Five Years On: Still In Search of “A Small Happiness”

Every now and again I will go to the deep vaults of dead and forgotten posts to see what was going on in history on this date. Today turned up this this somewhat dated yet still relevant post about ‘a small happiness’. I decided to make it an easy morning by reposting it for you to read with your early morning coffee while I drag my butt out of bed and drive downriver to get some bedding plants from the cheap nurseries before they are completely out of stock.

Originally posted May 19, 2016. How were we to know that those were the good old days?

 

  Did you see the Wall Street Journal article yesterday about Starbucks new app? Raj was in it! They spelled his name wrong, of course:

For Sathyarajkumar Krishnasamy, 49, an engineer, finally seeing his properly spelled name on a cup has been a breakthrough. In Starbucks stores, he had tried everything from providing his nickname, “Raj,” which sometimes came out as “Rodge,”

One hot black grande for “Rodge”!

to telling baristas to identify him simply as “number 10.” The accuracy of the app, says Mr. Krishnasamy, is “a small happiness.”

Butt that was the whole point of the story: how Starbucks new app – which prints out a sticker with your name on it  – eliminates the barista’s hand in misspelling your name in new and quirky ways:

Eugenia Leu misses the days when the baristas at her local Starbucks used to bungle her name.

The 36-year-old resident of San Mateo, Calif., recalls how she used to identify herself at the counter and then wait for the hand-scrawled translation to appear on her cup. She liked the anticipation of not knowing what it might say and then finding it boldly—and wrongly—marked “Ugena”

The new app lets you enter your own name which automatically prints out for the barista to paste on your cup. Efficient. Of course the new robot app, which eliminates the need to hire expensive baristas who can spell as well as make coffee, takes a lot of the fun out of the Starbucks coffee experience. For instance, there are now fewer clues for the “guess what your server majored in before becoming a full-time barista” game. Here are some of my best guesses based on previous, documented, misspellings:

Double major: Womyn’s Studies and LGBT Studies (yeah, it’s a real major)

[[trigger warning on this next one!]]

Not sure, butt definitely NOT Womyn’s Studies – unless they were being ironic

English – Linguistics; or Drama

English – as a second language

Of course the new app may have its own charms thanks, I’m guessing, to the auto-correct feature:

I’m thinking a new game that might be fun to play would be “guess the person’s coffee order based on their name.” Here’s a couple to get you started:

Grande White chocolate mocha for (Ex) POTUS:

Short Vanilla Latte for Hillary (with a Scotch chaser):

Café Americano for Trump, Venti:

Bernie never goes to Starbucks because many people can’t afford to buy coffee from the capitalist pigs.

I never go to Starbucks either because I’m one of those people who hasn’t had a raise in 8 years, so I don’t know if this new app is going to be a big thing or not. Butt Raj, who does visit occasionally, advises that “the seeing of your name” – or a reasonable facsimile thereof – on your cup is indeed  a “small happiness.”

And really, what more can any of us expect from life other than a small happiness from time to time?

Here we are 5 years hence and I find it requires a lot more than your name – and a lot more coffee – to deliver even a small happiness in these trying times.

 

This small happiness is on me. Enjoy!