It's Roasting In Here: OutKick Readers Chime In With Their Biggest Coffee Gripes

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for another edition of the biggest thing to happen to complaining since the advent of social media, The Gripe Report.

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving, but if you can think back to what happened before you mainlined half a pan of stuffing, I did a Gripe Report about coffee.

Now, I love coffee, but there are also plenty of coffee-adjacent things that drive me insane, and it would seem that this is the case for a lot of you, too.

Have a gripe? Send it in!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com

So, on this week after Thanksgiving, when I'm still nursing a stuffing and pie hangover, I figured I'd let the readers take the wheel on this one.

"They were out of dark roast, so I got you this coffee that tastes like pie. I hope you like it…" (Getty Images)

Flavors 

One of the things I’m not big on is flavored coffee. My argument is that if you want to drink coffee, drink coffee. If you want to eat a cupcake, eat a cupcake.

Don’t drink coffee that tastes like cupcakes.

However, Ken has a solid exception to this:

I’m with you on the coffee battle, Matt, and generally on the beer battle.  If it’s good, it doesn’t need any flavoring!  (This goes for BBQ, too - if it’s cooked right, it doesn’t actually need any sauce!)

I have to confess, though, I do make an exception in the beer world - a friend of mine (a lovely lady, so I’ll cut her a little slack) once brought me some chocolate-peanut butter porter.  I was reluctant at first, but we drank some, and I was blown away by how good it was! 

Now, it’s not a go-to beer by any means, but in the winter when the weather is cold, on dreary nights, it just hits right!  I really enjoy it in the proper situation. 

Go ahead, give it a shot on some cold, rainy evening.

…

No shame!

There is a novelty factor to flavored whatevers. It’s like a neat party trick. You take a swig of beer or coffee, and you’re like, "Hey, this really does taste like a Ring-Ding… how about that?"

But the thing is, they’re never daily drivers. They just stay as an occasional thing to bust out at parties or if you’re out of your usual stuff.

Hey, I even sometimes have to dip into my wife’s flavored coffee if I miscalculate my supply of standard-issue dark roast.

Unnecessary Follow-Up Questions

One of my gripes had to do with how, about 70 percent of the time, when I order black coffee, the barista asks me if I want cream or sugar.

Well, TexJim has a great example of how this can happen outside of the coffee realm:

OK, Matt (Nat-Pat-Whatever). Here is one of my biggies. 

Me - I would like a hamburger with mayo, no pickles.

Waitperson (politically correct) -Would you like cheese with that?

Me -No (I want a hamburger,     not a cheeseburger!!)

Is it possible that I don't know what I really want to order, and they are just helping me out, or do they think I don't know how to order a cheeseburger?

At one of my favorite local hamburger joints, I am asked this every time I order. Maybe an automatic response, or is it possible they are afraid I will ask when I get my burger, where's the cheese??

Maybe I am overreacting, but if I wanted a cheeseburger, I would have ordered a cheeseburger.

…

This drove me more crazy than my own black coffee dilemma did.

I mean, have some in our society forgotten or not understood the distinction between a hamburger and a cheeseburger? Because, if anyone needs a refresher, the answer is cheese.

I think this may have been the result of the person taking the order going on autopilot, because unfortunately, they've idiot-proofed those little cash registers to an insane degree.

And apparently, that wasn't even enough because these days, at least half the time, you order on a tablet.

What bugs me about this is the unnecessary extra bit of dialogue. We're just spinning our wheels because I already told you I wanted my coffee black, so, no, I don't want cream or sugar. Or, as in TexKim's example, he made it clear he didn't want cheese by ordering a hamburger.

If you add up these little fragments of unnecessary chit chat, you'll probably gain several days of your life back when you finally take the ol' dirt nap.

So, stop wasting all of our time, please.

Self-serve coffee solves a lot of the problems you encounter in coffee shops. (Getty Images)

Self-Serve Coffee

Mike is checking in with a coffee recommendation that solves a lot of problems. Because I'm so nice and also very handsome, I'm sharing it with you too!:

Hey Matt

Great column, as usual.  That said, we have exported the jewel of Philly-area convenience stores, Wawa, to Florida.  Try their Colombian.  It’s perfect for those of us who drink coffee-flavored coffee.  And it’s self-serve.  Go to the self-checkout, and you don’t even have to acknowledge the existence of another person.

…

Mike may have found the solution here. Roll up, pour yourself a cup, pay, and get on with your life. I love it.

No unnecessary chit-chat, no messed-up names, and no one trying to show off the fact that they're writing a crappy screenplay.

Although if you write in the shadow of Wawa, I like the cut of your jib and would like to read your screenplay… actually, no, I wouldn't, but I can appreciate you for liking to work near Tastykakes and Herr's potato chips.

Good for you and your romantic comedy sci-fi space epic set in a dystopian future where people have sex with computers.

Wrong Name Solution

My name is prone to getting mispronounced, and Tim has the solution:

The name issue isn't limited to coffee shops, but all varieties of drive-through vendors.  My name may be Tim, but my "nom de ciné-parc" is Rico.  They rarely get that wrong.

…

I love this idea and have always wanted to do it, but I have a couple of problems.

The first is that I'm a little indecisive and would have a hard time picking a name. Maybe one day I want to go with Trevor, a nd another day I want to go with Demarius.

And if I'm switching the names a lot, I'm afraid that I'll forget which phony name I was using.  

I'd just stand there oblivious while they try to hand a coffee order identical to mine, thinking, "What are the chances Jefferson Steelflex and I have the same order… crazy."

Maybe I'll give it a go sometime.

First name?: Horatio.

…

That's it for this week! Thanks to all who wrote in for this edition of The Gripe Report!

If you've got a gripe, be sure to send it in for a future edition!: matthew.reigle@outkick.com