Service with a smile?

A Sunday afternoon trip to Leeds Castle followed by a visit to their Costa-franchised coffee shop. "Proud to serve Costa" was their claim. To be accurate, the signs should have read "supremely indifferent to serve Costa" or "can't be arsed to be civil serving Costa". Rather perversely, I quite enjoy seeing people not buying into corporate hogwash. Long may they retain their distain for empty slogans.

Whilst on the subject of coffee chains, is it just me who is irritated by the Starbucks slogan “We proudly serve Starbucks coffee”? The use of that adverb annoys me. Not just because it’s grammatically rather clumsy, but because it also attaches the pride to the service and not the Starbucks coffee – which I don’t think is the intention. Why can't they employ literate copywriters? You know what? I think I'll boycott their coffee shops in protest. Ooops, as a non-coffee drinker, I do that already.