This might be the Worst Hatchet Job Ever Written.

After all, it's a pretty disastrous hatchet job that makes you dislike the hatcheteer far more than his intended subject. Especially when the former upbraids the latter for condescension while committing the same crime.

Rosenbaum is clearly of the opinion that one should, by now, have already read several inciteful commentaries of the role Starbucks plays in modern society. And that to have not done so marks you out as some kind of weird dinosaur.

Yet some of us have assiduously avoided reading this kind of "journalism". We recognise that hanging around in a coffee shop on big comfy sofas isn't a "cultural phenomenon" - it's what boring people who watch Friends do. It is thus also rather passé and silly. Professor Fish seemed to be making roughly the same (necessarily simple) point.

Rosenbaum, however, insists that Starbuck IS in fact a cultural phenomenon, one that requires a more sophisticated and modish "analysis" than provided by the professor. In my language we'd call Rosenbaum a "wanker", a word it's hard to translate into American.

Although I don't especially like the hatchet metaphor, I am happy that people find fault with the article. Having worked for a few days at a coffee shop, and at a giftshop as a volunteer, I know a little of what it is like to meet the public, and Starbucks employees don't seem to reflect much on the experience. they are pretty stone-faced, and as a teacher who used Tim Hortons frequently, it is noticeable that when a franchise is in a poor part of town, the employees are equally dispirited. That was in fact the reason why I stopped going to fast food coffee shops.

And then, showing my ignorance of these fast decision making places, the worst fast food experience I feel is at Tim Hortons when you are in line in the car and you order tea. having to explain "bag in or out" is extremely stressful to me, since it doesn't matter. i managed to stutter an answer, since "I don't care" was not clearly understood and I was encouraged to try again. "Cream, no sugar" is more understandable, but again, it certainly destroys the soothing cup of tea experience.
We just ended up by laughing at the whole thing !

GreenwichJ:

Rosenbaum is clearly of the opinion that one should, by now, have already read several inciteful commentaries of the role Starbucks plays in modern society. And that to have not done so marks you out as some kind of weird dinosaur.

Yet some of us have assiduously avoided reading this kind of "journalism". We recognise that hanging around in a coffee shop on big comfy sofas isn't a "cultural phenomenon" - it's what boring people who watch Friends do. It is thus also rather passé and silly.

Oh, I don't know, I think what marks one out as some kind of weird dinosaur might be one's rather passe reference to Friends.

I understand 'wanker' pretty well, and would even add another Britishism and suggest that Rosenbaum is 'up himself' big-time...:)

Friends counts as passe?

The thing isn't that the Starbucks crowd aren't latte-sipping elitists. We most certainly are. And it sure is nice to go to a nice un-kitschy coffee shop & get a cheap cup of coffee and maybe have the barista come over and set it down before you & smile. No, that's a lovely experience and we all join together in applauding Dr. Fish for noticing that.

The only problem is...like, isn't that sort of...obvious? Hasn't that been the discussion we've been having for ages? Not just about Starbucks, but about everything. Nothing is like the Good Old Days. Nobody serves me coffee anymore, nobody shines my shoes, nobody asks me to go the other water fountain because I'm black. It's miserable.

I don't think Rosenbaum's asking for a disseration which really probes the heart of the Starbucks problem. He's merely asking that a distinguished professor not pretend he cannot pronounce the words "au lait" and act as if it just occurred to him that "these days" all coffee shops don't serve you and embrace old-world values. There is a turnip truck several miles down the road. Dr. Fish is frantically attempting to wave it down, he left his cap on that truck, when he fell off of it and found himself in the year 2007.

Rosenbaum brings up an excellent and fertile point: Why is it so fashionable to pine after the Good Old Days when the sort of cultural shifts that are occuring suggest that many people, if not most people, are on board with the Good Today? And if you want to go to a cute personal coffee shop, it may be tough in some places (but I mean, I'm from a suburb in the middle of nowhere and I can still find a cute non Starbucks place), but it isn't that hard. Where does Dr. Fish live? What is this Op-Ed complaining about? The wider array of choices? Choices which this apparently half-brilliant half-utterly oblivious professor cannot avail himself of, by, say, walking an extra block and parking his tweed clad tush in a smaller joint? Where they have the decency to just serve good old decaf or caf with cream and sugar?

Also, why does the Professor care if I use terms like "au lait"? Nobody said he has to. Maybe he shouldn't be so nosy and intimidated by the manner in which the people around him get their coffee. That op-ed was absurd. I agree with Rosenbaum. The man is posing as an everyman and it's insulting, confounding, and bizarre. And, quite possibly, the worst op-ed ever.

Fish attacked by shark. Fish, retired, looks for something to write about. Rosenbaum, not retired, writes piece about nothing. You like Starbucks? go there. You don't, don't. Fashionabe to attack academics by non-academics. A tempest in a Bunn coffee maker. There is no realsubject here worth belitlting and that is the real problem with the shark attack. As momma used to say: if you can't saying something nice about a person then don't say anything. Or at least say something ad if the subject merits it. This one doesn't. Rosenbaum should be consigned to Dunk Donuts through all eternity.

What amuses me is duality of this discussion (and I include the original Fish-Rosenbaum stuff) which has 'old-style- coffee and 'sophisticated, elitist' coffee, which is embodied in Starbuck's.

Starbucks!! Sophisticated? Elitist? Where I come from we REAL sophisticated elitists call Starbucks 'Coffee with trainer wheels'. We only go down to Starbucks to stand outside and see what American tourists look like. Then we go off to have a decent cup of coffee in any one of a hundred coffee shops the likes of which I never found after a year living in Chicago.

As for Fish - he is either a brilliant and subtle purveyor of irony, or else very, very sad. Either way Rosenbaum's response shows himself as both an intellectual and a coffee peasant. Not so much a shark as a guppy.