International Understanding

You may be aware that in Canada they largely use the metric system. In fact, on the menus at Starbucks, they note that a "tall" is 355 ml (not 12 ounces). Now, it turns out that standard Starbucks temperature on Y's lattes is Too Dang Hot, and so she often wants a "warm" latte which I normally ask at an American Starbucks as "120" or "130" degrees, Farenheit, doncha know.

At the Starbucks by the hotel in Vancouver, I wasn't sure what to do, so I tried the safe route: I asked for a "warm" soy latte for Y. Sadly, the guy at the register looked confused by this, so I quickly attempted to convert Y's temperature to Celsius, got something like 50 out, and asked for it to be "50 degrees". The guy sort of wrote "50°" on the cup, but he didn't really seem to happy about it. In fact, a second later, he came out and admitted that they used Farenheit there at the Starbucks.

So, I told him "120 degrees", he scratched out the 50 and wrote 120 instead, and Y got a coffee of suitable temperature in the end.