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I want my plain bagel!

By Ami Eden · August 16, 2010

The New York Post reports on Lynne Rosenthal, an English professor who was bounced from a Starbucks in Manhattan who made a scene over the store's insistence that she verbally decline a spread for her bagel:

... Rosenthal, who is in her early 60s, asked for a toasted multigrain bagel -- and became enraged when the barista at the franchise, on Columbus Avenue at 86th Street, followed up by inquiring, "Do you want butter or cheese?"

"I just wanted a multigrain bagel," Rosenthal told The Post. "I refused to say 'without butter or cheese.' When you go to Burger King, you don't have to list the six things you don't want.

"Linguistically, it's stupid, and I'm a stickler for correct English."

Rosenthal admitted she had run into trouble before for refusing to employ the chain's stilted lexicon -- balking at ordering a "tall" or a "venti" from the menu or specifying "no whip."

Instead, she insists on making a pest of herself by ordering a "small" or "large" cup of joe.

Yesterday's breakfast-bagel tussle heated up when the barista told the prickly prof that he wouldn't serve her unless she specified whether she wanted a schmear of butter or cheese -- or neither.

"I yelled, 'I want my multigrain bagel!' " Rosenthal said. ...

Read the full story.