Inherent Specialization

The problem with Starbucks... (and while I do love the company; sometimes I even joke that "I no longer study Kaballah; Starbucks is my new religion". Anyways the problem with Starbucks )is that it has created a culture of instant gratification and inherent specialization. (Big words eh? I'm kinda intense this week.)

Witness: Lulu mom ordering [and I shit you not] a grande, in a vente cup, soy, four splenda, extra hot, non-fat latte. Fair enough bitch... right? Maybe.
As she leaves her blackberry rings. Thank Sean Preston for her blackberry right? What life-threatening, earth-shattering crisis could this yoga mom possibly be a part of... I'll tell you:
"Yes... hello."
Pause
"Oh you're at which Shoppers Drug Mart?"
Pause
"Well... I was at the Eglinton location and I was looking for a size nine in the black jelly flip flops..."
Let me break down the Faux Hillish for those of you who don't speak the local dialect. This woman, who clearly has NOTHING better to do with her life, was at Shoppers, saw a pair of cheap flip flops that she liked but which were unavailable in her size(and which are probably on sale) so she has had some poor minimally paid employee scour the country for them so she could pick them up. Woman, get a life. Seriously.

I actually blame Starbucks for creating this instant gratification mantra of consumption and for creating a culture where the "customer is always right". [Truly I'm just practicing a bit of university pschology: according to transference psychology it isn't the woman's fault, rather it's society in general, which allows her to get away with it, blah blah blah].
But really IT IS Starbucks which has taught the customer to specialize his/her drink to thesis sized proportions; IT IS Starbucks where consumption is instantaneously gratified and by providing such excellent customer service that by default the cusomters of Starbucks assume that every store plays by the same rules. And that if you haven't gotten the memo via your blackberry is insanity.