What about the title of this page ... ?

Well, my real first name is Jörg or Joerg if you cannot find the ö on your keyboard or know how to type using key combinations. It is a German name and the -J- is pronounced as a -Y-. Anyway, I work as a programmer/researcher and, like all good or not so good programmers, I like coffee and espresso. When my work buddies and I go out for lunch we usually cap it off with a cup of Joe from Starbucks. (I am not the biggest fan of Starbucks because they really make money selling milk, but I will leave this to another post). So back to getting coffee at that Starbucks. After standing in line for a few minutes and being bombarded by a whole lot of displays that scream at you: "Please by whatever is displayed here, even though you only want a cup of coffee ...", it is finally my turn to put in my order. As part of that they generally want to know my name. Now, here is where it gets interesting, pronouncing my name the right way in English gives you no idea how to spell it. The correct pronounciation would sound something like saying Yirk. No, no, I know what you are thinking, sounds an awful lot like jerk, but I must disagree here. Back to Starbucks. So I spell my name for them and they write it on the cup which will eventually be picked up by the barista, who will prepare my Americano or coffee and then try to call my name. That's usually the time I am being called a jerk. Even more interesting, looking on the cup after I finally hold it in my hands, I see the weirdest names:

• jurich
• jourg
• yurk
• jorge
• joreg
• george
• gork
• borg
  

There is many more and the saddest part of this story is that I spelled my name for them, -j-, -o-, -e-, -r-, -g-. And what you see above is what I find on the cup. Now, I will leave it up to you to make a judgement what this says about Starbucks or the people who work there. But it provides me and my work buddies with tremendous entertainment to see what variation of my name they come up with.
In the future, expect more here about all kinds of stuff, not just buying coffee and spelling names.