Curbing my enthusiasm for coffee
‘If you order a small coffee you don’t get to pick your chocolate’
IDON’T know if Butlers coffee is especially nice. I’m not a coffee connoisseur. Nowadays I take one espresso a day, for the jolt mainly. And for me it tastes as good out of the Nespresso as it does anywhere else. Sometimes, depending on my circumstances, coffee tastes nicer. Like in a sunny square somewhere in Italy.
I think it’s me that varies rather than the coffee. It’s like how I also imagine that every pot of Happy Pear pesto is different. Sometimes it appears to have a different consistency, or a sharper, fresher, more basily tang. But that must be me too. I’m in a different mood every time I eat some, so it is a different me that comes to each pot.
Sometimes I feel bitter eating Happy Pear pesto, because, to be honest, I resent every fiver I give those Happy Pear guys. It doesn’t sit well with me. Not sure why. Is it because they are so pleased with themselves? So much better than me? More dynamic and muscular and generally nicer than me?
Anyway. Back to the coffee. One thing that does make my espresso nicer is something a little sweet with it. Which is why, on the rare occasions when I am going to have a coffee in town, I will favour a Butlers, because they nearly always let you choose a chocolate with your coffee. And I like Butlers chocolates. I am particularly partial to the dark coconut one, which is essentially a posh Bounty bar, and also to the dark salted caramel. Not caramel mind you, salted caramel. Is there unsalted caramel anymore?
Recently my wife and I were in town together without children, so we were feeling a bit reckless. When she suggested we get a coffee, even though I had already had my allocated one coffee for that day, I said, “Hell, why not?”
Because I don’t particularly like coffee, I ordered an espresso macchiato. And then I went to pick my sweet. Imagine my surprise to find that Butlers still have in force this ridiculous rule I had forgotten, which is that if you order a small coffee — which is €2 if I’m not mistaken — you don’t get to pick your chocolate. They give you a standard pre-wrapped one instead. It’s discrimination is what it is. Discrimination against people having the small coffees.
It’s hard to think what reason could they have for possibly doing this except to annoy people. Who sat in the board meeting of Butlers and said: “Now guys. You know this genius whizz we have of giving everyone a chocolate with their coffee? And you know how this gives us a great competitive advantage over other coffee shops? I think we should deny this stroke of marketing genius to the people who order short coffees. We will still charge them €2 for a coffee that costs a fraction of that to make, but we just won’t let them have the fun little sinful ritual of picking a sweet and getting it put into a little see-through bag.”
And did someone else in the meeting, an accountant perhaps, then say: “Great idea. I can really see how we could save a lot of money on this.” But then, as the accountant got his calculator to see how much money they would save, the first person said: “Wait a minute. I’m not suggesting we give them no chocolate. That wouldn’t be right. We will give them a chocolate, but just for this particular type of coffee we will give them a pre-packaged generic chocolate that costs slightly less to make than the one they could pick themselves.”
Did anyone pipe up and say: “Why are we pissing these people off for the sake of a minuscule difference in costs? Why are we singling them out and making a point of denying them the small pleasure of picking the chocolate they like? Would we not be better off to give them no chocolate? We are going out of our way to annoy them, but it’s not even going to save us that much money!”
Maybe someone did. But were they listened to? Hell no.
The truth is that if I hadn’t been expecting a chocolate at all I would have been OK. But having forgotten the stupid rule, I had built myself up to wanting a dark chocolate coconut, and then this guy was actively going out of his way to say no to me. To tell me I couldn’t have what everyone else was having. Why would you set up a system like that?
I say all this by way of reminding you that Curb Your Enthusiasm is back, and all of us who encounter lots of ridiculousness and First World problems in our charmed lives, are glad to welcome Larry David back into our lives.