I have worked at Starbucks for far too long (although, not really that long), and as I serve the same complicated drinks to the same non-complicated people day after, I have started to wonder what this coffee-shop phenomena is all about. And I moan about it, a lot. Because coffee shops should be quirky and personal, like our dear Central Perk, where the characters in Friends happily spent a good fifty percent of their time.
And then I had a terrible, terrifying thought. What if Friends had been set in Starbucks?
And so I wrote it down, because that’s what I do.
If Friends was set in Starbucks…
1. They wouldn’t be drinking cappuccinos. They’d be drinking semi-wet, double tall lattes, with a shot of vanilla. And soya. Because it’s so in right now, yah?
2. We’d like them a lot less because they’d keep ordering these really annoying drinks and it’d take up all the screen time. They’d also spend a lot of screen time queuing.
3. We’d be disappointed in them as people. Chandler, no, don’t do it, don’t go for the soya, why, Chandler, why?
4. We would start to question Phoebe’s sense of morality, because we trust Phoebe in these matters. She doesn’t wear fur, she dumps loving boyfriends when they shoot birds, she has funerals when the flowers in her vase die, and we know that Phoebe would be morally opposed to a soulless chain coffee shop…But then again, there was that Pottery Barn incident.
5. We would want to slap Ross even more. He’d keep taking drinks back and joking about it and everyone would hate him. He’d definitely be the guy for whom the pinnacle of excitement is trying a different flavoured syrup in his coffee.
6. Rachel would have never gotten a job there. No jewellery, no nail polish, hair tied back at all times. Rachel, with her hair not on display. Psshaw!
7. There’d be no Gunther- sad!
8. Or there’d be a Gunther with no peroxide blond hair-possibly even sadder!
9. Joey would have never gotten a job there. Even actors can’t deal with that much rejection on a daily basis.
10. We wouldn’t be able to hear any of the dialogue over all the yelling and the whirring coffee machines, and customers arguing about wireless internet, and whether it’s fair they have to pay 25c extra for whipped cream.
11. We would never have experienced Friends, because all the characters would be off in some cool independent coffee shop far, far away from Starbucks.
So the moral of this story, little ones? Cool people hang out in independent coffee houses/book stores/record shops/brothels. Not in Starbucks. Go forth, into a new and glorious world, full of life and colour, where the only question asked when you order a coffee is ‘Milk and Sugar?’
