Lit Prof stars in "Institutionalized" reboot.

Via FOC Lime Spider, news of a fellow fesser getting into trouble at Starbucks:

Starbucks' strange vernacular finally drove a customer nuts. Lynne Rosenthal, a college English professor from Manhattan, said three cops forcibly ejected her from an Upper West Side Starbucks yesterday morning after she got into a dispute with a counterperson -- make that barista -- for refusing to place her order by the coffee chain's rules. Rosenthal, who is in her early 60s, asked for a toasted multigrain bagel -- and became enraged when the barista at the franchise, on Columbus Avenue at 86th Street, followed up by inquiring, "Do you want butter or cheese?" "I just wanted a multigrain bagel," Rosenthal told The Post. "I refused to say 'without butter or cheese.' When you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want. "Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a stickler for correct English." Rosenthal admitted she had run into trouble before for refusing to employ the chain's stilted lexicon -- balking at ordering a "tall" or a "venti" from the menu or specifying "no whip."Instead, she insists on making a pest of herself by ordering a "small" or "large" cup of joe. Yesterday's breakfast-bagel tussle heated up when the barista told the prickly prof that he wouldn't serve her unless she specified whether she wanted a schmear of butter or cheese -- or neither. "I yelled, 'I want my multigrain bagel!' " Rosenthal said. "The barista said, 'You're not going to get anything unless you say butter or cheese!' " But Rosenthal, on principle, refused to back down. "I didn't even want the bagel anymore," she said.

I'll be a guild traitor here and throw my sympathies behind the baristae. The Cod has similarly refused to master the Venti, etc patois, but if you say "small, med, large," in my experience, they will translate that when they call out the order. If one is ordering a single bagel from a coffee place, butter or cream cheese is a reasonable question to ask, and a different matter entirely from the silly venti... business. It's like ordering a martini and refusing to answer questions regarding your olive/twist of lemon preference. 

FWIW, the Post has "'It was very humiliating to be thrown out, and all I did was ask for a bagel,' recalled Rosenthal, who said she holds a Ph.D. from Columbia." She does, in fact, titled "THE CHILD INFORMED: ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE SOCIALIZATION OF THE CHILD IN NINETEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH CHILDREN'S LITERATURE" 

She does not, however, show up in the MLA directory, and research idle googling does not indicate just where it is that she professes. More important, the "all I wanted was a ____" leading to repercussions, a) it's like Suicidal Tendencies came back in the person of a sixtysomething academic. And if you were wondering, it's further proof that August is not a concept Guiteau Monday can even comprehend.

Comments

[Marco]

So, she should have said, "neither butter nor cheese", non? or just "neither"? If Starbuckeroos had, say, 7 bagel condiment choices, there would have one neither and 6 nor's. This can get very confusing, especially when one hasn't had any morning coffee yet. Sure glad I don't go to Starbux for anything and never will.

[Rose's Lime]

Either the article or the professor sounds spurious to me. What learned person would order a bagel from Starbucks if you were on the West Side of Manhattan?

A better question than "butter or cheese" would be, "are you aware that Zabars is just 4 blocks south of here?"

[Mr. Sunshine]

Some papers like whipping nothing more than English fessers, (well, maybe stretching the definition of torture on the rack) but I too break with the guild to say that MLA needs more anger management sessions, especially this time of year.

She doesn't appear to be teaching anywhere... so she's off the ranch. Is it fair to have "English Professor" in all these headlines? Kinda like "Texas Rangers President Invades Iraq" or "MBAs Destroy Global Economy," no?

[walt235]

[url=http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7rgXJCY_AsoJ:lca.lehman.cuny.edu/lehman/telephone/default.asp%3FR1%3DR%26R2%3DS+professor+Lynne+Rosenthal+contact+information&cd=33&hl=en&ct=clnk]Telephone & E-mail Directory, Lehman college[/url]

ROSENTHAL, LYNNE
EXTENSION 8528
ADJUNCT ASSISTANT PROFESSOR-ENGLISH
[email][email protected][/email]

Lehman College
250 Bedford Park Boulevard West
Bronx, NY 10468
1-877-LEHMAN-1