Do you have a Starbucks name?
Mark K February 23rd, 2008
There is an episode on Will and Grace in which Grace orders a coffee at Starbucks. When the coffee is ready, the counter person calls out a different name and Grace goes up and gets her coffee. When she is asked about this, she explains that this is her “Starbuck’s Name” - an assumed name that she only uses when she’s ordering coffee.
My daughter tells a funny story about how a friend of her ran into trouble with this approach. Her friend, “Kelly”, wanted to order a juice drink at Jamba Juice and decided that she would tell the person that helped her that her name was “Penelope”. Jamba Juice, in case you’ve never been there, is an extremely noisy place with the constant whirring of blenders and crushing of ice and I’m imagining that the person taking the order couldn’t hear very well, so she asked for the spelling of the name.
Unfortunately, Kelly had chosen a pseudonym that she wasn’t sure how to spell. So she did the best that she could: P-E-N-E-O-P.
“Peneop? Peneop? Your name is Peneop?” the counter girl asked incredulously, getting louder and louder each time she repeated it.
The jig was up. Finally, totally embarrassed, Kelly had to admit the truth. “Okay. Okay! My name is Kelly!”
The counter girl scrawled “Kelly” on the styrofoam cup as the would-be Penelope slinked away.
I’m hoping that Kelly didn’t give up, that she memorized the spelling or came up with an equally cool-sounding but easier-to-spell name and returned to the scene of the crime.
As for me. Is it spelled “Marcello” or “Marcelo”?
