When one goes into, say, your Starbucks, or even, dare I say, your Timothy’s, one is greeted with a brand phalanx.  Everything from the music you hear to the layout of the tables to the presentation of the napkins is a fastidiously orchestrated fugue that belabours the brand ethos.  When you order a drink– a mixture of  water, sugar, and cream, with some flavour additives — you specify many of its characteristics in a way that is characteristically Starbucks, a delivery so cliché that jokes about it are more so– says the Ironic GenX Commentarian: “I’ll have a double-tall no-foam extra-hot milk-from-teets starburst lemonshower eggnog candycane merangue-whipped triple-dipped chocolate cappucino.”  Why, that’s as unique as you are!

I, on the other hand, drink tea.  Without sugar.  A bag of leaves dunked in a bucket of hot water.  If you go into a forest, many puddles satisfy this criteria.  So, I’m understandably crestfallen to make my order at an SBucks.  I’m belittled.  Everyone else orders a wonderworld: I order a dustbin.  This is fine.

The problem, is at Tim Hortons.  They are by no means a SBucks-grade brand machine.  However, I must make this point: when I arrive at the counter, and place my order for an Earl Grey Tea– a black tea flavoured with Bergamot, an amazing substance all its own, far more so than sugar or cream–the attendant always, always, responds to my dismissal of milk and sugar by referring to my tea as plain.  The order recap: “Okay, you’d like a breakfast sandwich and a plain tea.” (”breakfast sandwich” added only for rhetorical cadence).

A plain tea?  Notwithstanding this being my unique morning beverage, the same one that SBucks presents with blazing fanfare, Tim Hortons, this is your beverage too.  Reminding me how plain this $1.50 tea is — when I can buy a bag of it for 9 cents — is not just the branding equivalent of smelling like urine, it’s tasting like it too.

And is about a 5% reduction in Morning Quality.