Can I take your name, please?
- Of course you can. You can. You take it, and then you mincemeat it into something barely legible, barely understandable, barely my name on plastic cup. YOU are the Starbucks person serving me, and I really start hating you - all of YOU!
- My name is Alice and I have a serious problem: I like Iced Coffee. I don't need the sun to drink my iced coffee, no. When it comes to iced coffee, I loose all self-esteem and all self-control. Anytime of the day, anytime of the year. I even go so far as to abandon my self-imposed ban on multi-national chains and drop into Starbucks (pah!) to get my fix. It's this serious (Sorry Brick Lane Coffee, Get Coffee, Monmouth and Climpson & Sons).
So imagine how I feel if I, in the midst of betraying myself and all other coffee-lovers, am being treated like a non-person - a nameless individual without identity!!??? I hate the fake smiles and the 'How are you today' that is being trained into the people at Starbucks, and I hate the uniforms that are supposed to democratise the lot, but in fact only widen the gap, and I hate the name badges that make everybody sooooo approachable. All about Starbucks is fake, but what really gets me going is the bloody name-taking.
Dear non-existent reader, my name is Alice. It's a British institution if you like; 9 times out of 10 when I meet new people and introduce myself, they say something like 'ahh, in WONDERLAND' or 'uhum, so your parents were into Lewis Carroll?' or even 'aha, school's out for ever'. It's almost impossible not to make the reference, and if they don't, I'll take over and do it myself 'like the one in Wonderland', to preempt all future tasteless jokes and references to cake and drink, and caterpillars, and cats, and oysters, and two fat blokes with almost identical names, and and and......
Also, dear reader, I have a very standard diction - not Laurence Olivier - but not bad either. I used to work for radio and telly, so I think I should get the talking part alright. I speak more or less the Queen's English, with a hint of an accent, but in a conversation that lasts less than a minute, nobody would notice. Even after an hour, some people are surprised to learn that I am one of the Queen's finest immigrants.
So - but here comes Starbucks. As you can see from the collection of pictures, not a single of the 'barristas' has managed to get my name (remember, it's A-L-I-C-E) right. The bloke who wrote 'ALES' gets an extra prize for asking me to spell my name. So HOW, HOW on earth is this possible?????? It's bloody, effing five letters long; it's taken from one of the most popular Edwardian children's books and there is MORE than just one of us around!!! (At the moment I'm listening to Limahl 'Neverending Story' and frankly, there you have a name to get wrong! #ChildOfThe80s)
I've been thinking about this problem for some time now, and the only logical explanation (if there is one), is that I just don't look like an Alice. I'm not a small blonde girl in a blue dress (that could also make me a Dorothy), I'm not a leather-wearing, ageing rock star - I look very much like myself, and a tiny bit like my gran (who was an Alice, too). It seems though as if Starbucks' staff doesn't recognise me as an Alice, and finds nice alternatives to re-christen me. Very often, those alternatives end up being men's names (?). Even if they ask me to spell my name (Ay - Ell - Ai - See - Ee) they get it wrong.
They must be completely oblivious to my name, if they get others right (a guy in the queue was called Timothy, and there was a Rishi, as well as a Gwendolyn) - to the extend that I fear entering one of their shops, dreading the fake smile and the 'Can I take your name?'. They can take my name; they do; and then they destroy it.
Time to clock out. Best of luck, Alysse xxx
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