Starbucks Closed? NO!!!!

What the hell?

I am dragging today. DRAGGING! I had a busy weekend, and I was up till nearly 2am trying to finish some work last night. I was up at 7am and decided to wait till I got to the office to get my morning latte from the Starbucks near work.

My mistake.

There are FIVE Starbucks near my house. But when I walk to the subway, I don't walk past any of them. So rather than taking a detour, I decided (as I usually do) to get my coffee from the one next door to my work.

At precisely 8:32am, I get out of the subway station and walk across the street to the Starbucks. I notice on the front steps that the morning newspapers are still there.

"No one brought these in?" I wonder.

That's when I try to open the door... And fail. The lights are barely on and no one is inside. I look at the "Hours of Operation" on the door. It reads that they open at 6am. I double-check my iPhone to verify that it is indeed after 8:30am, and that I am not just running absurdly early today.

Another patron walks up the steps to join me. An older gentleman.

"They're not open," I told him.

"What?" he grumbles. "They have to be!"

I watch as he tries to open the door and then peek inside.

"This is crap!" he says, and walks down the street to the very place I am headed but do not want to go to...

Second Cup.

It's another coffee house chain here in Toronto. There are a handful of various chains. I like Starbucks, Lettieri's and Urbana Coffee. Timothy's is pretty good too. For a one-off kick ass coffee place, there's JetFuel in the Cabbagetown neighborhood. But for shitty coffee and oafish service, there's Second Cup.

Or as I like to call it, "Second Suck."

But I am desperate this morning. And the nearest Starbucks is a 15-minute walk away. So I stomp my feet to Second Cup.

Every time I go to this coffee place, something is not right about my order. Either they use the wrong milk instead of what I requested... Or they give me a small when I asked for a medium... Or they take fah-evah to get the order out. Or, like today, they over-filled my cup... And I ended up with foam soy milk all over my hands when I went to put the lid on the cup.

(In Canada, you have to put your own lid on your cup. It's a health regulation. They won't do it for you.)

The coffee itself isn't bad. Well, the espresso isn't bad. It's just a combination of lacking skills and customer service that make this place my least favorite chain to go to. But today, there was no choice.