...starbucks 101...

As I stood in line here in this crowded coffee shop, Seal blasts some words of motivation through the earphones of my iPod. “…there’s so much a man can tell you, so much he can say…”, he goes, as if the words were pervasively written for pseudo-sentimental writers like me stuck on a gloomy afternoon inside a roomful of adolescent socialites enjoying the rush of commercial caffeine in their brains. Seal can’t even hope to spark my opinion now.

In my attempt to strip this mini-society around me and psychoanalyze the people in it, I am facing a blank wall. “…hearts and thoughts, they fade, fade away…” Eddie Vedder softly croons as his song goes into fade, much like the fleeting anti-social opinion I am harboring for these individuals. I get distracted by boisterous laughter, or a whispered gossip from four tables away.

There is many a lesson in psychology to be learned in a place like Starbucks. The new culture that our young have unwittingly created is an experimental haven for psychoanalysis and research. Imagine, a pre-teener whose pubic anatomies have just barely started to manifest, cavorting with fellow pre-teeners while discussing such important world-changing topics as hair gel, or the latest issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine. All these they do over a 200-peso sandwich drowned by a 150-peso caffeine-deficient coffee drink. That’s more than what an average worker earns in a day. In this coffee shop, that amount buys only half an hour. If there’s a new entry on their resume, it’ll be for special skills – able to spend money they never earned in the first place.

And let me tell you about the place itself. Never had commercialism been more influential in our society than when Starbucks was conceptualized. How on earth were we made to believe that a predominantly sugar and foam concoction can be tantamount to Starbucks coffee, and sold at a price roughly equivalent to the GNP per capita of some impoverished central African nation. We really must have placed Starbucks at a very high social regard for it to still continue its existence in the market.

“…can’t stop, addicted to the shindig…” yells Anthony Keidis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as if on cue when I mentally asked the question, what makes this almost caffeine anemic assemblage click? The lethal combination of a highly commercialized capitalist entity leading an obligingly clueless society is enough reason for us to re-evaluate our values and outlooks as communal beings. It doesn’t take a genius to know that this partnership translates to more money and societal standards degradation.

“Sir,” the darn barista woke me from my trance, “your Caramel Macchiato, will that be Tall or Grande?”