Comedian Paul Gale has come up with a hilarious explanation to why your generally friendly, well-educated, and cheerful neighborhood Starbucks barista can never seem to spell your name properly. Apparently, it is all part of a nefarious scheme to mess with you.
Gale lays it all out in a three minute video, littered with expletives, posted on his Youtube channel on Sept. 8. In just two days since it was first uploaded, it has been viewed over 4.5 million times and was even featured on major television networks such as NBC's The TODAY Show.
The video paints a picture of a passive-agressive barista who wants nothing more than to irritate and even disgust you by misspelling even the most common of names with a jumble of letters that resemble nothing like the original name.
"I'm deliberately misspelling your name to confuse and annoy you," Gale says in the video with a coy smile as he further explains that it is the highlight of his job and he has no intention of stopping.
This tiny act of spelling your name wrong, he says, will haunt you for the rest of your day, causing you to post photos on Instagram, Twitter, Vine, and other social media platforms to declare the ineptitude of your barista's spelling skills.
Which only gives him more victory points in his silent attempt to get into your head for the rest of your day.
Sometimes, he claims, he will spell your name correctly. Giving you a small sense of comfort, security, and even pride. But Gale says this is only part of his elaborate game and right when you feel safe, he will lead you down a path spiralling down into neurosis with an even more complex misspelling of your name when you return.
The Starbucks video is the first episode in Gale's Agitators series on his channel, Paul Gale Comedy. The episode was filmed at a cafe in Gale's neighborhood that was outfitted to resemble a Starbucks.
