awkward

Medium Drinks

This is an awkward trend that always fascinated me.  Lets bring the term “medium” into discussion for a moment.  We’ll look at it in terms of what it may be describing.

Temperature:  Not too hot, not too cold.  
Steak:  Not too rare, not too cooked.
Size:  Not too large, not too small.

These definitions suggest that something which is medium would fall somewhere between two extremes.  A middle value, if you will.  We all basically conform to this rule.  Everything does, really.  So why have restaurants taken the liberty of ignoring this rule of nature?  Marketing, I suspect, but it really upsets me.

“How much is a small drink?”
“Well, the medium is $1.50.”
“No, the small.”
“The medium is the small.”
“So what’s the medium size?”
“Large.”

I think they briefly tackled this in a Seinfeld episode, but I think my point is valid.  Using inaccurate terms to describe sizes is less useful than just resorting to gibberish.  Take Starbucks, for example.  Tall, grande, and venti don’t suggest anything about the size of the drink, but at least they don’t confuse you (beyond learning the lingo).

What if a restaurant mish-mashed all of its items and not just the sizes?  What if they called their drinks “hamburgers?”  Try to wrap your mind around that one.  

If this was difficult to follow, I apologize, but this is the nature of beverages.

Ice Cream Elevator

Here’s something amusing that happened the other day.  Everyone at the office decided to go down and buy some ice cream from one of the lazy trucks that had parked nearby.  I haven’t gotten ice cream from a truck in years.  It was amazing.  Soft-serve with sprinkles and everything.

About nine of us went down that day.  On our return trip in the elevator, we stopped prematurely to pick up someone also heading “up.”  The doors open and that poor man is presented with an elevator holding nine gentlemen licking icecream cones.  It was vulgar, in a way.

I sometimes wonder about that man.  He probably went home after work, sat down, and thought very hard about his life.  Something can be said about being the only person in an elevator who isn’t licking an ice cream cone.  If I was him, I’d be afraid that my life went down a path I never intended.  When ice cream is involved, it’s always best to be the one eating it.  If you’re willingly leading a life that involves abstaining from ice cream, there’s something completely wrong.

I feel bad about that guy.  I never intended on ruining his perceptions on reality, but part of me feels like that’s what we did.

Subway

Let’s just assume for a moment that you’re a reasonably groomed, fairly clean individual who doesn’t have anything strange — like a third eye or something off-putting like that.  You take the subway to and from work each day.  Okay, cool.

Subway seating is a very exhausting thing.  You want to avoid sitting directly next to someone but it’s perfectly excusable to do so if there’s no where else to sit.  Okay, we get it.  It’s kind of an unspoken rule.

Some of us prefer to stand if given the choice of that or sitting directly next to another person without an empty buffer.  A three-seated bench comfortably holds two people in this day and age.

But what about when you manage to find a seat at an empty three-seated bench on the subway?  You’re like the king of that bench.  The train stops at the next stop and the doors open.  A handful of people enter the car and you have no problem with one of them sharing your bench with you.  You’ve even prepared for the possibility that two people may sit.

But no one does.

Here you are, sitting alone on the subway, while other passengers gleefully stand, gripping the poles for dear life instead of taking a seat near you.  What gives, right?  Why doesn’t anyone want to sit with you?

It’s a strange phenomenon.  Allow its occurrences to brighten your day with its absurdity.  Someone stood just to avoid sitting with you.