If you live in a heavily LDS area in Utah and drink coffee, have you ever noticed people treat you differently at work or out in public? Disapproving glances? Passive aggressive comments?

Apparently it's an issue at my job (98% of the staff is Mormon) and it's really ridiculous. People getting so uptight about a drink.

Yes.

I lived in Provo for almost a year (1991).
There was a 7-11 about 2 blocks from my apartment, so almost every morning I'd walk over there to get a big cup o' joe (both for the coffee and the exercise).

I got tons of dirty looks (oddly enough, even from the cashier at 7-11!). I heard lots of sniffly-hmph type noises from other folks on my walk there/back. I had one older guy, whose house I passed every morning, stare at me out of his window with a disapproving "you filthy coffee-drinking sinner" look every day.

In the winter, I'd drive over instead of walk (Provo winters are cold!). I got pulled over by cops (who were sitting in the 7-11 parking lot) three times in a month, because I had the devil's brew as I got into my car. Every time I got pulled over, I also got asked if I was LDS by the cops. By the third time, I'm sure they knew me, so I don't know why they asked. Once they issued me a "fixit" for a tail-light bulb out. The other two times, they just looked at my DL & insurance, then sent me on my way after insuring my car didn't smell like pot or something.

One of the many factors that drove me out of Provo. It's no place for a non-mo to live :(

While I'm filling up a 20 oz cup with coffee at the convenience store, I'll see Mormons I know filling up their 48 - 72 oz. mugs with Coke, Mountain Dew, and other caffeinated sodas. Or they're buying a big can of Energy Drink. Sometimes, I get glares and stares from them, while I'm filling up my cup of coffee. It's such utter nonsense and hypocrisy!

I pay no mind to what others think. Maybe since my never Mo grandmother was a lifelong Utahn for her adult life, and she drank coffee. It didn't bother her at all, and she was very hip for a granny.

Her friends weren't LDS either. She had her own social circle, and paid no heed to what Mormons thought of her. She was able to be her own person in the heart of the Morridor. She was a woman of valor and substance, and a role model for her family. :)

They are dummies.
Caffeine isn't illegal anymore.
It's HOT DRINKS.
Like the ones they have daily-
Post um

Yes!

At the Salt Lake Roasting Company

I get treated very well
Everyone does.

I treat everybody, well, sometimes. Probably because I drink coffee. I want a LONG life and I want a GOOD one. A good cup of coffee. It's to live - not die - for. Not frum.

M@t

Ridiculous. The look they give is called envy.

But I must say, I was rather surprised at the long line-ups at the Starbucks on the main strip in St. George. And quite a mix of people, too.

(Next door, at Carl jr’s, when it was discovered I was a tourist, I was egged on by a very proud TBM Utah family to try the famous Utah fry sauce. They even waited for me to taste it while they watched and waited. Weird, but it was a little charming.)

What exactly *is* the main strip in St. George?

There's Bluff Street. Sunset. And St. George Blvd. Which pretty much converge on each other. It's like one big business strip.

Where is this Starbucks you favor? :-)

I wrote badly.

The Starbucks I visited was surrounded by hotels, restaurants and shopping just off of the 15 (main strip). Red Cliff drive, I think.

Thanks. I'll look for it next time I'm able to visit. :)

Got it. Right at the tip of Red Cliffs Drive, and foot of St George Blvd.

Tankoo. That is where the Red Cliffs Outlet Mall is, I think?

"Weird, but it was a little charming."

Nope...just weird. Par for the course w/Utahns.

Utah's contribution to the Culinary Arts:
Fry Sauce
Chunks of veggies in Jello
Funeral Potatoes.

I love the irony that Heinz is going to start making Fry Sauce for the whole country, but call it Maychup....

nonmo_1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Weird, but it was a little charming."
>
> Nope...just weird. Par for the course w/Utahns.


Heh. Ya, I hear you. But local weirdness sometimes has its charms when a tourist.


