Tim Hortons

Trauma Junkie over at Surviving RT School asked me the following question: "I've never heard of Tim Hortons. Is that like Starbucks?"

No, Tim Hortons is not like Starbucks. Don't talk shit like that if you're ever up here in Canada. You're gonna get hurt real bad, if you say something like that up here, unless of course you're in a Starbucks. If you're in a Starbucks the sniveling weasels who frequent such a place, will think that you are "bad ass". You will become a legend. They will speak of you often, always in a whisper, when they think it's safe. They will wonder if you're still alive and what ever happened to your body.


The difference between Tim Hortons and Starbucks (in no particular order):

1. Line ups. There always seems to be a line up at Tim Hortons. Do you regularly see 20-30 people standing in line at Starbucks? In Canada, people go to Starbucks when the line up is too long at Tim Hortons. When they do this, they feel ashamed and hope that none of their friends see them. They also feel dirty. They feel dirty because they are.
2. No stupid questions. If you go to a Tim Hortons and say "large-double-double" at the counter, they give you your coffee just the way you like it. They put in the cream. They put in the sugar. They stir it up real good. They give you your coffee. They don't ask you any stupid questions. What's the deal with Starbucks and their stupid names for coffee cup sizes anyway?
3. They actually make your coffee for you. Starbucks pours black coffee into a cup and makes you go to some stupid little counter, where some stupid idiot's always in your way, so that you can put the milk and sugar in yourself.
4. The rules. There are rules when you're waiting in line at Tim Hortons. If you break the rules, you're going to get hurt by the other people in the line. There will be no witnesses and the security camera is defective. The ambulance will find you in a Starbucks parking lot, at the other end of the city.
5. The people. People who go to Tim Hortons aren't sniveling weasels. They don't ask for a half-caf-triple-mocca-frappa-whatever, unless they're a regular and making fun of Starbucks.
6. Pretentions. The pretentious people who work at Starbucks think that they're something special. I guess that's where people with advanced degrees in Philosophy end up working. If you work at Tim Hortons, your job is to make coffee, lots of it and to keep the line moving. If you're a Tim Hortons employee and start to think that you're something special, you get shipped off to the Tim Hortons in Kandahar. People in the line up at the Kandahar Tim Hortons have automatic weapons. If you get uppity at the Tim Hortons in Kandahar, there will be no witnesses, the security camera is defective and you were an enemy combatant.
7. Cardboard insulator thingys. Tim Hortons doesn't have those stupid little cardboard insulator thingys, that you put a coffee cup into, to protect your hands from the hot coffee cup. Those things are for sniveling weasels. You can find them at Starbucks.
8. Ice Cap. Tim Hortons has a cold coffee drink that doesn't taste like shit. Everyone calls it an Ice Cap. I think that it was once called an Iced Capasomethingorother but I'm not sure.
9. Starbucks sucks.
10. Tim Hortons doesn't suck.

A soldier in front of the Kandahar Tim Hortons, holding a box of donuts, three ice caps and a large-double-double: