Coffee houses appear to be popping up everywhere with menu items from regular coffee to cappuccino (not that nasty flavored water crap found in gas stations) and con panna. Most people don’t know what these names mean or other terminology found floating in the air along with the smells of chocolate, coffee and cream, so I am here to break it all down for you, the average “joe.”First off, you have to know what a barista is. Very simply, a barista is the person who serves or prepares the coffee. The word barista comes from the Italian term for “server.” If you have ever visited a coffee shop and seen the little jar they have out, I highly recommend that you drop something in for them. Not because I work as one, but because they are your “non-alcoholic bartender who serves additive caffeine all day,” Caidy Carter, a barista with Jazzman’s, said.

Okay, so now we walk up and order a drink from the barista, but now the question of what to order comes up. If you want to be traditional, by far, the most common coffee beverage served at Jazzman’s Caf in the student union, and probably every other coffee shop, is the pre-brewed flavored house blends, which cost $1.18 with tax. “I buy a tall Henry’s Blend a couple times a day. I am here from 8:30 in the morning until 2 o’clock in the afternoon. So with the 45-minute commute and the amount I’m here, I really don’t have a choice but to purchase coffee because thermoses don’t last,” Robert Russell, a general studies sophomore from Morgan City, said.

If you decide to buy a house blend, you must face the dilemma of deciding what goes into it. There is a heated debate on what the term “black” when referring to coffee means. Sure, it designates the color and everyone agrees that it cannot contain any milk or half and half, but what about sweeteners or liquid flavorings?

On one side is my stepfather, who being a member of the “older generation” of coffee drinkers, likes his coffee with nothing in it ,and it has to be almost thick enough to stand a spoon up in. He is the type of person that always has a pot of fresh coffee on because he constantly drinks it all day. Blaise Bergeil, professor of marketing, for those who know him and join him for coffee on a regular basis, know that he has his coffee and that is it; no thoughts of milk or sugar for this man. Let’s refer to them and their kind as group A.

Group B, myself included, enjoys coffee flavored coffee. We are the minimalists of the coffee drinking world. Okay, so we add a hint of sweetener to our coffee, but is that really wrong? How many people add a little salt to their food when they eat?

Next, we must speak of group C. These are your more liberal coffee drinkers. They enjoy milk, sugar and a flavoring or two or some variety of sorts. While this is not entirely wrong, it just seems to walk too close on the line of manageability, when all of a sudden, too much of one addition pushes them over into the dreaded group D.

These are the people that coffee shops market to, with their highly sweetened, flavored milk drinks that contain enough coffee to barely fill a thimble. Not to mention, the price of some of these drinks make you wonder if the people who constantly have them are selling drugs or prostituting themselves just to be able to afford them.

Group A makes up your “true blacks.” Group B has the pleasure of being “black with an added bonus.” Group C is “the moderates” with not too much of any one addition. Finally there is Group D, which is made up of the coffee world’s social outcast as they ask for more chocolate or caramel in the cup and less coffee.

Back to deciding what to order; if the coffee shop is not too busy, ask the barista to tell you what some of the unknown drinks are; unfortunately they can vary place to place. If the barista doesn’t know, leave.

Size does matter in the coffee world. Well, sort of. Cup sizes –no, not that type, you sick twisted individual. I mean the size of the coffee cup — vary from place to place with almost everyone using a different name for small, medium and large. Jazzman’s tall is their small at about 12 to 16 ounces. But, The Coffee Table’s small is only 8 ounces. However, The Coffee Table has a larger sized frozen drink. With that said, I guess you are just going to have to shop around until you feel satisfied.

In closing, remember satisfaction is a number of aspects grouped together. While having good coffee is a must, it must be served in a timely fashion, be exactly what you ordered, and most importantly of all — since we can brew our own coffee if we really wanted to– it must be served with a smile, much like that of my dear friend Carter at Jazzman’s.