America's Coffee Addiction

So I realize that this entry would have been timely about 10 years ago to this day, but I have to write about when I was ordering breakfast with Casey and Jenna in downtown DC after our White House Tour (separate story for another day -- let's just say a guard was ready and willing to beat yours truly with a black baton for having "slanty eyes" and Casey got reprimanded for sitting in a chair).

Anyhow, we walk into a place called Cosi to grab some breakfast bagels. I ordered my sandwich and they asked me what I wanted to drink. The dialogue went (roughly) as follows:

"Would you like something to drink with that?"
"Yes. Milk, please."
"Coffee?"
"No. Milk, please."
"For your coffee?"
"No. Just a normal cup of milk."

Now I understand that miscommunications take place. I also know that I have the tendency to mumble sometimes. But honestly.

I think those of us from this generation saw earlier indicators of America's need for a coffee fix in our classmates in high school, and most of us noticed that at some point the number of Starbucks in our hometowns outnumbered the number of people. But who knew what it would grow into?

America is so in need of coffee in the morning...well, let's try this one on for size: How many times have you heard a coworker say: "I haven't had my coffee this morning..." as an excuse for poor performance, and then had the supervisor nod their sympathetic understanding and add: "Hey, could you brew some up? I need to get a start on the day, too." Addiction is an understatement. If you can't function without it, and going 24 hours without it is the cause of crippling headaches, that's called withdrawal, a symptom of addiction.

Or when you can't order something as simple as milk at a cafe because the employees' vernacular is limited to "coffee", that might be a symptom as well.