coffee cup sizes and the great Charles Darwin
This morning I didn’t have to commute so I walked a few extra blocks to try out a new café that has been getting a lot of great reviews on Yelp. It was one of those independent cafés that really goes out of its way to impress upon you just how not-dependent they really are. They’d even—gasp—bucked the industry trend and appeared to be using “Small,” “Medium,” and “Large” for cup sizes. I enjoy coffee as much as the next fellow so I ordered a “Medium” expecting to be presented with a paper cup brimming with 16 fluid ounces of coffee. However, this coffee shop had callously decided to disrupt societal norms an instead attempted to pass off a 12 ounce cup as a “Medium.” As you know if you’ve been to a Starbucks, Tully’s, Seattle’s Best, Pete’s, etc in the last decade, a 12 ounce cup is a “Tall” or “Small.”
At this point I, somewhat indignantly, query the barman as to the locale of my remaining four ounces, only to have him deliver a lecture on the correct and incorrect volumes for proper coffee service. It seems that 20 ounces, the standard “Venti” or “large,” is simply a grotesque affront to the proud tradition of coffee and, as he clearly couldn’t offer his pristine brew for sale in such unholy quantities, he was forced to promote “Medium” to “Large” and so forth.
Usually I can endorse most forms of elitism, but for some reason this outraged me. I think the reason I’m so irritated is that, as far as I’d ever heard, these sizes were pretty much standards. It is as if this proprietor was so taken with his particular brand of java that he saw fit to flout the conventions of society—conventions that exist for his benefit. Standards are just inorganic adaptations that help a system fit into the larger system. This café owner is basically spitting in Darwin’s face, and I for one won’t stand for it.
