Saturday 26 October 2013

A coffee, please....

I guess the owner of this bar was tired of  his "rude" customers

You can see this sign as you enter a particular Italian bar. For those of you who doesn't speak Italian - this is what it says:


A (cup of) coffee    3 euro
A (cup of) coffee, please    2 euro
Good morning, can you make me a cup of coffee, please    1 euro


This is kind of a funny way to get the customers to be nicer to the barista when ordering their coffee..... I guess most people prefer to ask nicely for a cup of coffee instead of having to pay three times as much as the normal price.

However, I have to say I find it kind of strange, seeing a sign like this here in Italy where you hear "prego", "per favore" and "grazie" everywhere you go. You'll hear it shouted at the markets, it lingers in the corners of the shops and it bounces off the walls in the piazzas. So why would this particular owner feel that he has to educate his customers? It beats me..

I'm not sure how much I would have to pay for my coffee if I ordered it from that bar. Surely not 3 euro, but 1 or 2 euros depending on how much in a hurry I am at the time. If the bar is full or I have to catch a train my coffee would cost me 2 euros. (It might be a Norwegian "thing" - not wanting to waste anyone's time with "unneccessary" words......) But if I'm not in a hurry and the bar is almost empty I would get away with 1 euro.

How much would you have to pay for your coffee? 



3 comments:

Laruchka said...

A full 3 euros! I used to ask really politely but then I realised I was the only person doing this, so I put it down to being too English. I do say grazie though!

H. said...

I would try to go for the 1 euro, and that is what I pay in little Bolsena town - grazie mille

A Foreigner in Italy said...

Where I live we pay only 80 cent for a coffee... And that's yet another reason to remember the per-favore part....

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