Now, hold on. If you're like me, an avid espresso loving, coffee drinking, bean grinding, true Northwesterner, I know what you're thinking (cause you're like me) and we'll get there, oh believe me I've got your back on this one!
It seems that there are some non-coffee drinkers among us. Which is fine, to each their own. I'm not into forcing (wasting) good espresso on people who don't appreciate it. However, when these same folks start addressing us, as if they are one of us and throwing around the term mocha-latte, I have a problem. Besides the fact that it just grates on my nerves to hear someone say mocha-latte (for you non coffee drinkers who don't do this, there is no such drink!! There's a Mocha and there's a Latte) the context of them using it is usually something like this, "If you just give up your daily mocha-latte, you could save xyz, or you could afford xyz..."
Recently I heard this term used in just such context. It was in an ad on the radio by a well known business owner with a very distinctive voice...I don't remember which station but you can hear him on almost ALL of them I'm sure. I won't tell you exactly who it was, but I have a pretty good idea where you can find him Monday-Friday till 8, Saturday and Sunday till 5. As if that that's not enough of a hint, I can tell you that after hearing this ad, I didn't feel like making any friends in the diamond business.
The jist of the ad was that, guys if you're thinking of buying an engagement ring but are worried about the cost of a nice ring, well he (this unnamed business owner) did the math and if you gave up your daily gourmet mocha-latte for a year, you'd have enough to buy a very decent ring for your (PATIENT) girlfriend. Now, I say let's think about this scenario a little bit deeper. What am I really hearing when I listen to this ad? Something like this, "guys, if you're addicted to espresso and you're thinking of buying an engagement ring for your girlfriend, why don't you listen to a finance program put together by a non-coffee drinker who obviously doesn't have those crazy love chemicals running rampidly through his brain on top of the daily caffeine overload, because he seems to think that waiting a whole year to propose AND abstaining from espresso this entire year is going to have a happy ending.
Well, I propose that the ending would look something like this..."A very desperate, cranky guy walks into a jewelry store and throws down $1,095 and freaks out when he sees his very decent engagement ring, because well, it's just not big enough and shiny enough to win back his, well his estranged girlfriend.
I think maybe non-coffee drinkers shouldn't interfere with the bond/addiction between us and our espresso. We don't ask that they understand, just that they stop asking us to give up our daily mocha-lattes!
