moses, the old senseless goober!
try going to a peets and ordering tall coffee! you are effed....death stare!

why cant starbucks just call it small, medium, large....like everyone else?

WTF?!

For a start, if they were referring to their "tall", "grande" and "venti" as anything, it would be "large", "very large", and "pint of coffee". The serving sizes are truely scary.

I see more "grande" and "venti" sized coffees leaving Starbucks, than "tall." It shows how TIRED we all are.

They used to have "short," too, but as I heard it, Starbucks wasn't selling enough short coffees to justify the costs of carrying short cups.

I wonder why Starbucks doesn't call its "tall" coffee alto or something catchy like that.

I'm with you, everyone seems to be filling up with the larger sizes of coffee to keep up with the fast pace these days.

Have you heard the latest news that Juan Valdez is coming out with a chain of coffee houses to rival Starbucks.

I wonder what they will call their coffee sizes.

Maybe pequeño, enorme, and el último.. :p

Ha! I actually got into an argument with one of their "Baristas" about this. It ended with me saying "you know, there's a reason we have a standard language - it's so we can all understand each other." Then I walked away with my LARGE coffee, dammit.

It was all very Seinfeld.

I think this allegory is to the point of urban tale, but here goes:

A businessman is seated on an airplane beside another businessman; the first businessman asks the second, "What do you do?" The second responds, "I sell coffee. I'm starting a company called Starbucks, and we're looking for investors. We'll be going public soon. You can get in cheap. $1000 is what I'm asking." The first businessman says, "Coffee, eh? Over the counter? Like coffee drinks?" He thinks about it, then concludes, "It'll never fly."

This happened in "coach seating" by the way. So I wonder who's riding first class these days?

Hilarious, Colin! There's no arguing with baristas (isn't that a female bartender in Florence, Italy? Imagine Poppa Hemingway traipsing into a bar, ordering a double-bourbon shot, and "you" say, "I'm a barista." He'd cold cock you, no problema).

The baristas are by-and-large kids who want to finish school and get into Hollywood (at least down here). Or they're anarchists who write secret messages on the cup if you forgo the cardboard sleeve and ask them to "double cup" your coffee.

I once did this. An irate barista wrote on my cup "Kill the rich!"