You want to know what gets worse than all this? Once people crack the Starbucks Code, they venture out to other coffee shops and attempt to use the same lingo. They hope that they've learned a language not just a regional dialect.
But they haven't.
Your special offer Starbucks Decoder Ring:
Short (8oz)
Tall (12oz)
Grande (16oz)
Venti (20oz)
However, you'll never see a short on their menu. If you accidentally order one, you'll soon find that you've just forked over $1.50 for a dixie cup worth of coffee. Oops.
Even more confusion ensues when you work in a new brand of coffee shop (as I did) and someone asks for Grande, then gets confused when you give them the big cup. Or they ask for tall and get the medium cup.
Customer: "No, I just want a tall."
Me: "This is the tall size."
Customer: "But I want the little one."
Me: "That's a short."
Customer: "Oh."
I think someone at the homeoffice decided to "be his own man" and rename all the cups with suitably coffee-sounding names. Because you can't call it Small, Medium, Large when you're charging that much for it. With the price comes the aura of mystery.
Then you get the old guy, the retiree who obviously reminisces about the "good old days" who learns that 10 oz. is a "short" at my store. He harumphs "At least you have the decency to call this puny thing a short." Ahem, apparently your manhood is in question, Starbucks.
