I’ve not been in Cambridge for a few weeks now. I ended up in the city for 50 mins and several things irritated me.

1. Apple Store

I go to buy a hard drive. They have various models and, as usual, the staff in Apple stores have pretty much zero product knowledge. Choice is a G-RAID desktop drive or a G-RAID mini drive. I opt for the desktop drive as it’s double the capacity for the same money. Get back home and realise that the desktop version doesn’t support RAID-1 1 (i.e. mirror the data on the drives). I mean why the hell didn’t the guy point out the differences to me as I was discussing it ? They only have about 20 or so hardware products in the bloody shop. If I worked there I’d know these things. At the end of the day it’s my own fault, but it would really help if people had basic product knowledge.

2. Starbucks

Okay, the (not so) Grand Arcade Starbucks has to be one of the worst Starbucks in the planet. Thankfully there wasn’t a queue a half a mile long for a change – not helped by the fact that the English level of the source and synch of the queue is usually poor and that all the ‘special’ people in Cambridge can’t have something straight off the menu but need variations. Anyways, there’s a girl (who’s not a local) in front of me who orders something pretty normal. I place my order (Venti Cappuccino to go). We both walk up to the collection point. Now, forgive me but the whole basis of a queue and the way that the cups are passed to the Barista is that a simple pipeline is formed. The girl in fronts drink comes quickly, followed by a Grande Cappuccino in a sit-in cup. Thinking that my order has been taken wrongly, I simply remark to the guy “oh, I have a Venti take-away”. Now, in any normal place he’d reply “yep, that’s just coming”. No, this is Cambridge so he replies “well it’s obviously not yours then”. I call him an asshole.