That's what the guy in front of me at Starbucks had. "No water," he added. I don't even know what a 5 pump chai with no water is...

The next guy had a latte, 120.

I think that's degrees.

There's no longer 19,000 different beverages at Starbucks. There may be several million if you count outliers like these.

And why does it matter? Surely we could agree on, say, 1,000 different options that would be enough.

Nope. Never enough. Never enough because the selection is the equivalent of friendship, of recognition, of self worth. Having it your way is a power trip, and one that's well worth $4.

It's hard for me to imagine a business that couldn't offer the same to its best customers.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/20..._pump_chai.html

I work for starbucks... mostly for the free coffee. Last week while I was working on drive through I had a lady yell over the intercom that she would like a Mocha with 20 sugars. A Mocha is already sweet enough to drink without any sugar (I take about 9 sugars in my tall coffee, and a mocha is definately sweet enough for me). I asked her 5 times if that was what she really wanted. I don't think she had ever had one before, she said that was how many sugars she usually put in her coffee. I was waiting for her to take a drink of it, but she never did. So yeah, the point is, some people really like their sugar.