For many of you that actually know me in real life, I work part-time at a trendy dessert shop that is Taiwanese-Vietnamese fusion right by campus. This store sells it all: macaron ice cream sandwiches, shaved snow, cotton candied drinks, and jar drinks. I’ve held this job since my freshman year, so that’s 2 years since my beginnings in the dessert shop customer service game. Within that time I have noticed something awfully peculiar as a dessert aficionado and an observant human being.
My store’s location (there are multiple) doesn't sell boba for contractual conflicts with the building’s owner (cough cough Irvine Company). However the other locations of the company do sell them, it’s just the one I work at that doesn't.
I would have customers come in, order a drink, and then demand why is there no boba in their “boba tea?” Now before I continue, I have to explain through my mundane explanation that my store’s location doesn't sell boba. “Yes, there are teas that would taste great with boba but no boba. I apologize. However, there are other alternatives you can choose from.” Then the eye-rolling individual would grab their drink away and walk out the store in critical disappointment.
The boba drink craze has boomed through out the SoCal area drastically that people automatically correlates boba to the “milk tea” drinks. So when they see an Asian-inspired dessert store, they would automatically assume that there IS boba in the drink because ALL milk teas have boba.
I would have customers that would confidently order drinks without asking for boba until they see the final product because they would assume we would add the nonexistent boba in there. The display of subtle laziness has gone too far so I am going to have to “*use my big words and use my [pictures]” for those people to actually understand the differences.
Boba: “The tapioca [that] looks like bubbles as they come up through the straw, thus the derivation, “boba.”’
Milk Tea: “Milk tea is a very sweet tea that is often used in Boba. Boba is a drink consisting of tea and balls of tapioca and honey.” (BTW: If you have figured out where I work, we don’t sell regular milk tea either)
If people are not able to learn something as subtle as the difference between the boba and the drink inspired by the Taiwanese culture in the 1980s, how are we as a culture, a nation, the human race supposed to understand the cultural differences? This article is not political in any sense, well I hope it isn’t, but it’s to evoke an humane exchange of learning and expanding the mind.
The issue lie in not only being able to educate oneself in different cultural settings, but for one to learn to ask questions, not in an rude manner, but to simply just ask. To relief curiosity, to learn more about a culture and to indulge in the beauty of it all, starting with a refreshing boba drink.
*SNL Reference: Melissa McCarthy- Sean Spicer
Sheetal Tadiparty
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