Coffee Cognomina

Where I now work there is not a Starbucks nearby (which seems like that ought to be illegal in these United States, but that’s neither her nor there.) So, I am forced to either 1) bring coffee from home 2) deal with the sludge in the office that people call coffee or 3) go to Cosi. Now, typically I go for number 1. This is easy to do when Tim and I are carpooling because when he takes care of the pups in the morning, he turns on the coffee pot and then it’s simply a matter of filling my travel mug before heading out the door. But, since he is slug-boy this week and sleeping in to the late, late hours of the morning, I would have to have forethought and set the thing up the night before. I never remember to do this. Dealing with the sludge is just not a workable option. I tried it. I nearly threw up. Seriously. Talk about an acid stomach. Just not a good plan.

So, yesterday I took a different path to my office and swung by Cosi (which apparently used to be called X and O. This is a much cooler name than Cosi – cause you can go with X and O or you can mush it into a neato word, xando, depending on how you’re feeling. Cosi is just….bland.) Anyway, it’s very much like a Starbucks, though it does look like they actually make their baked goods there and it also looks like they have more of a menu for lunch and stuff. Oh – and they do have one really cool feature – you can get s’mores there! So maybe they’re more than your average coffee shop. Regardless, I approached the counter, eyeing the menu board with glee as I saw that the very tippy top item was my particularly favorite poison – the vanilla latte. However, their sizes worried me.

I have no issue going into Starbucks and asking for a Venti Vanilla Latte. I don’t feel weird, odd, stupid or anything uttering the word venti. To my knowledge, venti is not actually a word, but it sounds like it could be a nice, Italian word. Their other sizes (though seriously, do people order things other than Venti?) are also fairly normal – tall and grande do not engender self-consciousness. However, at Cosi, in order to order, you must fall prostrate on the altar of self-consciousness and utter the words “Gigante vanilla latte.”

Gigante? Really people. Venti sounds possibly Italian. Gigante sounds like you’re trying to say gigantic but failing miserably. If we’re going to go ahead and use silly words like Gigante, why not “elephantine” or “enormo”. In fact, if I ever open ‘Beth’s Café’ ( a secret dream of mine), I will have enormo as one of my drink sizes. And I will mock people who try, as I did this morning, to get away with large.

Maybe I’ve been brainwashed by the Seattle slingers of sustenance, but I begin to wonder what would happen if I just went in and asked for a Venti. You know they’d know what size I mean.

(Linked to: Bloggin Outloud open trackback party for today.)