What’s Your Starbuck’s Name?
For some reason, Dylan is an extremely complicated name for Starbuck’s employees to spell. I’m really not sure what throws them off. But inevitably my name is most commonly misspelled in one of three different versions “Deelan” “Dillen” or my personal favorite “Doolan.”
Which makes me wonder why Starbucks a fortune 500 company would continue to insist that their employees need to write names on cups when half of them are more than likely illiterate. Of course that might partially explain why the company is closing 600 stores.
Sure I can just go to another coffee shop, a better coffee shop, where employees know how to spell, but Starbucks is just so damn convenient. So now instead of using my own name, I started using other people’s names like Paul, John, and Steve. I find that those are the easiest names for them to spell correctly.
But occasionally I choose a name like Pedro to honor that little Mexican outcast who became class president in Napoleon Dynamite. The name makes me feel good. Like I can be somebody.
And there in lies the beauty of Starbucks that ever morning at 9 am, I can bee whoever I want to be. I am no longer defined by the five-letter name my parents bestowed upon me. I am free to imagine a different life. Someone else’s life.
I am Tom Brady, Bill Gates, Barack Obama.
For three hours each morning, I am anybody but me.
