Iced

famous examples of this in my family include “lava mountain” for volcano and “lamp hat” for lamp shade

Is your family bilingual or multilingual? I find that I do that type of translation between languages and it gets lost in translation.
- no, just forgetful lol

My mom once said "flat bowls" when referring to plates.

I would expect some vodka in a drink like that.

Alternate take: I'll start ordering whiskey smoothies. And yes on the protein powder.

Username checks out!
My stomach hurts reading that.

I might have the opposite problem that she does. Somehow I ended up being a bartender even though I've never touched alcohol in my life, in fact I despise alcohol. When highly-experienced bar patrons would rattle off their requests to me I would give them a blank stare and request them to repeat themselves slowly but talk to me like I'm a 5-year old. Thankfully they obliged and we got through that rough year one minute at a time. Sometimes I even invited the customers to come behind the bar and make their own damn drinks. That was a fun year. Not doing that job ever again.

Considering it is a career that requires certification to do, I find myself doubting that you just suddenly found yourself being a bartender with no intentional desire to be one. Care to share more details to flesh out the story?
- I was stranded in a town in the middle of nowhere Nevada, the kind of town that only has a post office, one restaurant bar, and a motel. I was stranded because while I was traveling, my retirement direct deposits suddenly stopped coming in.
  
  So the lady who owns all the motel and the restaurant she hired me the first day as a dishwasher, the second day as cleaning motel rooms, then the other housekeeper told her I was too pretty for this and that I should be a bartender. So on the third day the boss started training me as a bartender. I did it and was grateful for the money but I hated every minute of it.
  
  according to state law you are correct I should have taken a test and gotten certified but no one ever required that of me, and I didn't realize that was even a thing until one of my friends moved to Reno and had to take a test to be a bartender. But no one ever made me do that. There is no government oversight in that little town in the middle of nowhere except
  
  One day two representatives from the FDA came in and spent a couple hours with our chef and found no violations except they told him to wear latex gloves, and that was all the govt oversight I ever witnessed out there.
- Certification to be a bartender? Where at? I worked in the restaurant business for a decent amount of time when I was younger. The restaurant I worked at had a training regime for bartenders so they would learn how to pour accurately and learn the recipes for a ton of drinks, but it wasn't mandated by the government. Front of house staff from several establishments in the area would hang out and our restaurants were far more lax.
- There was a time not that long ago when you needed nothing but hands and to be of age to be a bartender..even then it wasn't necessary.
- Permanently Deleted

unironically cool as hell

I asked for coffee neat last week. I was too tired to think about saying coffee, black. Yes… I needed coffee to order the coffee.

It works the other way too.

I went to Starbucks once (while probably hungover) and asked for a coffee. Employee said what size? I said "medium is fine". She started at me like a deer gazing into headlights for a minute and said "we only have demi, short, tall, venti, and grande".

Like seriously,...

"The fuckin middle one."

Shaken, not stirred

I literally did this at my workplace, ordered as J. Bond. The look on our barista's face was priceless.

My wife hates that I forgot what chicken nuggets are and called them 'meat dots'. Of course I don't call them anything else now.

Like dippin dots, but made of meat

This is going to be how I order iced coffee from now on.

I don't get it.

I think the implication is that the customer is drinking alcohol frequently lately because the lady ordered in the way you would order many alcoholic beverages with ice.
- Your understanding and articulation of the joke is correct.
Cause the English is poor. Replace "and so" with "and also" and it makes more sense.
- "and so" is perfectly valid as a conjunction for implying causation. "Thus" would be a synonym. It fits better than "and also" which doesn't imply causation and so isn't the right word.
  
  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/so#dictionary-entry-2
- Thanks! Haha, I get it now.
Someone didn't know the Starbucks secret code so they deserved to be mocked, apparently.
- It's not that they didn't know Starbucks secret code ("iced" is a common term to use for putting ice in any drink). It's that they used alcohol code instead ("on the rocks" is a common term to use for putting ice in alcohol).
- Asking for a drink to be iced is the least Starbucks thing in the world

May I present you with "dirt-smoke".

A caramel macchiato? What is this madness? Must taste like a boxing match in your mouth.

E: Oh, I see. Americans have recipes for "macchiato lattes" and flavoured macchiatos seem to have way too much milk to be a macchiato, which is normally a damn powerful espresso. I think if I ordered that here, they'd confirm confused, and my face would implode. But I'll try later today.

Yeah, it's weird but hear me out. What they're referring to is a latte macchiato, which is the opposite of the traditional espresso machiatto you're familiar with. The word macchiato translates as "marked". So an espresso machiatto is an espresso that is marked (with milk), and a latte macchiato is milk with only a marking of espresso. Confusing if you've only heard of one of them, but it does make sense. A lot of Americans are only familiar with the latte macchiato, and major chain shops like Starbucks don't even know what an espresso macchiato is.
Europe does it right. My ex wife would order either macchiato and cappuccino so she could keep awake on our trips. She’d order them and also add 2-3 things of sugar. I would just enjoy my cafe or espresso as is, depending on where we were.

Our last trip we were in Italy for 2 months, she stopped at Conad and found the American section, grabbed a bottle of chocolate syrup so she could make her own monstrosities. While not the reason for the divorce, this was a big problem for her back home. I do not miss the tons of ultra processed foods in my pantry.

“Hey Luigi! Bowl of Spaghetti?!”

“Just spaghetti on the rocks.”

Especially as you're working in a shoe store

*and also.

Man that hurt my head to figure that one out 😂

I think they meant "and therefore", as in cause and effect.
- and thus
  
  Not enough people use thus. It's a good word.
- Or I took it as, "and in such a manner", like in "And in so choosing..."
Nah, "and so" as "therefore". Not sure how official is this expression, maybe not American or maybe not even English (UK).... But I have heard it several times for sure.
- I'm American and I understood it without noticing. It doesn't look unusual at all to me.
- It just wrecks my head to interpret it that way lol