamas when I wear it.
4. Quality Time – Uninterrupted and focused conversations are the pinnacle of this exhausting love language. This one is all well and good, unless you have an uninteresting partner, or you are trying to focus on something else, and your partner just won’t shut up. Sometimes I really like to take a walk and talk about life and hopes and dreams. Sometimes I want to sit on the couch, put in a video game, and shoot Nazis without having to be tied up by a two hour discussion of what my favorite top ten pies are in order and why I ranked them that way. I think that it is also important to note that quality time means different things to different people. For example, going to a trampoline park as a parent can be good quality time for both of us. You enjoy it because you think we are watching our child bounce around in pure bliss, and I enjoy it because inevitably the random kid that hasn’t been listening to the safety advice of the referees will faceplant into the exposed metal frame, which will be a little gift for me. And we shared this experience together.
5. Acts of Service – Help your partner with their responsibilities. Uh huh. Like I don’t have enough to do. This last love language really cramps my style. I mean, when I get home from a long day of figuring out how to stretch 2 real hours of work into 8 hours, the last thing I want to do is do YOUR work for you as well. The suggestions on this one are things like, “Make them Breakfast or Dinner, help them out with the chores.” What if I already do that anyways? In all seriousness, my spouse and I split up the responsibilities around our house pretty evenly, and its a good thing that neither of us can be labeled with the “Acts of Service” love language, because neither of us really want to do the other one’s chores. You stay in your lane, and I’ll stay in mine. I know you have the flu, but I am really terrible at loading the dishwasher, so can’t you just power through?

So, at the end of all these quizzes and labels, the facilitator decided to make a bold statement. She said, “Sarcasm is the highest form of abuse in any relationship.” My spouse and I looked at each other and just raised our eyebrows. Uh oh.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the 6th and best love language. Sarcasm.

Welcome to SnarkyThoughts.