My new wife is never-mo. She found the St. George Temple quaint, peaceful and not without charm. We sat on a bench on the grounds and I explained to her what all these nice looking people were going to do inside the building, and I told her about the tithing and interview they had subjected themselves to earn the privilege of doing those things in the Temple. She doesn’t quite believe me. PayLayAle? But if true, she says, decidedly not charming.


Mormon ketchup going national...that’s a little weird right there.

No. The Mormons I work with don't care what I drink and I don't care what they drink .

I remember when I joined, everyone drank Mountain Dew or root beer. One of the root beer brands had caffeine, so some avoided that. There was a difference between sprite and 7-up, can’t remember.
(One they used in their ice cream punch)
They also drank plenty of hot chocolate and apple cider ( hot drinks).
It was very confusing to me

I never got the coffee habit, I drink lemonade in summers, hot choc on very cold winter days.

at a restaurant, I order OJ, even tho it's ridiculously expensive there.

OJ was my "Mormon" coffee when I was TBM.

Nowadays it's a default breakfast drink in lieu of coffee or tea on some mornings. It's energizing and refreshing although I occasionally crave a cup of brew or tea.

Daughter spent a school year teaching in France. There it is customary to drink a bowl of hot cocoa for breakfast.

"If you live in a heavily LDS area in Utah and drink coffee, have you ever noticed people treat you differently at work or out in public? Disapproving glances? Passive aggressive comments?"

Oh Yeah! Oh Hell Yeah! In any other part of the country coffee is as American as Mom, Baseball, and Apple Pie. Only in Utah is it considered really "evil" and "unworthy".

Too bad the Mormons don't know what most Americans really think of their BOM, Polygamist roots, and Holy Underwear.

Cartoon caption I saw back in the 1970s (I don't think it was one of Steve's, but could have been):
In Utah, you have more social standing if you rob gas stations for a living than if you drink coffee in public."

It's better now, but that's not saying a lot. Plenty of coffee shops in SLC.

So here is the approach I take when drinking coffee in Utah. I carefully cradle the cup with both hands while staring at it with great admiration and slowly bringing it towards my nose to fully appreciate the incredible aroma. After savoring each sip I let out a barely audible ahhhh! Do I get treated differently? Tough to say but people sure seem to pay attention.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2018 11:48PM by steve benson.

I treat coffee very good
I want it to come back

LOLOLOLOL.

:)

Thanks Amyjo

The coffee-drinking thing has really changed in Utah. It's gone from dirty looks to restaurant wait-staff being proud and smug about the fact that they don't know how to serve coffee and none's made, but maybe we can dig out a pot to brew some, etc., to really changing. I think Starbucks is responsible, because Starbucks is seen as cool, and keep-up-with-the-Jones' Mormons aren't going to be left behind. Especially because--caffeine!

Coffee shops are springing up everywhere--even in the UVU library. Starbucks serves the non-coffee steamers or whatever, so everyone can carry around a Starbucks cup and no one has got to know what's in it. The more upper-class Mormons are just putting coffee in. They still apologize for it, but that's the beginning of the end. Even if the worker-drone Mormons at the office are still tsk, tsking about coffee, it's only because they don't rank high enough to get the memo. One day soon, it'll be, "Coffee? We never had a problem with that. That's just folklore," and everyone will have to put on their whiplash neckbrace (again), and move on.

No. The Mormons don't care what I drink.

Even the morMons mourning the morning pull out the coffee for me.

Ahh-

M@t

Oh yeah. I was a teacher anddrank coffee in my classroom. One kid's mother said needef to move him away from my desk because the coffee was damaging hos health. Bwahahaha.

I didn't drink coffee but my non-Mormon roommate did. The Mormon landlord actually had it in the rental contract that we couldn't drink coffee in the apartment. I told my roommate I didn't mind coffee drinking but I didn't want to get evicted if she had a party and served alcohol even though it didn't bother me. She said I was the only Mormon she could stand to have as a roommate because I wasn't a pain in the rear. And she followed my request.

Mormons don't drink hot drinks in public.

