I need to rant for a minute about Starbucks.

I generally like working in this particular location in Manhattan: Many subway lines are nearby, there’s ample options for lunch break, and Central Park is two blocks away. Not a bad place to spend 9+ hours a day, five days a week.

The biggest problem, though, concerns my choice of coffee purveyors in the morning. Every day I climb the stairs out of the subway, stop to grab a large cup of coffee (our office coffee is terrible), and head into the office. The total distance between the subway station and the office is about half a block, which limits my coffee options unless I go at least a block out of my way.

I don’t particularly care for Starbucks coffee, but unfortunately they seem to be my only convenient option. There are no less than four (count ’em) Starbucks locations within a block of the office, and one of them lies directly on my path between the subway and the office. This is the one I stop at every morning, if only for the sake of convenience, and every morning it’s the same routine:

1. Open door to this Starbucks, and curse under my breath when I see how long the line is. The end of the line is usually right at the doorway, sometimes even extending onto the sidewalk outside.

2. Roll my eyes at the insipid music they have playing. It’s always the same stale collection of crowd-pleasing, over-played oldies or, at this time of the year, hokey holiday music that they put into rotation sometime during the last inning of the World Series.

3. Look at what’s going on behind the counter. There’s always 6-8 people working there, and they’re yelling at each other, bumping into each other, tripping over each other, and/or socializing with each other. You’d think with that many people working there, the line of customers would be moving rapidly, but instead it creeps along slowly, as the dark green sea of humanity behind the counter froths with confusion and dysfunction.

4. As I slowly make my way to the front of the line, I have no less than three different Starbucks employees yell at me from across the room, asking me what my order is. Nothing complicated, just a large coffee with room for cream. Each time I give them my order, it gets barked to another employee, who relays the information to somebody else, who is usually busy talking to somebody else and not paying attention. Then yet another employee will ask me what my order is, and the cycle repeats itself. Bear in mind that this isn’t happening just to me, but to every other customer in line as well.

5. At some point I finally get to the cashier, who asks me what I’m having. Just as I begin to answer, she turns her head and begins talking to another employee behind her, ignoring me. She then asks me to repeat my order, which now is the fifth time I’ve told a Starbucks employee that I’d like a large coffee with room for cream. She then barks my order to the people behind her, and the whole cycle described in Step 4 repeats itself. I pay the cashier and wait for my coffee.

6. I then wait with the other customers who are still waiting on their own coffee orders. And I wait, and wait some more. You’d think that there would be five large cups of coffee rapidly coming my way, but no, all the yelling and confusion in Steps 4 and 5 appears to have been in vain.

7. After a few minutes of waiting, I inquire as to the status of my order, and usually a large coffee with room for cream will somehow appear in front of me. Meanwhile, there’s always a steady pile of miscellaneous other coffee drinks that I didn’t order being placed on the counter in front of me. Apparently no other customers ordered them either, because nobody is claiming them despite repeated announcements.

That’s on a good day, if they didn’t get my order wrong.

8. I get to the condiment bar which, nine times out of ten, has been depleted of creamer and/or sweetener with nary a refill in sight. Assuming I haven’t given up the will to live at this point, I flag down an employee, who, after a long wait, will hastily shove some creamer and/or sweetener in my general direction.

9. I finally make my escape out the door, back to the relative calm and relaxation of Midtown Manhattan at the peak of morning rush hour. I marvel at how such a badly-managed operation can somehow stay in business, until I remember that I just paid almost $3 for a cup of coffee that probably cost about a nickel wholesale.

Finally, after going through this ordeal on a near-daily basis for almost six months, I write a long treatise about how I’d give my left testicle for a better coffee option — anything other than Starbucks — within a half-block of my office.