STEPHEN KRUISER:
“…Our friends on the left, alas, aren’t so carefree and fun-loving. We’ve discussed the permanently aggrieved nature of the modern progressives before. As I am often accused of never having anything nice to say about the other side, let me try something new here: I frequently find myself marveling at their ability to continue to surprise me, especially with their ability to concoct outrage and/or resentment in almost any given situation.
Take, for example, the young women’s rights writer for The Guardian, who finds the Starbucks policy of asking for people’s names a trigger for resentment.
Never mind that she doesn’t even go so Starbucks, which she readily admits at the top of the article. One doesn’t need something as mundane as firsthand experience to take offense to things that aren’t really offensive in the first place:
I do not drink the coffee in Starbucks because it doesn’t taste good. But even if I did, I wouldn’t, for another reason: my name. Because if you’re a half-Turkish, half-Iranian second-generation immigrant like I am, it means you have a name that few can pronounce, and which even your parents can’t agree how to spell. (My father spells it with a Sh, my mother with an Ş. In their defence, they don’t agree on much.)
When your own parents can’t agree on the spelling of your name, and beloved co-workers continue to get it wrong after years of gentle admonishing – well, I’d rather not have to go through the rigmarole of painstakingly spelling it out to a barista.
My daughter has an unusual name — it’s Polish — and she loves Starbucks. Never once have they gotten her name right and never once has she been offended or traumatized by the experience.
Because she was raised by sane people…”