I’m currently in Seattle for training at a company that stocks high-end coffee in the break room. While I was back there getting myself a soda, I overheard the following conversation:
“Has anyone made any fresh coffee this morning?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I brew my own roast at my desk.”
I had to stop and contemplate how certain conditions have led to some people developing these types of over-specialized tastes.
Seattle is known for it’s coffee, for some reason, and apparently many of the natives take that to the point where even a freshly-delivered Seattle “micro-roast” isn’t good enough for their delicate coffee-drinking palate.
It’s not just Seattle and coffee; it’s people all over of a certain socio-economic strata who “absolutely can’t survive without” something that a few years ago would have been considered extravagant if not absurd, like 300-thread-count sheets, Egyptian cotton towels, or Aveda hair products.
There are two major factors at work here, as I see it:
- People spend so much more of their lives in discomfort, the creature comforts become that much more important. There is a lot of pressure, especially on young professionals, to live that Crate and Barrel/Restoration Hardware lifestyle, and that isn’t cheap. A lot of the time that means a fifty-hour work week and, if you live in a place like the Bay Area, a multiple-hour-per-day commute. When you’re constantly tired and stressed-out and inconvenienced, not getting that Starbucks Frappucino in the morning can send you over the edge. I know, because I’ve been there on one or two occasions.
- People are so obsessed with urbanity. Anyone who claims to have such a refined taste can essentially claim a type of aristocracy. This is especially important in situations where you have to constantly let on that you’re “executive material”.
or
- People are showing off their social conscience. If you only eat free-range eggs, fair-trade coffee, and organic produce, you can effectively work off your middle-class guilt and show everyone what a superior person you are in one broad gesture.
This is not so hard to achieve, as long as you never leave your downtown apartment. But throw these people into any kind of less-than-big-city environment, and they starve, or freak out.
I figure we’re ripe for alien invasion at this point.
7:46:58 AM 
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