Dear Starbucks Coffee

Dear Starbucks,

The side of your cup has little boxes that beg to be checked. They say, Decaf, Shots, Syrup, Milk, Custom, Drink.

My question centers around the Drink box. Shouldn't this box be checked all of the time? This could lead to an exestential crisis that not even Jean Paul Sarte could solve. If you do not check the Drink box, you are admitting that it is something other than a drink, and if it is no longer a drink, I shouldn't be drinking it. I took my chances today, and made it a drink by the very act of drinking, even though it wasn't technically a drink because you failed to label it as such. How are we to function without sign/symbol relationships? Our world would become unitelligible.

I would recommend two things to solve this problem and avert the paradigm shift which must inevitably flow from your sloppy labeling techniques. First, you could have a check mark printed inside the Drink box. That way you are always admitting that that which goes inside the cup is a drink. Unless, of course you are putting things in the cup which aren't technically drinks. For instance, let's assume that you run out of plates and one of your baristas decides to place a muffin inside the cup. In that case, it should definitely not be defined as a drink. So maybe the first option, printing a check mark on all the cups in the drink box, would not completely insure that everything that goes inside the cup is a drink because, you would have to make certain that a rogue barista never put anything in the cup which isn't a drink. I don't think you can assure the public of that.

The second option is to totally remove the Drink box, and let the public decide whether that which is in the cup is potable or not. However, by doing this, you relinquish some of your previously held powers to define. It's your call.

One more thing, the Custom box is slightly irrelevant. Anyhing that isn't your regular, is by definition, custom. Therfore, you might wan't to remove the Custom box and replace it with a "Regular" box. This will give us a more precise idea of what we are actually drinking. Thank You.

Yours Very Truly,
Man Who Finds Philosophical Conundrums in all things.

P.S. You could be extremely precise and put the following box: Drink, unless something that isn't a drink is in your cup, in which case it is not a drink. If you cannot determine whether it is a drink or not, don't drink it because if it isn't a drink, and you drink it, you have taken it upon yourself to label it as a drink, and therefore have abnegated its original existence, thus causing a pardigm shift for which we cannot be responsible.