Human shields

English professor Lynne Rosenthal has become a cause celebre after she was thrown out of a New York branch of Starbucks cafe by police for clashing with staff over the wording of her bagel order.

The academic had wanted a plain, toasted multi-grain bagel but said she became infuriated when the server insisted she use the phrase "without butter and cheese".

According to Prof Rosenthal, the exchange proceeded thus: "I yelled, 'I want my multi-grain bagel.'

"The barista said, 'You're not going to get anything unless you say butter or cheese.'"

It seems a bafflingly trivial incident for both parties to get exercised over, and the fact that none of Starbucks' staple product was involved in the contentious order makes one wonder what would have happened had Prof Rosenthal had the temerity to ask for a small white coffee.

Via the BBC. I feel a certain sympathy for Prof Rosenthal's frustration. I'm also sick of being asked to buy in to the phony, robotic marketing-speak dreamed up by wretched corporate drones. There's no such thing, in an English coffee shop as a "regular Americano" - it's just a borrowed word intended to re-brand a perfectly respectable small filter coffee as something more exciting and exotic (with a price point to match). When I board a train, I am a passenger, a word that has served perfectly well since the before dawn of the railways - I don't want to be re-branded as a "customer", a weasel word intended to downgrade the railway journey itself to an incidental element in the branded retail experience.

My sympathy is limited, though. Starbucks may be guilty of being a prime purveyor of this sort of weapons-grade bullshit, but getting into a strop with its poorly-paid staff isn't the answer:

She subjects a poor service clerk to a barrage of abuse for asking the question which she or he has been trained, nay drilled, to ask. Anyone who has worked behind a counter will be familiar with the easy air of arrogance with which you can be treated. This Professor made a cruel stand against people who could not fight back, people who at best could continue to ask her perfectly reasonable questions.

Via the Left Outside Blog, clearly not impressed by Prof Rosenthal's outburst. There are two sides to this story, I wasn't there and I don't know whether or not Prof Rosenthal was rude to the person serving her, vice versa or a bit of both. What I do know, is that junior staff in many large organisations have to follow a script. It may be phony, it may waste time, it may enrage the customer, but the person following the script isn't talking like an idiot because they want to. They're doing it because they've been told to do it and will get it in the neck from their boss if they communicate in a non-approved way.

That's why I don't have a go at the bank clerk who asks me whether I'd consider getting a loan, or changing to a new mortgage provider, even though I've clearly only popped in to drop off a cheque, am visibly in a hurry and do not, I hope, look like the kind of half-wit who, if I was actually in a bank and needed a loan, would be incapable of asking about one without being prompted. Because that bank clerk is just another poor sod stuck in a tedious job, who is required to pester potential customers at every opportunity and who would be disciplined for having the temerity to realise that the customer clearly didn't have the time or inclination to discuss additional services and could, therefore, be spared the time-wasting sales talk.

So I bite my tongue. And the faceless corporate zombies responsible for making the poor dogsbodies at the bottom of their organisations talk like exasperating cretins are able to continue tormenting the public, safe in the knowledge that it's the dogsbodies who will be their human shields, taking any flak that results from following their idiotic script.

Steaming aluminium

People who care about such things often have their personal favourite Italian design classic. Not being a petrolhead or a fan of conspicuous consumption, I'm fairly lukewarm to the charms of Ferrari sports cars. I find the Vespa motor scooter more impressive, in the sense that it's easy to build cutting-edge design into something that ridiculously wealthy will pay for, but to give flair to something affordable and mass produced takes a bit more ingenuity. But the Vespa isn't my classic of the moment. Neither are immaculately tailored Italian clothes - I don't know enough about fashion to spend my time coveting la bella figura or eagerly pursuing all the latest fads and trends.

What I do like is the Italian moka coffee pot. It's a modest and easily overlooked object - in fact I'd managed to pretty much overlook it myself until quite recently. I'd seen the little octagonal aluminum pots around before, but hadn't paid them much attention until I actually used one for the first time last year.

Previously I used one of those those glass jugs - normally called a cafetière, French press, or plunger - in which you put your ground coffee, pour on hot water, leave to brew for a few minutes, then push down the filter to trap the grounds before pouring. You can make decent cup of coffee in one of these, so I'd had no reason to look at any other method. In Italy, last year, I found myself in a kitchen, with no other coffee-making equipment but a moka pot. I'd no idea how to use one until I was told how, but when I tried it out, the resulting coffee was as smooth as silk, with a kick like a shire horse. The strength is due to the amount of coffee you put in the filter and the percolating process, which extracts more caffeine than the cafetière method. The smoothness must be due to the filter retaining more of the coffee grounds. The moka is, strictly speaking, for preparing espresso, so it's not surprising that the caffeine dial goes up to eleven. What truth there is behind the stereotype of Italians shouting and waving their arms about probably owes something to the ubiquity of the moka pot.

There's something very satisfying about brewing coffee in a moka. This is partly because it's like a tiny steam engine and makes a satisfying gurgling noise when your coffee's ready. Even the freshly-brewed coffee aroma seems more pungent and enticing than what you get out of a cafetière, although that's just my subjective judgement. Here's a diagram showing how the magic happens:

You fill the lower chamber (A) with water and the filter (B) with coffee. Screw on the upper pot (C). Place the pot on the heat. The water in the bottom chamber gets hot and gives off steam. The steam forces boiling water through the coffee in the filter, so coffee bubbles up into the upper pot. When the lower chamber's almost empty, steam bubbles are forced up through the remaining liquid to produce the gurgling noise that signals your coffee's ready (apparently purists say that by the time the pot starts to gurgle, the coffee's already at too high a temperature and the flavour has already started to spoil - for the perfect cup of coffee, you should be able to anticipate the gurgling and take the coffee off the heat before it starts making a noise).

The moka pot was invented in 1933 by Alfonso Bialetti and there's one of the Bialetti company's coffee pots in the majority of Italian homes (or another manufacturer's design based on the same principle). The simple, octagonal industrial styling seems to go with the moka pot's steam engine-style splutterings and has hardly been changed since it was first introduced. I was recently given a moka pot which works on this principle as a present. It's not a Bialetti, but another brand made of stainless steel rather than aluminum, and not in the original's octagonal shape. I sometimes think a classic Bialletti would be better, but on reflection, I'm not that fussed. It does the same job and, although I like the Bialetti, I can appreciate the design without fetishizing it and getting into that horrible marketing-manipulated state of having "brand loyalty" (it is only an object for heaven's sake). The idea of any branded product being a "must have" seems incredibly superficial and just deeply wrong to me (it really is only an object).

I remember long ago, as a student, being amused to see some American students trying to make tea. They'd put teabags into the teapot and were trying to boil them up on the ring of a cooker. I wouldn't laugh at such naivety in beverage preparation these days. After all, until last year, I'd never used a stove-top coffee pot and didn't know how to without being told. Even worse, many years back, when I started using "real" coffee (as opposed to instant), it didn't even occur to me that it was a fresh product which needs to be kept in the fridge once opened. I was merrily keeping mine in a cupboard, like tea or instant coffee, then wondering why my coffee started tasting terrible after a short while. I've decided that ignorance isn't anything to be ashamed of - it's only failing to learn and correct that ignorance which should cause us to blush.

Anyway, here's to the moka pot - it's only an object, but it's rather a splendid one.