transition week 2.0

I feel like I just got the punchline. At Siena, it was always some person trumping up how good the coffee is at Starbucks. At Sbux, a woman came up to me on my first day and said, with a preface of no offense, "Have you ever had Peet's coffee? It's really good."

Joke's on me.

I don't know what I expecting. Maybe I thought things would be different somehow. That Sbux would be grand and brilliant and exceptional. Joke is, the grass is always greener on the other side.

Their dirt is just as brown.

There are rules for everything, manuals thick and spiral bound, but I constantly hear, oh that, we don't really do that.

In the end, they are just a store that is slowly deteriorating, maintaining a facade of efficency and sheen, but when you look close, crumbs, cracks, and weariness greet your probing eyes. The difference is there's more people to bitch about it, there's more people to answer the question, "Who did this?"

I can already see, a week in, that I'll either have to bite my tongue or do things the way that I know they are supposed to be done. It'll probably be like it always was at Siena, a question of how tired or how willing I was, or how much time I had.

All in all, I am glad and grateful for the newness of it, for the move, for the benefits and stuff, but I'm a little dismayed by not getting the joke; That it'd be different anywhere else.