Wednesday, September 25, 2013
... and yet another thing I have apparently aged myself out of understanding ...
... grown-up sippy cups.
I just had to run up to Staples to pick up some stuff for the office, and the guy standing behind me in line had a Dunkin Donuts sippy cup, presumably full of coffee. He took a couple of swigs while he was standing there, in the thirty seconds or so it took me to check out, and I thought, really? You're that thirsty?
And this is common now. Surely you've noticed it. Every damn place you go, there's a bunch of people with their sippy cups. The mall, the grocery store, in the park for Chrissakes, it doesn't matter. Where people are, there are sippy cups.
And I have to wonder, are all of these people really so sleep-deprived, or so caffeine-addicted, that they have to have their coffee with them everywhere they go? I mean, I'm not averse to a nice hot cup of coffee, first thing in the morning or sometimes right before bed, but constantly? How much coffee are these people drinking? And what is it doing to their guts? Coffee's pretty acidic. (Although I am, admittedly, a little overly sensitive to intestinal issues at this point.) And what's the appeal of lukewarm coffee? Even in an insulated sippy cup, that sh*t's not gonna stay hot too awful long.
And I wonder how store clerks feel about constantly wiping up coffee spills and coffee rings and throwing away the discarded sippy cups.
I'm thinking that maybe coffee is the new cigarettes. You can't smoke all over the place like you used to be able to, so maybe carrying around a sippy cup is the new security blanket?
I dunno, I didn't meant to go all Andy Rooney here, but it's once of those things that once noticed, can't be un-noticed. What do you think? Are sippy-cup people taking over the world? Are you one of them?
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8 comments:
I never picked up the coffee habit - when I was a kid, my mom would ask me (and my brothers) to make her a coffee - and it was a mug of coffee, with 3 heaping teaspoons of both creamer and sugar - and long before I was old enough to drink coffee, I had decided that I would only drink coffee black, because if I had to add that much sugar and cream, then clearly I really didn't *like* coffee.
As it turns out - I don't like black coffee and honestly I don't like it even doctored up with sugar and cream. I actually don't like hot beverages much - especially in the morning.
I get my caffeine when necessary, via Diet coke - which is a much cheaper habit.
The only place I have ever seen this habit is the US, and I agree lukewarm coffee is just nasty. Do you remember during the OJ trial and Marsha Clark would come in with her large coffee? I read that some thought that was one of the reasons the jury turned on her, coming in late and flaunting her take out coffee.
Oh, this habit is alive and well here in Finland too ;) Just this (late) morning whilst walking a relatively short distance to my gym, I spotted three persons with coffee walking to wherever...
I think it's pretty much what you said; a habit, similar to smoking, just to have something in your hand and to gulp down without any particular reason...(although you will become addicted eventually, eh)
spiffi, I'm a diet mountain dew gal, myself. Sometimes diet orange.
fmcetc., I had never heard that about the OJ trial.
and Zella, Finland too, eh?
It's just ... it seems like these are the same people who wander around the mall in sweatpants and fuzzy slippers. I feel like saying, "Go home and put some clothes on! Macy's will still be here when you get back."
I'm pretty sensitive to caffeine and the acidity of coffee, which means that I tap out at one cup (if that). I too am alarmed at how addicted to caffeine we are now. I absolutely do think it's a product of being sleep deprived as well as being overworked and constantly on the go.
I don't really blame people for this--the reality of our society now is that people must work work work constantly just to stay afloat. Just a little while ago, I drank about a cup and a half of coffee because after being at one job early this morning for a few hours, I now am getting ready to go to job #2, and with this being the end of my teaching week, I need a boost. I don't like it, but that's my reality.
Kate, I dunno - Most of the people I see wandering the mall with their coffees look more like entitled a**holes than like working stiffs. It's like PJs and sippy cups are the new signifiers for the nouveau riche.
And I hear ya on drinking coffee to stay awake sometimes - For me, it's the two p.m. meetings that do me in.
I am reminded of a decade or two or three past when everyone "had" to carry a bottle of designer water everywhere, all the time. Tap water was no good, it HAD to be expensive water (even through we knew you were refilling the bottle at the tap every morning).
The bottles became a landfill horror, so they made them thinner, which made them difficult to reuse, and it soon became obvious you were cheating and filling them from the faucet. Then there were the horror stories that the water you paid a small fortune for because you thought it was from mountain springs in the Alps was actually coming from faucets in the Bronx.
Along about then, Seattle, already used to duping silly consumers, unleashed a terribly fancy overpriced burnt-tasting coffee that required that one learn a special (bastardized) language even to simply order it, thus spawning a plethora of copy-cat "coffee" houses on the masses.
Run-on sentences notwithstanding, it is not satisfying that you learn the special language and pay through the nose, when the only people who see you doing it are those who are also doing it. It is satisfying only when those who are NOT part of the cognoscenti are witness to your erudition.
Thus, sippy cups carried around.
That the coffee gets cold is not pertinent. It is to be SEEN, not drunk.
[Just incidentally, I prefer my coffee cold. Iced, even. But I don't carry it around.]
~~Silk, I think you're right - sippy-cup coffee is the new bottled water. I wonder what'll be next?
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