They handed me the wrong coffee at Dunkin.
One sip. I spit it back into the cup in the parking lot like I'd been poisoned, which, and I want to be precise here, I had been.
Then I looked at the receipt taped to the side.
Ten liquid sugars.
Ten
Not ten packets. Packets would be a mercy. Packets have to be torn open one at a time by a human being who has to look at what they're doing and count.
Liquid. Pumped. Out of a machine, into a cup, ten times, by an employee who did not flinch, because this is a normal order and they make it forty times a day.
Somewhere out there is a person whose name was on that receipt. Who ordered that on purpose. Who drove away happy. And who is going to do it again tomorrow.
Their tongue doesn't work anymore
That's the only explanation and it's worse than the alternative.
You cannot taste ten liquid sugars and enjoy it unless something has already happened to you. That is not a preference. That's damage. That mouth has been carpet bombed every morning for so long that a normal amount of anything now registers as nothing.
Hand that person a strawberry and they'll tell you it isn't sweet.
They have lost access to an entire category of human experience and they paid four dollars a day for years to lose it.
And they are not fine
This is the part.
That same person is dead on their feet at two in the afternoon every single day and cannot work out why. They're bloated. Their stomach is a whole situation. They're at the dentist twice a year with something new. They wake up feeling like garbage and they say "I don't know, I just have no energy lately."
Lately.
You have been drinking a can and a half of soda out of a cup with a lid on it every morning since 2019 and you have never once connected the two, because it came from a coffee place, and coffee is a morning thing that adults do.
Nobody would crack a Mountain Dew at seven in the morning in a parking lot before work. Everybody would see that person. Put the identical sugar in a paper cup with a cardboard sleeve on it and it's a routine.
And they're handing it to a kid
The small one. Whipped cream. Sprinkles on top. Passed into a back seat at 7:45 in the morning on the way to school.
That child is going to grow into a person who can't taste a strawberry either.
Here's what actually gets me
It isn't a treat.
A milkshake is a treat. A treat is something you have sometimes, that you look forward to, that ends. This is a baseline. Every day, before anything else has happened, on an empty stomach, in a car.
Somebody made ten liquid sugars their floor. That's where the day starts now. And they'll tell you they don't have a sweet tooth, and they'll say it while holding it.
I spit mine into a cup in a parking lot.
Somebody out there finished theirs.
How to handle a person like this
- Ask what's in it. Sincerely. Make them say the whole thing out loud, in order, to your face. The list is the entire argument and they have never once heard themselves recite it.
- Read the receipt. It's taped to the side of the cup. Read it out loud in front of everyone. Don't editorialize. Just read it and hand it back.
- Call it what it is every single time. Not once. Every time, for a month. "Are we stopping for your dessert." They'll start ordering something smaller and never tell you why.
Frequently asked questions
What's wrong with liking sweet coffee?
Ten.
That's not an answer.
Ten liquid sugars. That's the answer.
Some people just have a sweet tooth.
Some people are working on a diagnosis.
Isn't this judgmental?
Yes.
A note on safety
None of this is advice and it is emphatically not nutritional advice, we are not qualified for that either. We sell merch. We are not qualified to tell you what to drink, what to order, or what to say to the coworker who has recited the same forty-second order to the same barista every morning for two years. Do what you want. You were going to.
