Christmas Coffee Cups

A few posts ago, I was ranting about coffee cups and Christmas as a marketing ploy.  Thinking about it, it’s only natural that coffee shops should have seasonal cups.  They’ve been trying to personalise the coffee experience, just like the cola companies have been trying to, and so no wonder that they changed the design of their beverage containers to make us think ‘ahhh, lovely, let me guzzle this and go out and buy another, this is fun!’.

It does lead me to wonder why the hell aren’t these people making a bit more of an effort during the rest of the year.  Christmas is not the main Christian holiday, Easter is, and so why don’t we have special; designs for Easter.  Or for other seasons or holiday, God knows the shops seem pretty bloody keen to sell us stuff related to Halloween, why not cups and cola cans too.  (Honourable exception here, Krispy Kreme, they make one hell of an effort.  I don’t know what’s in that orange icing they use, but it’s practically a legal high).

Given the drive for personalisation of your gulping experience by cola companies and coffee shops alike it is unsurprising that they seek to make the experience special with a seasonally decorated beverage holder.

Gentleman & Player’s favourite though is, you will be unsurprised to learn, the Waitrose coffee cup.

Let’s pause for a second to consider the Waitrose beverage.  If you have a ‘My Waitrose’ card (which is one of those customer loyalty cards that allows, depending on your point of view, either you to get reward points and vouchers and special offers or for the store to build up a profile of you based on your shopping meaning they know what you eat, what you drink, when you go on holiday, what birth control you use, when you menstruate, and can sell all this to, in ascending order of dreadfulness, other companies, foreign powers or Our Own Government!) you can get a free tea or coffee every day.  The idea is of course that you go in there thinking ‘just a free coffee, just a free coffee’, start getting your coffee, think ‘must…be…strong’ and then exit with at the very least a pastry and more likely a 42 inch telly.  Such is the acknowledged power of going to the shops for a bottle of HP sauce and coming back with an HP printer.

The Waitrose seasonal coffee cup is…it’s…well…it’s very Waitrose.  It’s a white reindeer and seasonal scene on a green background.

Two things.

Firstly, tradition.  Apparently, before the evil elves at the marketing department of a certain cola company got busy, the traditional colours of Christmas were green and white, not red and white.  This makes sense, as we have green Christmas trees in the house and the only red traditionally on offer is the breast of a robin and the claret spilled during the traditional family punch up (always after the Queen’s Speech, we’re not savages).

Secondly, it’s just so very classy and understated.

But surely they can do more.  Costa have four different characters, with the occasional variation, Waitrose can turn a cup into a collectable.

Obviously, a simple red dot on the snout of the animal turns a random reindeer into a beloved character.

A tartan bow, and we have a wee ‘Monarch of the Glen’ moment.

For our American Friends, who think nature is best admired when mounted on the wall of their double-wide trailer, a cross hairs on the forehead.  Actually, that’s the Scottish stalking method, if it’s an American, it’ll be a green haze and a line of print along the bottom that reads ‘cluster bomb option selected’.

I actually rather liked the Waitrose coffee cup.  Possibly because it was full of free coffee but probably because it was astatically pleasing.  The reindeer in question actually looked quite jolly, the green (Waitrose corporate colour though it was) was understated but festive, and appropriate, it was the sort of green you might encounter in nature.  Possibly in woods where fir trees grow.  Possibly at night, armed with a hacksaw, I couldn’t possibly comment.

Tesco in the toilet

Trebuchet.

Bless you.

A trebuchet is a siege engine.  That is, it is a bloody huge wooden tower with a weighted throwing arm, designed to throw heavy objects against or over castle walls, from a distance further away than the longest ranged weapon available to the castle inhabitants.

That’s right, like in LOTR.

Trebuchets were the heavy artillery of the age of castles and siege warfare, and lasted right up until the arrival of the sapper, a bloke with a beard and a spade and some stuff he called gunpowder, who explained how he could tunnel under the castle walls and explode the gunpowder.

Two obvious points before we move on, why couldn’t the hirsute little sod keep digging, like a Medieval Manic Miner, for a few more yards and so make a tunnel into the castle enabling troop deployment into the Keep?  Also, why did none of these idiots ever think of attacking the castle through the weakest point; the gift shop.

Imagine though, having something like a trebuchet.  A tall tower with a throwing arm like Ian Botham on a good day.  And these things were made out of wood, not Lego.  Essentially, you took a tree, which had been withstanding gales and gusts for decades, then strengthened it with all sorts of fastening and, oh I don’t know, elastic bands or whatever, then you pulled the bugger back and then…TWANG!

