“Welcome to Starbucks. My name is Sam. Would you like to try an apple [something something]?” I couldn’t understand what he said. “A what?” I asked. “An apple chai [something].” “No.” “Are you sure?” “Can you say it one more time? I didn’t get the last part.” “Apple … chai … infusion.” “I’ll have a venti iced latte.” “OK. That’s almost as good.” The poor guy really had his heart set on serving me an apple chai infusion . . . Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Coffee
It Could Have Been Worse
We took Lightning to the Huntington Dog Beach this morning . . . As we were parking the car, my wife asked, “Do they have bathrooms here?” “They have portables,” I said, pointing them out. “OK, you guys go ahead and I’ll meet you down at the beach.” Later, when we got back to the car, I asked, “Where’s my coffee?” “It’s all gone,” she said. “It may be all gone now but it wasn’t all gone when I left it here.” “I had to pee in it.” “You peed in my coffee cup?” “I can’t use those portables.” “Why couldn’t you pee in your own coffee?” “I had to make a judgment call.” “Well . . . thanks for not setting it back and letting me drink out of it.” Read more →
Early Shift at Starbucks
I walked into Starbucks at 5:30 this morning, ordered a drink . . . the Starbucks guy asked my name and wrote it on the cup, despite the fact that I was the only customer in the store. Whether that would be considered a training success or failure depends on whether Starbucks trains its people to always ask for the customer’s name, or to use situational judgment. I was hoping the barista would call my name when the drink was ready so I could do a comical “who, me?” take, but she just set it on the counter . . . Read more →
My Hair is Too Short
The girl at Fantastic Sam’s cut my hair too short. She was telling me about a car accident she had yesterday and I asked her, “Were you drunk at the time?” “In the morning?!” she yelled. “Hel-lo!? I was drinking coffee!” O-kay, like, overreaction! Probably in major denial mode, and does in fact have a serious drinking problem. And like I said, she took it out on my hair. Read more →
Fishtailing
I didn’t get much sleep last night. This morning, I had a 32-ounce iced coffee on an empty stomach. I’m fishtailing between nausea and euphoria . . . Read more →
The Latte Factor
Is $1 million really better than a good cup of coffee? Someone has trademarked the phrase “The Latte Factor,” referring to his claim that you could save the $3.50 a day you’re spending on little things like coffee, invest it, and wind up with millions of dollars. I don’t doubt that under a certain set of assumptions, that’s true — although under another set of assumptions, you could invest the money and lose it all, in which case you’ve got no lattes and no money). Read more →
Jack LaLanne at 88
From a Dateline NBC interview with fitness guru Jack La Lanne, who will be honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Sept. 26, his 88th birthday: Keith Morrison: A lot of people, once they start to get older, have things like strokes and heart attacks, high blood pressure, arthritis, those kinds of diseases that are associated with age. Have you had a heart attack? Jack La Lanne: I can’t afford to. It’d wreck my image. I can’t afford to die, man. Read more →
The Programming Circus
Most of my illustrious career has been spent working or consulting for Fortune 1000 companies. These companies are fundamentally dependent on their computer systems, particularly their online systems, to transact business. If the systems are down, the business stops running. In fact, the systems don’t even have to be down to create havoc. What if the response time is too slow? If you’ve ever done user testing with people whose job it is to enter money-making financial transactions for large corporations, you may have been amazed, as I was, at how fast they are. Obviously then, the software you build for them has to be even faster; split-second response time is required. If your software is slowing people down, the business is losing money. Or what if people are sitting around staring at their monitors because they can’t figure out how that great new interface you gave them is supposed… Read more →