Earth to Howard: E-mail home. You’ve gone utterly, completely, totally mad. First, I must confess that I am opposed to Starbuckification-the seemingly relentless march of chain stores that have put Mom and Pop out of business, turned New York City into a soulless Gaphattan and transformed our nation’s landscape into one transcontinental strip mall.
No, I wasn’t out there on the barricades in Seattle, hurling chairs through windows or chaining myself to a 14-year-old girl with purple hair-hey, I’m a passionless Yuppie, after all. But when a Starbucks finally opened in my quiet corner of heaven (also known as Brooklyn, N.Y.), my neighbors and I began a quiet revolt that should terrify Howard Schultz.
Instead of patronizing the new coffeehouse, my neighbors have treated it like a mini-San Francisco, lounging there day and night yet rarely buying more than one cup of coffee as a sort of “rent” on the comfy chair that they’ll occupy for hours.
One friend even tells me that if she’s out of milk for her morning cereal, she’ll stop by the Starbucks that night and, for lack of a better term, steal some.
Yet Schultz says he’s not worried about “high-tech loitering.” Fool! You’re being low-tech loitered to death.
To prove my point, I started spending some time-although not so much as a dime-at my local Starbucks. My investigation revealed three things:
I am far from the only person who will sit for hours in a Starbucks and not buy one damn thing.
Starbucks and other faceless places like it are ruining this country by encouraging workers to not care about their companies.
Lists like these need three entries or else they don’t really work.
When I entered my local Starbucks for the first time, I realized how pleasant these places can be. As I sat in Starbucks’ comfortable chairs reading the local papers-the scent of coffee and the lilting sound of jazz surrounding me in a relaxing womb-I thought that this could become an expensive habit (until I remembered I wasn’t buying any of that overpriced, charbroiled Starbucks coffee).
All told, I was there for three hours, took up a nice seat by the window, read all the New York papers (a $1.50 value!) and didn’t buy a thing. I didn’t feel the least bit guilty. This was it, my own personal Seattle-without the risk of property damage or getting Maced.
In fact, I rationalized that I was striking a blow against chain stores and their homogenization of the American cultural landscape. After all, if I was sitting in a neighborhood diner, I couldn’t last 10 minutes without the owner saying, “Hey, buddy, are you going to order something?” But Starbucks’ hourly workers are about as committed to their company as Hollywood actors are toward the institution of marriage.
My research was far from over, though. A couple of days later, I stopped in again. This time, the countergirl watched as I walked in, sat down, pulled out a newspaper and started reading. Yet she did nothing.
I decided I’d get some work done by writing part of this column.
The following is a sentence I wrote while ripping off Starbucks for free office space: “Most people run in and out of a Starbucks for a coffee break. They get the coffee, but no break, yet I sit here getting a break, but no coffee.” OK, it’s not the best sentence I’ve ever written, but I feel it really captures America’s post-millennial beverage angst.
Next, a woman sat down with a large mound of what seemed to be lasagna. I recalled that Starbucks sells food, so I asked her if she had bought her meal on the premises. She shot me a “What, are you crazy?” look (which is a standard greeting here in New York). I asked her if she always came to Starbucks with food and drink from the outside and I got the same look again.
I realized that perhaps the woman was right; perhaps I was crazy for merely using Starbucks as an office or a living room. Perhaps I should use it as a dining room, too. So on my third trip, I brought along a delectable ham sandwich and grabbed a prime seat near the window.
An aproned Starbucks employee walked by as I was eating, so I figured I should at least show some respect. (I stopped crunching my potato chips so loudly). But when I finished my sandwich, I couldn’t help but notice how thirsty I was.
Now, until recently, I thought that the height of chutzpah was running for Senate from New York without ever having lived here. But now I know what chutzpah really is: Eating an entire sandwich in a restaurant where you have bought nothing for three days and then asking the countergirl for a glass of water.
But she gave it to me without even flinching. Hmm, I must say, they serve a damn good cup of water at Starbucks. Maybe someday, I’ll even buy the coffee.