They don't appear to relax.

Everybody else is relaxing, having a hot or cold drink, letting their mind wander (without a leash), smoking a tobacco or cannabis cigarette, but not the Mormons.

They are so worried they'll make a mistake, sin, mess up, or think something wrong, that they rarely, if ever, dream, wonder or think.

Coffee? NO! It might open up worlds I'm afraid exist.

Ahhh-

M@t

I lived and worked in the Morridor of Idaho as a young adult, and cleaned a junior high in a school district of my hometown for a couple of years before moving away.

My morning routine was to wash out the coffee cups and mugs of the school teachers who worked there during the day, and left them overnight for me to clean in the morning. I was the first one to arrive. I also set up the coffee percolator each morning for the first batch of coffee, fresh and ready to go for when the teachers and admins arrived.

In a heavily populated Mormon community, why then oh why were there so many coffee cups for me to wash each and every single morning?

Did it help that my boss who was a BIC TBM was also a coffee gulping employee of the same school district? He loved his coffee as much as those school teachers did. Only the most diehard TBM of us, me included at the time, did not imbibe of the morning brew.

I'd like to say they were "the good old days." But they really weren't all that good. Just innocence and lost youth.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2018 12:06PM by Amyjo.

at Smith's in Heber City (where I am presently located). My theory: Mormons love sweet, pricey foo-foo drinks that may or may not contain caffeine. It makes them feel naughty and worldlyish. I feel smug and superior that my venti latte only takes 2 seconds to order.

Mormons also apparently like iced latte with a variety of flavors, because at Kneaders they usually stop to confirm that I want mine hot and with no added flavor. The one time they didn't ask, I got something gross that I guessed was pumpkin spice.

Kneaders has most of the same foo-foo espresso drinks as Starbucks, but only one size ... grande? Not venti. So I'm looking forward to the big new Starbucks that's going up between Carl's Jr. and Panda Express, which looks like it will have a drive-thru. I expect the wait will rival that of any Starbucks anywhere.

Meanwhile, the Maverik has a good selection of normal coffee, light to dark.

Beyond that, I work mostly virtual and don't hang around any Mormons other than my mom, who's as kooky as ever and even more Mormon than I thought before I moved back to Utah. I stayed with her for a few weeks when I first arrived and was disappointed to learn that she's developed fear and loathing of the evil hot bean water. She said my coffee smelled bad--not like Grandma used to make. It made her want to barf.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/02/2018 05:26PM by munchybotazv2.

Coffee is an acquired taste. And apparently scent. You'd think coffee is improved over the years, rather than diminished in terms of it's quality. Maybe your mom has an acquired bias called Mormonism? (Just a hunch.)

Plus I've learned not to assume that my mother is telling the truth. ;)

Which is not to say it's not possible that it really did make her want to barf. The brainwashing is that powerful. But I feel like my mom has mostly done it to herself in the last 10 years. She just really wants it to be true.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2018 01:58PM by munchybotazv2.

I tried to buy coffee at Lagoon a few years ago, but only one vendor stand sold it, and it was horrible.

Mormons make hypocrites out of themselves with all of their self-imposed 'rules'. I thought they were supposed to avoid even 'the appearance of evil'....which most certainly would include carrying around a Starbucks drink (even if it is only a hot chocolate).

I live in CA, but my crazy TBM sister and I went to Starbucks together one time to get their buy one, get one half price deal (or whatever it was). I asked her if she wanted a salted caramel mocha and she said, no make it a salted caramel hot chocolate. I said, why not just get decaf? No way. She is so brainwashed that she won't even try the drink as intended, but with the decaf option. When I ordered it her way for her in the drive-through (salted caramel hot chocolate) the barista thought I was nuts and didn't understand. LOL I'm sure it was just a super sugary disgusting hot chocolate. Mine was fully leaded with the coffee to balance out the sweet.

(Cussing) just say, "what the hell do you want from me a secret handshake or a death oath, jesus people." say that for your boy the badass.