Boggles the Mind

A few moments ago during a coffee run (we have a Starbucks on the lot), the girl in front of me ordered (for one of her superiors) a "decaf latte, with 4 shots." I immediately laughed and said, "What's the point of asking for decaf? Isn't that a little weird?" Neither the no-nonsense barista (female) nor the assistant (who seemed frightened, even out of earshot of her bosses) seemed to find any humor in my statement. In fact, the barista gave me a look of death and said something curt in defense of the order. Then I stepped up and ordered a light frappucino with whip cream (not for me), but decided not to share the humor in that with the humorless barista.

Their reaction to my statement made me take pause. I wondered if, in fact, I have been mistaken (all these years) in thinking that espresso shots contain caffeine. After I placed my orders, I sidled up to the assistant and said, "Shots have caffeine, right? Is he just asking for decaf to delude himself, or what?" She looked up at me from squeezing her orders into her carry-out tray, then shrugged. "I don't know." She was reading the coffee orders from an email that said, "Please deliver to floor 6," so I wondered if she even knew the guy. She was probably intern, and that probably wasn't the weirdest order she'd ever filled.

But when I got back, I told two friends, just to check. They thought it was weird.

And then I Wikipedia'd "espresso": "While there can be significant variation, on a per-volume basis, espresso contains approximately three times the caffeine content of regular brewed coffee (1.700 g/l (50 mg per fluid ounce) of espresso versus 0.50–0.75 g/l (14–22 mg per ounce) for brewed coffee). Compared on the basis of usual serving sizes, a 30 ml (1 fluid ounce) shot of espresso has about half the caffeine of a standard 180 ml (6 fluid ounce) cup of American-style coffee, which varies from 80 to 130 mg."

I guess the strangest part of the whole encounter was that nobody stops to laugh at (or question) all the funny little things like that that happen every day. Or maybe people don't notice? Or care?

This inspires me to share two quick coffee-related stories.

A few months ago I went on a (fairly unremarkable, kind of bad) coffee date, at a Coffee Bean. During the good part (the part before we'd really talked much), we sat down at a table that was already littered with tiny espresso mugs (I love miniature crockery). A few minutes later a barista-janitoress asked if we were done with our coffee. We laughed and said yes, none of this was ours. Imagine if we'd imbibed all of that caffeine! The barista told us that she never jokes or makes judgments, because you never know... Out of curiosity, we asked her the maximum number of extra shots anyone has ever ordered from her. She said that somebody had asked her for FOURTEEN shots in one drink. We concluded that said person must have been a recovering drug addict, looking for an angry fix. Nobody else could handle that kind of buzz.

Least of all, me. This past summer Cole and I took a UCLA Extension one-day seminar, at UCLA (which is not a total duh because they have classes all over, I think). On the morning of, we arrived in Westwood a bit ahead of schedule, and decided to drop into a Peet's Coffee, because we don't generally go to Peet's. Neither of us being major coffee people, we ordered Chai Lattes, which turned out to be undrinkably spicy. I didn't want to just throw a $5 drink in the trash and walk out, so I asked the baristas if I could have something else. At first one of them gave me attitude about how everybody knows that Peet's is stronger than other places (my response: Um... I didn't), but another one (who seemed to side with me that the Chais were gross) took pity on us. Cole was planning on suffering through his latte, but the barista offered to make new drinks for both of us. I don't remember what happened, but something went wrong with drink #2, and I finally ended up getting some sort of coffee drink-- but forgot to order it decaf. At that point I just wanted to get out of this cursed shop, so we left.

Cut to: 10 minutes later, my heart is beating like a hummingbird's. I always drink decaf because my family drinks decaf, and because I generally have a lot of energy to begin with. I didn't actually think that caffeine was something that would mess with me, other than making me have to pee more or something. But wow, caffeine is not my friend. I felt like I was taking crazy pills, FOR REAL. I was laughing and sweating and shaking. And about to enter an 8-hour lecture.

So... those are some tales from the coffee crypt. I ended up including LA's Big 3 (Starbucks, Coffee Bean, Peet's) without even trying. While drinking a good Chai Latte (a rare treat; I usually don't order). (But when I do order... now that I order for multiple people at once, I always give myself a fake name, because even though I love the fake name game it's too weird to do an obvious fake name for just myself. Today I was Bill. Last time I was Wanda.)