label mania

I freely admit these days that I am addicted to coffee... not just any coffee in particular, but double-double's from Tim Hortons.  For those of you not lucky enough to live in Canada where this milk of the God's exists, that's coffee with two cream and two sugars (you can look it up, it's even in our dictionaries!)  Fortunately, I am also lucky enough to be able to afford said double-double pretty much every day of the week.  I also drink Starbucks, but it's more expensive, and quite inferior when it comes to coffee (except that Pike blend, I like that).  My clients however, are not always so lucky. 

Something I've noticed recently is the large number of my clients walking around with coffee cups from Tim Hortons.  Now often you here people panhandling who say "spare money for a cup of coffee"?  So I figured they were just actually buying coffee.  And seriously, with the way the coffee in the shelter tastes, I can totally, totally understand that.  To say the coffee in the shelter tastes bad, would be a serious, serious understatement... and since I've sampled the coffee at more then one shelter, I wouldn't be all that surprised if it tasted horrible pretty much everywhere... bleck.  

It came to my attention however that appearances are not always worth believing.  I discovered, that what many people are actually doing, is filling their cups with coffee from the shelter and reusing the same Tim Horton's cup over and over again.  Why would any one do this you ask?  Well, it actually makes a great deal of sense.  Having coffee from Tim's implies you have money.  Having money tends to imply that you're not homeless and that you are "worth something".  It's about the label and the brand name.  Just as kids like to sport the Nike shoes or whatever, these adults work on fitting in with society by carrying around their Tim Horton's coffee cups (which seriously, is a huge deal where I live).  

It's interesting when you think about it, the things people do to fit in...