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.

(NY Post)

Beside the obvious in-bad-faith fatuity of her claims, I believe Rosenthal made a philosophical indiscretion in getting herself expelled from Starbucks for refusing to specify bagel toppings and drink size in Starbucks’ generally accepted terms. For instance, you don’t go into another country and yell at people for not speaking your idea of correct English, right? Now, America above many countries is extremely ghettoized—socially, economically, culturally—and we’re rendered even more discrete by our places of commerce.

I don’t have to fill out a slip to deposit checks at the ATM, but I do at the bank window. At Burger King, there are obvious ordering conventions, which Rosenthal apparently follows. One wonders if she ever argues about the transcendental validity of the sizes Small, Medium, and Large when they apply to french fry sizes versus soft drink sizes. I’m fairly sure they don’t scale in proportion. That nominal solecism is even worse than Starbucks’ perceived one since the words ‘small’ through ‘large’ have real world connotations that could likely confuse someone adhering strictly to Burger King-ese. Those smalls aren’t very small!

But moreover, meaning is contextual and fluid. As is practice. One would expect Rosenthal to be run over while shouting, stomping, and pointing excitedly at the illuminated WALK sign.