"What?s in a name? That which we call a Rose.

Hi, my name is Zubeir. Nice to meet you.

And if you're reading this then please introduce yourself :)

Why the formality? Well today, the popular coffee house Starbucks started asking (UK) customers their name and personalising their coffee cup by putting names on them. This is an attempt by the coffee giant to appear more friendly.

The baristas were certainly very friendly and approachable this morning but this could just have been a front for the new campaign, or am I being too cynical?

This approach is not new, the policy has been in force in the States for a while now but with some fairly negative consequences - shoddy spelling, miswritten names, etc. There are entire blogs dedicated to it. But I do understand where they're coming from. The baristas calls 'Latte' and five people think 'Is that mine?'

Views aside, I think it can only be a positive thing as long as it's followed through properly. There's nothing more annoying than a company initiative which is half-assed and falls flat on it's face without the proper engagement of it's staff. Yes, I'm speaking from experience ;)

By the way, I urge you to check out the third book in that pile - 'A Beautiful Lie'. It's written by my brother-in-law and he's paying me good money to say this (not really).

Minor post-processing - conversion to greyscale and addition of a little noise.