Coffee Snobbery

I'm a coffee snob. There, I said it. But as a Melburnian who serves coffee in what can now be described as one of the world's leading coffee capitals, I feel that I have a valid excuse. And yes, chances are that if you order a take away weak soy decaf latte with me in the morning I may have a tiny little sigh to myself and hope that one day you'll actually drink real coffee. But a little experience I recently had has made me ponder the question...has coffee snobbery gone too far?

Just the other day a woman came into the cafe where I work and ordered a regular latte, before muttering in an embarrassed undertone that she'd like two and a half sugars with that. I smiled politely and took her order without batting an eye lid. She rushed on to say that she knew it was a lot of sugar but that's just how she liked her coffee. "That's alright", I replied, "we don't judge here". She looked a little relieved at this and went on to say, "thank God, the last people I got a take away from refused to put any sugar in for me!". Now, when I said I don't judge, that may not have been entirely true (and personally I would never ruin my perfectly good coffee with two and a half sugars), but I found myself being outraged on this woman's behalf. I would never (NEVER!) refuse to add sugar to a customer's coffee. Who were these people to look down their noses at this woman? Were the gears wound so tightly on their customized fixies that they were too uptight to give the lady some god damn sugar? And what's more, what ever happened to the golden rule 'the customer is always right'?.

I'm more than happy to offer all the advice and recommendations I can to customers in order to help them navigate thought the minefield that Melbourne coffee can be (pour over, aeropress, siphon), but I will also recognize that each customer has a personal taste. So I am officially putting my foot down to coffee snobbery because I believe that you can have your extra hot weak soy decaf mocha and drink it too!