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BEAN_THERE

                                             August 13, 2021

The website for "The Bean" coffee place in New York has a cute
list of what they've got and what they haven't:

    What we don't have
    Burnt Coffee                                      INSIDE_THE_BARISTA
    Pretentious Staff
    Annoying Coffee Names
    Boring Elevator Music

This sounds pretty good to me-- three out of four ain't bad,
but I wonder about this one:

    Pretentious Staff

I *like* pretentious staff, particularly at a coffee place.

The kind of coffee places I was hanging out in back in the 80s
and 90s would have people talking behind the counter talking
about random, interesting things, most often to each other,
but sometimes at you:

                                       THERMIDOR

                                       PRINTERS_INK

                                             TOMMYGUN

There's apparently a phenomena where many people find it
off-putting when the staff is more interesting than they
are and isn't shy about letting them know.  There are a
lot of people who evidently go around feeling inferior       DAWNING_AT_AQUARIUS
for "being boring" or something, and I don't get this at
all:

   Does it bother you that you're boring?
   Then stop.

   If it *doesn't* bother you, than stand
   up for your right to be boring.  Why
   shouldn't you be?

   Instead, you want to be *sheltered* from
   anyone who might rub your nose in your
   boringness?

And this is a place *in New York* where people
used to like cranky old guys that make up
arbitrary rules and throw you out if you haven't
heard about them (ala Shopsin's).

        (There's that bit of TV triva "No soup for you".
        Is that from Seinfeld?  Cheers?  Sorry I'm not
        boring enough to know these things.)


This is a place that's trying to *distinguish* themselves
from corporate chains-- if you don't want to feel dissed
by a barista, you can always find some place where they
make them wear uniforms and drill them in calling you "Sir"
or what not.

   (Now that the left is insisting on even more complex
   rules of pronoun ettiquette, what's going on with
   the "Sir"/"Mam"/"Madam"/"Miss"" polices?)




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