Coffee bars are snobby

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Okay, that's a generalization, but am I the only one that feels they have an air of cliquishness and snobbery? (Not starbucks, though.) Like, you don't fit into our little subculture, so we're already mad with you for being here.

I've never really experienced that with coffee shops. Usually, whenever I go into a coffee shop, it's just people sitting individually, minding their own business, sipping coffee and working on their laptops or on schoolwork or whatever.

I like coffee shops. I find them to be relaxing.

I enjoy coffee houses. There was one coffee house, where all the unusual people liked to hang out, that was in my area. They closed it down, three years, ago. There's no place for me to hang out, now on the nights that my friends, and I stay home.

On the contrary, I've found that coffee shops are a good place to meet all kinds of strange and interesting people. Going to the fast food joint is one thing...if sitting close to a woman with 3 kids screaming and running around the place is your deal go for it...but coffee shops are nothing like that from what I've noticed. If I wasn't so anxious about just going to public places to unwind, I'd do that over McDonalds.

i don't really go to coffee shops. may just to star bucks or dunken donut

I alway feel self-conscious in coffe shops. I don't really detect any snobbery but I still get the feeling I don't really belong there.

No

I never detect anything cliquey there, in fact coffee shops have been my refuge from stressful situations as they've been a therapeutic, and reliably non-threatening environment.

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I dont know if its just where I am, but most of the coffee shops here attract the hippie/indie kinda people, and I personally think there kinda weird. So I avoid it....

i have found coffee bars to be expensive and snooty, quintessentially upper middle class, and since i am underclass i am immediately repelled by them.

The snob aspect is really kind of funny when you think about it. They have stars upon thars.

Not really, just a bunch of different people minding their own business, not paying any real attention to one another.

If coffeehouse coffee wasn't so insanely overpriced I'd probably spend more time in them. It's my ideal workplace, plenty of coherent yet un-intrusive outside noise and a good amount of distance from those around me.

Here in London we have coffee shops, and we also have little green huts.

The coffee shops are much as you would expect. But I'd like to think the green huts that seem camouflaged are a special "London only" tradition. They're basically an equivalent to what we in Blighty would call "A transport cafe", or "A greasy spoon". As a particular fanatic of such establishments, but also one who is not opposed to watching city professionals behaving bizarrely whilst supping a recently percolated brew, I have been caused to observe certain differences in said establishments.

The typical "greasy spoon" is frequented by the "cockney cabbie", and he's not the sort to muck around. In truth he can be as scary, as he can be humorous. Right now he's off duty, and what he wants is a cup of tea and a plate of bacon, eggs, sausages and a fried tomato. The lady in the ancient green wooden hut has been serving this up for many, many years. She knows what she's doing. I would never dare to enter the small hut because it's the cabbies domain. Being a simple sort, I quite like a plain old coffee, and I'm also partial to a freshly fried bacon sandwich. The latter you just can't get in "Starbucks".

So I approach from outside, and the kind lady looks on me with sorrow when she sees I have no bacon sandwich. I barely have to say, "Cup of Coffee, Black and Two. Bacon Sarnie as well please. Could I have a drop of cold water in the coffee?" The bacon is frying before I've asked.

In Starbucks it's different, but I'm still the same. They don't do bacon sarnies. There's no point in asking. I'm not stupid.

But they do Coffee, and they have seats, so some days it just works.

Now the thing with Starbucks, is that they only do "Kung Foo" Coffee. It's a marketing thing. Designed to make money. They don't like the fact that I'm me. I don't care.



So I say to the Italian chap, who is over on his working student holiday, "Cup of Coffee, Black and Two. Could I have a drop of cold water in the coffee?"

You'll notice that I used almost the same words, but without a reference to the Bacon Sandwich.

This time it's a nightmare. I have to repeat myself three or four times. I get an explanation of how Kung Foo Coffee works - partially in Italian. All the different fizzes and whizzes, cherries and almonds, chocolate chips. Ten different cup sizes. "I just wanted coffee!" I exclaim. "I'm not trying to buy a Bra".

In the end you usually have to explain that you don't want a whole cup of cold water with your coffee. "Just put half a cup from the machine, don't whizz it, and then add cold water to the top." Obviously, you have to put your own sugar in.

So there it is.

Once upon a time, there was a program on the telly in the UK, called "Monty Python". They coined the phrase;

"But I don't like spam" - Well we all know what that became.

The moral of this story, is that it's not you. It's corporate pressure to make money.
Go in. Get a drink that you actually want. It's not a crime.

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