The £12 cup of coffee

An unseasonably hot, claggy day in central London today. 29 degrees might be the sort of temperature that would make an Aussie reach for his overcoat, but for us, it’s just on the uncomfortable side of warm — unless you’re in a beer garden.

I wasn’t in a beer garden. Instead I was sardined on the London Underground system, floundering in a forest of armpits and hissing headphones, and can attest that it’s a less pleasant spot from which to enjoy the heat.

This oppressive subterranean expedition would eventually lead me to the gates of the Bank of England, then slightly beyond. I was heading for Cornhill to attend an all-day seminar. One of the more substantial crumbs I was tossed by my previous employer was some time with an outplacement firm. This means access to a number of useful services including one-to-one career coaching, and these seminars.

With 25 minutes to kill, I stopped off at Starbucks in Cornhill, and joined the queue of hangdog bankers. I ordered my “large” Americano. I have no truck with this tall, grande, venti bollocks. It’s small, medium, and large. Simple. Alas, way too simple for the marketing boys. (And don’t get me started on the regular, large, and extra-large nonsense you get on Planet Fastfood. Small, medium, large. Simple.)

Starbucks in Cornhill is tiny, with barely room to swing a fat cat. The place was packed. The one concession to the lingering coffee drinker is a narrow shelf and a few stools along the wall opposite the bulging counter. I wanted to sit down, but with all stools taken, this seemed unlikely. The pleasant cashier asked for £2.05. I handed over my £20 note. As I did so, I heard the rasp of stool scraping across floor right behind me. This sound means just one thing: I am vacating this spot. Hurrah! A couple of seconds later, the previous occupant had completed his off-to-work manoeuvre, so I reached over and deposited my books and newspaper on the stool to stake my claim to this priceless patch of City real estate. I realised the cashier was calling out to me: “Change please! Change!” Ah yes, thank you. She handed me… £7.95. “Er, it was a twenty,” I said. She looked confused. “It was a twenty”, I repeated. “I gave you a twenty pound note”.

She still looked confused, and looked down at the till drawer. Eventually, she said no, I’d given her a ten. No, I assured her, it was a definitely a twenty.

How can I be sure? Two reasons. Firstly, I’d picked up the £20 note from my bedside table earlier this morning and put it in my wallet. It was the only banknote I had on me. I recall doing a quick assessment of whether that would tide me through the day, deciding that, in this current beer-free zone, it certainly would

Second reason is more nebulous, but I think people will understand what I mean. If you buy something for £2, and hand over £5, you semi-consciously register an expectation that you’ll receive 2 or 3 coins in return. If you give the person £10, that semi-conscious expectation is for a £5 note and 2 or 3 coins. And so on. When I handed the lady my £20, my brain received that subtle message that there was a £10, a £5 and a few coins on the way. They didn’t arrive.

After a few seconds of awkwardness, she summoned the boss, a startled looking African man. He asked me to wait, then took the till drawer and vanished through a door next to me. A minute or two later, he re-emerged, declaring “I cannot find the ten pounds”. Eh? What did he mean? “I have checked everything, and I cannot find this ten pounds.” He claimed to have spent his brief absence in a frenzy of counting and comparing and calculating, allowing him to declare there was no discrepancy.

As Boris Johnson, once a denizen of these very streets, and possibly this very establishment, would have put it, this was an inverted pyramid of piffle.

What’s a fellow to do in these circumstances? And I mean both of us. I accept that Starbucks can’t afford a policy of giving a tenner to anyone who requests one. But he could at least have suggested I call back later in the day, by which time they might have conducted a more plausible till check. A higher tech solution could be the one that a friend told me about, when he had a similar problem at a petrol station. While he stood there, they ran the CCTV pictures back a few seconds, and were able to see who was right.

And what could I do? A prolonged physical pummelling seemed unreasonably harsh. Even a sharp tug on the man’s ear would have been beyond my sentencing powers. The coffee in my hand was too hot to pour over his head, and I could hardly ask him to come back once it had cooled down. Sheesh. If only I’d bought a caramel frappuccino. Instead, I uttered pompously: “OK, I will now enjoy the last cup of Starbucks coffee I will ever drink”.

And that’s all I can do. They can stick their venti up their jacksie. I just hope that at Starbucks HQ at the end of the year, Mr Starbuck will be stroking his chin and saying with a faint whiney tone: “Y’know, ten billion dollars of revenue is just fine and dandy an’ all, but well, I can’t put my finger on it, but I was expecting around a hundred dollars more than this…. let me check those figures one more time.”

Ha! That hundred dollars is here in my pocket, and you are not getting it.

The seminar was called How to start your own business. Starbucks may be a long way from that point these days, but maybe they should remind themselves of a few first principles.