Reasons to Avoid Starbucks

There are those of us who cannot live without it. There are those of us who have no choice. I am fortunate. I have a wonderful local coffee shop I visit just about every day. The service is friendly, the coffee is good, the atmosphere is down to earth. Yes, the service can at times be infuriatingly slow. But it's my coffee shop. And I feel comfortable there.

Starbucks, on the other hand, is like a rental. It's reliable, but there's something iniquitous about its environs. First, as you walk in, you are assaulted by that vicious odor -- a coffee smell too strong for coffee. Second, there is an artifice about the place. Something synthetic and unreal. Perhaps it's the uniforms, the clerk's forced smiles or the air of crass commercialism. I hate being upsold. Every time I've been in a Starbucks, they try to sell me something I have no interest in. "How about a muffin to go with that?" "Are you interested in any cookies?" Look, I'm not buying a suit. I don't need a shirt, tie and pair of shoes to go with it. Just give me my coffee and let me exit this pretentious, prefabricated place. And no matter how little I linger, my clothes retain that skunky over-roasted coffee smell.

So, yes, this has been done to death. Starbucks detractors have scrawled, screamed and scratched their screeds over the inherent problems with a McDonald's-like institution that serves caffeinated beverages. But just to keep the dialogue going, here's my four dollars and fifty cents.

Why I do everything I can to avoid Starbucks:

Overpriced--Nearly $4.00 for a large (or tall, or whatever the biggest coffee is)?!
Over-roasted--(See above) Their French roast smells like Pepe Le Pew stepped into a vat of grounds, then broke wind.
Overrated--I can get better coffee at Dunkin' Donuts.
Over-exposed--Lewis Black tells a great story about finding the end of the universe. It's in Dallas at the end of an alley. On one side of the alley is a Starbucks. Directly across the street is ... a Starbucks.