I first ask the question if they use sweetened or unsweetened soya, since sweetened tastes like plastic. I get a vague stare and told to use the sugar shaker. I explain again. "No, do you have unsweetened? Because the sweetened milk makes the coffee taste really bad if there's enough of it." Another stare and someone finally someone hands me the carton to take a look at. Oh well. It's sweetened after all =/ I know that if I only have a little of it in, it won't taste too bad, and I can make it less bitter by adding some sugar (although I really don't like doing that, it doesn't take the edge off and just makes it sweet if it has lots of sugar in).
I attempt to order a white coffee made with soya milk. They ask if I mean a latte. Nope. Cuppacino? Nope, sorry. I'm looking at the board trying to work out what it's called and am completely lost. "Put a little bit of milk in the cup, and then add some black coffee to it, so it's white coffee made with soya milk?" They finally understand and ring it up. I know it's kind of my fault for not knowing what exactly a white coffee is called in Starbuckese but it would be nice to have some flexibility.
Get back to the office, open up my coffee cup, and ugh! It appears they have added the milk last. Why is this a problem, you might ask? Well, if you look on the side of most soy milk cartons, it states to add first to the cup before adding hot liquids to it. The milk seperates and goes icky if you don't. On the unsweetened one I use at home, I get a weird oily film covering the top, which is kind of nasty but it can be removed easily. This one though? It's gone lumpy. It looks like the milk has gone off, with thousands of tiny beads of white sitting on top of some black coffee. My cup looks like it has spores. :(
Nice.
Edit: Because it seems to be causing a bit of a silly argument over "wtf is this girl on" or whatever, I'll clarify a little. When I first went in I asked for "normal coffee with a little bit of soy milk in", but when they kept asking me what I meant by that I said, "a white coffee". It was then that this was understood. ♥