coffee.

I love coffee. I drink a lot of it, which could be because I love it or because I never sleep anymore. But I have some issues with NYC coffee that desperately need to be addressed. 

If you're from Missouri, you know that coffee is insanely hot. Like it will burn your mouth and your hands. And your legs when you accidentally spill it all over yourself in the car. But people from NYC are either much more tough than us Missouri-folk or else they don't realize that they're getting 3rd degree burns, because no one gives you cup koozies when you order coffee. I really don't understand it! The coffee is so hot I literally cannot touch the cup without fear of injury, but people just walk around drinking their coffee like it's no big deal. No, a napkin is not the same as a cup koozie. They're too slippery and don't provide a good grip and sometimes make me drop my coffee right outside the subway entrance. To make things worse, when I was telling my coworker, Miriam, about my koozie issues, she just laughed and told me that koozie is not a word. Apparently, people in NYC call it a "cozy" or a "sleeve."  Maybe that's why people never give me koozies; because they don't know what word I'm saying or what I'm talking about. 

Look what I just found when I Googled "koozy." A Ben & Jerry's ice cream koozy! I need this.

So, instead of giving me a koozie, they put my coffee in a bag. Yeah, a paper bag. I'm confused. Maybe it makes for easier transportation, but I don't like it. I guess they use special paper bags, because they have a little cardboard square at the bottom to keep the coffee flat, but that still doesn't answer my confusion about why they put my coffee in a bag. Which leads me to the issue of the terrible lids. Sure, maybe putting coffee in a bag is a good idea if the coffee lids don't spill, but they do.  And then the bag gets wet and threatens ripping and spilling it's contents all over the hallway at work. Everyone uses those flimsy flat lids that you have to basically rip a hole in to drink out of and then they never re-close.

It is also really intimidating to order coffee in NYC. It could be because there are always thousands of people in line behind you and the cashiers are always rushing you so that they can get all the thousands of customers in and out, but it's scary.  We just got a Dunkin' Donuts in my building at work and I went there with some of my students and it was terrifying. Everyone from the East coast already knows exactly what they like from Dunkin' Donuts, so I was just standing there wide-eyed and confused until I finally just said something intelligent like, "Coffee. How do I do that?" Then, I have to always remember to tell them that I want my coffee black, and then they look at me like I'm crazy because everyone here likes their coffee with tons of sugar and whole milk. Ew. I always thought whole milk was just for children. Learn something new every day.