I love trebuchets.

What I love about them, is their versatility.

Previously, I may have remarked that I have something of an antipathy for the popular chain store and tenth circle of Hell, Tesco.  This is based on a number of factors, such as the way they abuse their suppliers, and the way their customers abuse one another when in their stores.  I stopped shopping at Tesco after witnessing an argument between a couple who were pensioners.  I had previously thought that they were just an argumentative pair who shopped at Tesco and who, after 60 years of married life, enjoyed a public bicker.  Now I am more inclined to think that they are a loving pair who, after 60 years of married life, only ever argue in Tesco because of its conducive atmosphere.  I was also not a fan of the way that my local petrol station had a ‘Tiny Tesco’ or whatever the fuck they are called, and that they were convenient and open late when I needed wine.  Yes, I did see people shopping there in their pyjamas.  No, I never did.

So after the curious incident of the guide dog in the Tesco, I was researching how to build a trebuchet, thinking I might contact a farmer, buy a large quantity of manure, then fling the mess at my nearest store (having stocked up on wine beforehand, obviously).  This seemed the only way in which such a callous commercial monster might be wounded.

Then I turned on the radio.

Turns out, Tesco are in the shit.

So this is a company that makes a fortune, right?  A success story, right?  They post profits and then go and rub themselves against trees or something, right?

Apparently not.

Apparently, somebody has now queried the company accounts and the problem is that what was reported as ‘Finest’ is actually rather more ‘Value’, and either quite a lot of people forgot to carry the decimal point, or there has been a gross (or net, I’m not quite there with the accounting terms) misstatement of the amount of money that the company makes.

The enjoyment of the misfortune of others is a concept so alien to most civilized societies that only the Germans have a word for it.

What an absolute bunch of arseholes.

I mean, it’s not as if you had any ethical credibility, or were an outstanding employer, or your food was that good or your stores were a pleasure to visit.  All you had was that you made shedloads of money, and also possibly that you had the good grace to keep your shops that were attached to garages open late so that people who fancied something red and cheeky of an evening didn’t have trek the extra five minutes along the road to Sainsbury’s.

Fuck you S**rbucks, you really don't know me!

In what has to be the worst ever corporate mandate, or simply an astonishingly ham-fisted attempt at analogue data gathering about customers, Starbucks staff now ask you for your name when you buy a coffee.  Presumably this is because ‘Jeff’ is easier to remember than ‘double no-fun skinny latte and give it wings’.

The only plausible reason for a coffee shop drone to ask you your name is if you are the fiftieth person in line to sequentially ask for a latte and they need to differentiate you from all the other folk who can’t think of a more interesting beverage.

I do not like being asked my name in Starbucks, as a corporation famous for ending individuality on the high street by trying to drive independent coffee shops out of business with their mugs, and their staff, and their shots of syrup instead of the traditional stale cup of filter whatever-is-on-special-at Costco blend available in traditional coffee shops, it’s a bit bloody rich that they are trying to introduce individuality by writing the name you choose to give on a mug.  Also, I expect them to then ask for your rank and serial number.

Really, if I wanted personal service, I would have spent my money in the little independent coffee shop next door that Starbucks put out of business years ago.  Of course, if I had done that, it wouldn’t have gone out of business.

Or I would get my morning coffee at the Krispy Kreme Koncession, where they greet me with ‘Good morning sir, latte?’.

Sir!  What’s wrong with Sir?  The Krispy Kreme Krew don’t want to know my name, nor do they care, nor do they pretend that they care.  They just want to know that I am latte guy and that, even if I actually wanted a flat white that morning, I will now have a latte instead.  I can respect that.

Obviously the drill in Starbucks is now to at least give a made up name, or answer ‘Sir’ or ‘Valued Customer’ or ‘Master’.  Or ‘Doctor Claw’ or any of a number of cool names, if you can summon the courage to do that to some poor Starbuckian who has been on shift for eight hours slinging coffee to an ungrateful public, a suspiciously large number of whom seem to be called ‘Gengis Kahn’ or, if you are a Star Trek fan, ‘Kahhhhhhhnnnnnnnnn’.

As it was, I panicked and gave my real name.  And I’ve seen ‘The Great Escape’ loads of times, I should have known what I was doing.

As it was, she not only wrote my name down wrong but she also made the wrong coffee.

Thinking back on it now, it’s just possible I may have picked up the wrong cup.