Applying the Reasonable Person Standard to Coffee

Imagine yourself, bleary-eyed, at about 7:30am, when, contrary to all reasonable human practices, you've already been up for about two hours, and somehow you find yourself standing at the entrance to the hospital, about to start your day. Or, perhaps, it is about 3:30 pm, lunch was a distant dream, and home seems even more distant.

You need that coffee.

You realise that coffee isn't the elixir-of-life, it is only the elixir-of-the-next-hour-or-so. But anything will do.

So, you trudge to the nearest coffee shop... or, if you have enough volition, you might search your brain to see which is the nearest cheapest coffee shop. Because, after all, you are a student, and by definition you are very poor.

"What would you like?" says the girl at the counter, in a painfully cheery tone.

You search your brain for the right words. What was it that I wanted? Um, the thing. Comes in a cup. Taste bitter-ish. Coffee. But that's not good enough! What do I usually say? Come on, she's starting to look at me funny...

"Regular-skinny-flat-white" you manage to mumble, the words blurring together. Flat white? Or latte? Oh well, too late now.

When the regular skinny flat white comes, of course, she charges you for much more than the price you expected, and you see why. It is huge. You look frantically around the counter, and you realise that "regular", to this coffee shop, actually meant "medium", and "medium" means very large. You should have told her you want the "small", if you want a "normal" size coffee... but it is all too late now. You take the coffee away, glad for anything. And you drink it all, because no poor medical student throws coffee away.

For the rest of the day, your hand shakes when you put needles into someone, you need to run to the toilet every few minutes, and your head feels distinctly antsy.

It is the opinion of the writer that "regular" ought to be regular. There should be a standardised sizing system for coffee. "Regular" means the small in some shops, but large in others... while still other shops name their smallest size coffee "grande"... it is very confusing, and I am usually already in a confused state when I call upon a coffee shop. All I want is a reasonable sized coffee to reasonably kick start my brain. If I had enough brain cells to figure out what "size" that corresponds to, then I wouldn't need to buy a coffee!

Thus, a law ought to be passed in parliament. The Reasonable Person standard already exists in law; it holds that: each person owes a duty to behave as a reasonable person would under the same or similar circumstances. It could be applied to coffee thus: the size of the regular sized coffee should be the size of what a reasonable person would order, under reasonable circumstances. If it doesn't make a lot of sense to you, don't worry, that's law for you.

Either way, something needs to be done!