Make it a Venri.

I hate our sizes.

It's not the amount of ounces I hate, or the fact that they're misleading, or the fact that Starbucks decided that "small" wasn't coffee enough for them.

It's the reaction of the entire world toward the difference in size names that really, really makes em' so irksome.

Starbucks, when they named their drink sizes back in the 70s, did what a lot of companies do: take something common, and add a creative twist to it. They changed the names of their smallest and, at that time, larger beverage to short and tall. Later, they added grande, and then again, because if Americans can't guzzle disgustingly large quantities of fattening beverages, no one can, they later added the venti.

An explanation for all? When it was just short and tall, that made sense. One is short and one is, comparatively, tall. When American appetites demanded an extra four ounces, to call it grande also made sense, because at that point, that was the large. Why spend tons of money changing the middle size's name? Then, again later, venti made sense as well, sort of. Venti means 20, which is how many ounces are in a hot venti beverage. Short was taken off the menu, because it was laughable that anyone would cut their portion sizes to a meager eight ounces.

I applaud them for this. In the world of advertising, this is brilliant. The words 'tall', 'grande', and 'venti' are now synonymous with Starbucks, and, psychologically, all of the beverages (despite short) sound big and sound like a good deal.

Unfortunately, to most people, changing that sanctity of small, medium, and large is akin to replacing Elmo with a Hitler muppet. People have been whining about it for over three decades now. In anybody's list of Starbucks complaints, the size names rank right up there with the high prices, the fact that it sucks money from ma and pa shops, and their opinion of the coffee.

(By the way, I have nothing against ma & pa shops. I think they're quaint and I like seeing so-called normal people make money doing something they love. That being said, not only are most ma and pa shops not as up to standard in milk and food handling procedures as Starbucks, but a lot of them also use Torino syrups, which are the equivalent of sweetening your coffee with cheap sugary sewage. So if saving those are part of your excuse to hate on every Starbucks employee, then...well, I'm cursing at you in my head.)

These people, who are annoyed by it, are also completely annoying when they're forced to come in. I am being paid to call them by their appropriate sizes. I repeat: I HAVE TO CALL THEM TALL, GRANDE, AND VENTI. So when I repeat it back to you, in its translated form, I am not arguing with you. I am calling them by what I am paid to call them.

So many people don't understand this. I'm not correcting you. I really don't care what you call our sizes, unless it doesn't translate to something we sell (what do you think is "regular," sir?) or unless it's something really funny. Like tall-ay.

Now I understand that there are some baristas out there who aim to give us all a bad name. All you can do with those baristas is just not argue and leave assured that their coworkers hate them just as much as you do.