First a bit of an explanation: The “Starbucks Test” found its humble origins in a Bill Maher formula for recognizing whether or not you’re an asshole:

The more complicated the Starbucks order, the bigger the asshole. If you walk into a Starbucks and order a “decaf grande half-soy, half-low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n’-Low and one NutraSweet,” ooh, you’re a huge asshole.

Why should this be the case? Robert I. Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule—Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, explains it this way:

…when people get this picky, it is a sign to me that they are oblivious—or worse yet take great glee—at acting like petty tyrants, at imposing difficulty and complexity on someone with less power, at showing everyone in the store how skilled they are at pushing around the poor clerk, and at slowing the flow of the line.

Now that’s a great explanation! We’ve all been stuck behind such people. I doubt I need to remind you of how this feels. The closer you get to this kind of a jerk, the more your fingers start to involuntarily spasm, almost as if they can’t decide whether they want to choke or pummel, choke or pummel. . .

But what do you do when the Starbucks Test reverses itself?

I do the bulk of my dissertation work in bookstores that have coffee shops. This isn’t because I’m a coffee man. I’m a soda man (I like Mountain Dew in particular). When it comes to literature reviews and the like, I focus better when I’m around people and sipping away at this sweet nectar from Heaven. If I get bored, I take a break and browse amongst a thousand books. If I get tired, I order another Dew and perk right back up. It’s a system that usually works.

I say “usually” because one bookstore I frequent, and by that I mean I’ve been there at least three nights a week pretty much all summer, employs a plastic-faced, monotone mannequin who is hell-bent on “assisting” me with my order. . . to the point where I break out in a cold sweat.

Understand that my lip reading skills are a bit lacking. What I usually do is place my order by using my voice, and if the clerk doesn’t understand me, I’ll repeat myself a little louder. If he or she still can’t make out what I’m saying (I’m told that I have a very clear voice but it’s hard to be sure of how much volume you need in what very well might be an utterly quiet bookstore), I’ll write down what I want. And indeed that’s the end of it 99.9% of the time.

Of course a clerk will sometimes ask me, as Plastic Face has been asking me daily for the last five months, if I’m a member of this or that discount program. This question is asked of me so often, in fact, that I’ve since started watching for the word “member” in the same way that you watch for “…drink with that?” when you’re lip reading the clerk in McDonald’s. When I catch the question I’ll shake my head “no.” And once again, 99.9% of the time that’s usually the end of it. Plastic Face, however, always manages to ask me this without ever moving his lips once. Of course I have no idea what he’s saying, so he ends up having to write the question down—much to the annoyance of whoever is standing in line behind me. But no matter. The first time it happened, he proceeded to pour me my Mountain Dew as soon as I replied “No.” For the remainder of the afternoon everything was fine.

It wasn’t until after this had gone on for a few days and we fell into a routine that he slowly started stretching out the amount of time he kept me waiting for my soda. It was a game of his you see, called One New Question. Here’s how you play:

I again ordered my customary soda. He asked “Ahgubahmmer?” (translation: “Are you a member?”), and—prepared and watching for this question—I again replied “No,” as usual.

Then he asked, “Butt hize?”

“What?” I asked, pointing at my ear to remind him that I was deaf.

He pointed at the row of plastic cups on the counter: Large, medium, and small. “What size?”

And so I simply told him: “Medium.” After all, I’m not a jerk. It’s a perfectly reasonable question. He’s not required to memorize my face or read my mind. And nobody was in line behind me at the time, so the situation was stress-free. I got my soda, paid my bill, and went back to my table.

However, the night after that…

“Ahgubahmmer?”

“I’m not a member, no.”

“Butt hize?”

“Medium.”

“Hiss?”

I missed the last question, so he wrote it out: “Do you want ice?”

I blinked a little. There were four people in line behind me. Not the world’s busiest day, but still.

“Yeah, I’ll have ice.”

As the game went on, his list of questions grew. Did I know where the straws were? Would I like a napkin? The cookies were on sale, would I like one? One thing I noticed: the more questions he asked, the more people there were behind me. I did nothing to indicate that I appreciated this routine, and he did nothing to overtly indicate that he got some sort of sadistic enjoyment out of it. Nonetheless I eventually started unconsciously countering him with moves you would expect to see out of someone who had just failed the Starbucks Test:

“I’d like a Mountain Dew, please, medium cup, half-filled with ice. I know where the straws and napkins are. I don’t want anything to eat, and no I’m not a member.”

The people standing immediately next to me would grunt in disgust. I’d shrug apologetically as if to say, “I’m not an asshole. . . really!” But that usually just made them more irritated, and Plastic Face would immediately milk the situation for all it was worth by adding some new expressionless, monotone question.

About a week ago I was forced to reevaluate my strategy. I had been avoiding the store lately, which sucked because it was the closest of the three bookstores near my home. And by some depressing quirk of fate, Plastic Face and I seemed to have the same general schedule, meaning that whenever I went to that particular store, he’d be there. So what to do? Give up drinking soda? Not an option. Have you ever tried writing a literature review without a caffeine boost? If you’d like to know what it feels like, close one eye and spend a marathon no-sleep session circling every sixth word in the Bible. In an hour God will start speaking to you through code. And by the time you’ve worn your pencil down to a stub, you’ll be understanding it.

I thought I had the problem solved a few days ago when the coffee shop section was more or less deserted. I ordered my usual soda, and the clerk went into his usual routine with the questions. Finally I interrupted him and said “Dude, come on!”

There was just enough exasperation in my tone to startle him without angering him. We shared a frank but civil exchange over the next five minutes, with me voicing and him writing. I wasn’t a member and I didn’t want to be one. But I appreciated that he had to ask each customer. Nonetheless I was deaf and he knew that perfectly well by now, so why make communication more difficult than it had to be? I promised that I wasn’t about to change the size of the soda I was ordering or the amount of ice I wanted in the cup. And so long as the straws and the napkins remained in the same place they had been for the last three months, I was cool on that score, too.

And you know what? We came through that exchange in pretty good shape. The only other customer in the coffee shop section never looked up from her table in the far corner. Security was not called. The clerk was polite, I was polite, and I went back to my table with my soda in peace.

Yesterday, however, he did it again. Saturday afternoon. The shop was almost packed, with a line of people stretching behind me almost all the way back to the bookshelves. Are you a member? No. What size? Medium. Would you like ice..?

“Pour the soda,” I growled. No “please,” no “thank you,” and no more bullshit. I didn’t even need to try and sound menacing. I’d been working on the damned dissertation without caffeine for four hours straight.

Plastic Face slid my drink across the counter without further ado. I paid and left. Everyone there no doubt thought that I was a Big Bald Bully. And I almost have to wonder: If I had signed to the guy instead of using my voice, how many of them would have thought that I was a Deaf Militant?

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