Squagel is not a word

This morning, as usual, I stopped by Cosi for a coffee and a “squagel” with cinnamon-raisin “s’bread.” Why the wacky, wacky names for ordinary food? Well, you see, Cosi (formerly Xando) is DC’s own hometown Starbucks-like coffee chain. A term of its corporate charter is, therefore, that it use nonintuitive and vaguely Italian terms for its food and beverage offerings.

The worst thing about trendy little coffee chains is that they not only come up with cutesy names for their specialties and their sizes of coffee, but that they also dehumanize their clientele by forcing them to use said cutesy terminology in order to be served. The woman in front of me in line this morning, poor innocent soul, ordered a "venti" latte. The Cosi clerk then said, "what does venti mean?" "Oh, sorry," said the customer, "I meant gigante." It’s like she was speaking another language. Starbucksese.