I ordered my usual medium sized dark roast coffee today from Caribou. It’s a great deal at only $1 provided that the Minnesota Twins baseball team wins the previous day. The only real catch is that you have to remember to print out the coupon from the internet or you’re out of luck. At this point, it’s pretty much a habit for me and really hasn’t been much of an issue. Heck, I’m practically there every day so it’s routine by now.
Caribou locations usually have a trivia question posted on the wall and, if you guess the answer correctly, you receive an extra 10 cents off your purchase. This may seems trivial (pardon the pun) but when you’re coffee is only $1 to begin with it’s actually quite nice. If you get a really nice Caribou employee to ring you up, sometimes they’ll even give you the discount if you answer incorrectly and/or they’ll give you a second/third/fourth chance at the answer.
I placed my order and looked at the question. “Who is the month of July named for?” was proudly displayed on the trivia board. Who was the month of July named for?! Um... It seemed like the sort of thing that maybe I should know but I had no idea that any of the months were named after anyone. In fact, upon thinking about it, I had often wondered where these goofy names had come from in the first place.
Ashley rang me up at the register and, upon noticing that I was looking at the board, kindly asked, “Would you like to take a stab at today’s trivia question?” I hesitated uncomfortably. “Um, yeah, sure...” I said without much confidence. “Hmm, let’s see… Who is the month of July named for… Um…” I was stalling for time as much as possible as Ashley patiently watched me with little amusement.
I had completely drawn a blank. July? Who the heck is named ‘July’? Even worse, who the heck is named any part of the word ‘July’? Nothing was coming to me. Meanwhile, Ashley was starting to get annoyed. I had to come up with an answer and fast. Anything would do and they often say that your first thought is correct. Jul…Jul…
I settled on an answer in my head and promptly blurted it out. “Jules Verne?” No sooner did I say it but both Ashley and I laughed out loud. Smiling slightly, Ashley finished ringing me up, albeit without the 10 cent discount, while stating, “The correct answer is Julius Caesar.”
Ah! Julius Caesar! Now that makes sense! Jules Verne?! What the heck was I thinking?!!
I never was very good at history.
I think I had one of the worst coffees ever today. I saw an ad on TV yesterday for $1 McCafe drinks at McDonalds until December 5th and figured I’d give them another chance. I had tried a mocha at one of the ten million fast food chain’s establishments previously and was rather disappointed (but not surprised) to find that it was simply a hot chocolate with a spot of bad coffee in the middle of it. I’m not entirely sure but I may have even tried another one at a later date, just in case the first one was “off”. Well, it wasn’t. I figured for a dollar, though, how can you go wrong, right?
This time around I opted for a latte. I was shocked to be asked, “What flavor would you like?” Huh? Flavor? Since when is a “latte” flavored? Oh boy, here we go. After the cashier read off my list of countless options, I simply chose one blindly, just to be done with the disturbing question altogether. I chose hazelnut.
One thing I can’t stand about McDonald’s McCafe drinks is that the freakin’ drink hole on the lid is about 5 times larger than anything you’d ever get at Caribou, Starbucks, etc. I think perhaps it goes hand in hand with their trademark large diameter straws that you can basically suck up large pearl sized tapioca balls with. The issue with the drink hole on the coffee is that it’s absolutely puzzling what to do with it. If you attempt to put your mouth around it, you’re basically drinking a beverage with your jaw hanging downward and your mouth agape. If you opt instead to just press your lips to it, you’re sure to burn the sides of your mouth, that is, unless you’ve been gifted with an incredibly large mouth. Perhaps the inventors of McDonalds were gifted in that fashion...that might explain it. Either way, the drink hole is downright disturbing, especially since it’s in a rather clunky square shape. Do you know anyone with a square mouth? Okay, let’s avoid that question altogether.
The cashier basically turned around and started assembling my beverage herself. This was starting to seem like a really bad idea more and more so. Now, keep in mind that I ordered a “latte”, a drink normally made with frothed milk and espresso. It’s really scary when the entire beverage can be assembled from one machine…by pressing simply one button. That’s right, there’s no espresso maker, no frothing machine, no nothing of the sort. Simply one button does it all on the same machine that dispenses countless other beverages. Yikes!
Well, how about the taste, right? I had to dig for the coffee in my drink and I’m pretty convinced that it wasn’t in there at all. All I could taste was sugar, like pretty much anything else McDonald’s makes (heck, even the salads have sugar in them), and then some bad hazelnut flavoring. The top of the drink was frothy, mind you, but not “froth”. Heck, let’s be honest: this wasn’t a latte at all. It was a bad flavored hot chocolate in coffee’s clothing.
Yes, I may have only spent $1 but surely I received nothing worth more than 1 cent. And so, a couple hours later, I ventured out to Caribou and received the real deal. Ah…the sound of real froth!
I applaud McDonald’s for trying to venture out and entice people with their $1 trial but seriously, folks, let’s just keep coffee where it belongs…in a coffee shop. Give it up, McDonald’s. I beg of you. Stick to what you do best…roping in small children at a young age and getting them hooked on excess sugar so that they get addicted enough to keep returning as they get older. Clowns shouldn't make coffee, plain and simple.
