Modern urban absurdity

It's been a long time since I ran across any news tidbit with the least bit of humor, until I had this encounter at Chick-Fil-A.   Yeah, I know.   I boycotted them for years about their anti-gay stance.   But they seem to have dropped that now that the Colonel died, so I occasionally venture back.

I can over-look the cutesy spelling of their name;  after all these years, it's just become a name.  At least it doesn't trigger my snobbism like Starbucks weirdness with cup sizes:  short, tall, grande, venti, and the soon to be introduced trenta.  I never really liked the flavor of Starbucks coffee anyway.

So, having a yen for a chicken sandwich a few days ago, I went through the drive-through at Chick-Fil-A and asked for a sandwich and a chocolate shake.  "Small or large?" came back the disembodied voice over the speaker.   Accustomed to choosing "medium," I asked how big is the large?    Voice:  "We put it in a medium cup."

"OK," I said.  "I'll have the chicken sandwich and a large shake in a medium cup."  We both chuckled, the Disembodied Voice and I.   At least they don't use pretentious words like venti and trenta.

Which started me thinking about these two dyed jn the wool American institutions:  Starbucks and Chick-Fil-A.     I guess maybe they differ primarily in class appeal.   Starbucks is definitely West Coast (Seattle), progressive, urban, elite-ish, while Chick-Fil-A has roots in the deep-South, fundamentalist religion of the Bible Belt and their anti-gay stance of years past.

They could hardly be more different, while both still being American icons.  Remember that, in that Great American Novel Moby Dick, Starbuck was the first mate on Captain Ahab's ship in mad pursuit of the white whale.  You can't get much more nativist than New England whaling ships of the 19th century.   Unless it's the white-suited, Southern "Colonel" Sanders who founded Chick-Fil-A.

Anyway, I thought it makes an interesting commentary on the two directions of Americana.   Then I looked up the meaning of "venti" and "trenta."  Where did those words come from?  It turns out that our prototypical American coffee barista went Italian for its new names.  Venti means 20 and trenta means 30 in Italian -- the number of ounces in the two larger cups in the Starbucks menu.

Is Chick-Fil-A going to follow and get size-pretentious?   I doubt it.  My guess is that for them it's a business decision, not an image ploy.  By eliminating medium, more people will pay for large, even in a medium size cup.  As I did.  Because . . . well, who wants "small?"  Even if you were to say it in Italian.

Ralph