The seemingly terminal decline of Tim Hortons

[Richard White]

Unless you have a serious circulatory issue or substantially partake, addiction to coffee or caffeine won’t kill you, so if that’s your go to vice, you’re on the right path. Keep it up on the cigarette stoppage, good job.

Strange, I can drink 24 shots of espresso at once and not feel any more awake than before. I also do not get headaches from it.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Congrats. Keep it up. Addiction to smoking or other drugs will kill you otherwise. In 2018 my dad died from cigarette addiction at aged 69, in 2017 my mother died from alcohol addiction and I believe opiate pills at aged 67. As my dad said when telling my brother and I of his terminal cancer diagnosis, no one gets out of this alive. He was right, everybody dies, it’s inevitable, but you want to get your full nine innings.

I’m 48 now and I’ve never had an addiction because I hate them and the personal weaknesses and initial choices they represent, and this makes me much more a cold turkey person. If I think I’m drinking too much coffee I turn off the tap and it’s camomile tea for two weeks to prove it to myself.

Unless you have a serious circulatory issue or substantially partake, addiction to coffee or caffeine won’t kill you, so if that’s your go to vice, you’re on the right path. Keep it up on the cigarette stoppage, good job.

Cheers, mate.
Unfortunate and sad that both your parents died rather young but glad to hear that you took a good lesson in discipline from out of all that.

Quitting smoking cold turkey is easy. I dont know why some people have a hard time with it (then again, I quit meth like it was a light switch too, so maybe I just dont have the crackhead gene). I smoked for 15 years. Probably not heavily enough to be a true head (last few years between 5 and 15 a day except when drinking....that's um....no comment) Just stopped and haven't had a problem. Bonus: I can't drink alcohol now either because I'll want to smoke 3 pints in.

It's OK though, cutting out the two acutely toxic yet legal drugs for some mineral water and mushroom tea is a definite step up.
Caffeine...I drink tea, not coffee, 95% of the time and can go without whenever.

Anyway, I think I'll go from being a tobacco and Negroni connoisseur to snobbery on the mineral water circuit.

That's what Tim's need: mineral water.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Strange, I can drink 24 shots of espresso at once and not feel any more awake than before. I also do not get headaches from it.

Hmm....you're probably missing some enzyme or other and maybe aren't metabolising the caffeine properly.

If I drank that , I'd get palpitations and an anxiety attack.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Strange, I can drink 24 shots of espresso at once and not feel any more awake than before. I also do not get headaches from it.

Where you might get the headaches is without it. When I found myself drinking five or more cups of office coffee a day, mostly through procrastinations, I went hard cold turkey off all caffeine. Two days later headaches and inattention. Day three I was fine.

 

[Neutrino]

@SunriseChampion dude you're wild.

Re coffee addiction - at work in the morning, I trick myself by pouring a half mug. The next 2-3 are also halves. It's helped me greatly reduce my intake. I knew I had to do that the moment I signed at my current job for which I need to be up at 5. Thankfully next week is my last.

 

[SunriseChampion]

@SunriseChampion dude you're wild.

Re coffee addiction - at work in the morning, I trick myself by pouring a half mug. The next 2-3 are also halves. It's helped me greatly reduce my intake. I knew I had to do that the moment I signed at my current job for which I need to be up at 5. Thankfully next week is my last.

Nah....you should meet some of my friends. It's a bit high-functioning Hunter S. Thompson round here.

Next week is your last what? Coffee? 5am wake up? Day of work?

Or wait....all of the above?

 

[Neutrino]

5 am and work. Moving to a job closer to home and with a saner schedule.

I would not give up coffee.

 

[gabe]

Congrats. Keep it up. Addiction to smoking or other drugs will kill you otherwise. In 2018 my dad died from cigarette addiction at aged 69, in 2017 my mother died from alcohol addiction and I believe opiate pills at aged 67. As my dad said when telling my brother and I of his terminal cancer diagnosis, no one gets out of this alive. He was right, everybody dies, it’s inevitable, but you want to get your full nine innings.

I’m 48 now and I’ve never had an addiction because I hate them and the personal weaknesses and initial choices they represent, and this makes me much more a cold turkey person. If I think I’m drinking too much coffee I turn off the tap and it’s camomile tea for two weeks to prove it to myself.

Unless you have a serious circulatory issue or substantially partake, addiction to coffee or caffeine won’t kill you, so if that’s your go to vice, you’re on the right path. Keep it up on the cigarette stoppage, good job.

Food and Sugar addiction kills more people than any other drug. And going by the lineups at Tim Hortons and other restaurants that serve high sugar processed junk food i don't see that changing any time soon. I have lost far too many people recently to heart attacks, strokes, most of them were all over weight.

I love sugar too. I swear food/sugar addiction is the hardest to overcome. Over-consumption of sugar is just as bad as smoking, we have research to back that up. Canadian minister of health even says that! Yet our food is just loaded with sugar, and no one seems to be talking about the dangers of sugar (and fructose sucrose and all that other crap. Where is the warning labels on my box of timbits?

 

[gabe]

5 am and work. Moving to a job closer to home and with a saner schedule.

I would not give up coffee.

I can't give up caffeine. My BF and I spent a bloody fortune on our Jura coffee machine lol

 

[Towered]

Cheers, mate.
Unfortunate and sad that both your parents died rather young but glad to hear that you took a good lesson in discipline from out of all that.

Quitting smoking cold turkey is easy. I dont know why some people have a hard time with it (then again, I quit meth like it was a light switch too, so maybe I just dont have the crackhead gene). I smoked for 15 years. Probably not heavily enough to be a true head (last few years between 5 and 15 a day except when drinking....that's um....no comment) Just stopped and haven't had a problem. Bonus: I can't drink alcohol now either because I'll want to smoke 3 pints in.

It's OK though, cutting out the two acutely toxic yet legal drugs for some mineral water and mushroom tea is a definite step up.
Caffeine...I drink tea, not coffee, 95% of the time and can go without whenever.

Anyway, I think I'll go from being a tobacco and Negroni connoisseur to snobbery on the mineral water circuit.

That's what Tim's need: mineral water.

Are you on the spectrum?

 

[MisterF]

One of my favourite weekend things to do is to ride my old motorcycle into the countryside for a few hours and then find a coffee place. With their dodgy food and cramped, dirty restrooms (a good and large restroom is essential when you're wearing 30 lbs of leather, boots, helmet, etc.) I've now stopped going to Timmies, and instead look for a Starbucks (Uxbridge as one), there's more a more Starbucks opening in rural Ontario, perfect for a motorcycle stop.

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Or even better I used Yelp to find an independent cafe. I found this one https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Restaurant/River-Street-Cafe-1675812345968693/ in Sunderland, and highly recommend it. Cute town too.

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Some of the Enroute locations have Starbucks. "Getting off the beaten path" isn't what people normally do now; fast in-and-out. There are all sorts of mom-and pops" in towns along the way but you have to search them out. Back in the day when travel was slower, the 'Weber's of the day' travel break was a sit-down meal at the old Sundial in Orillia or Haugen's on Hwy 12 near Port Perry (although it is still popular).



Perhaps moreso in urban areas. Small towns are less discerning; coffee.

I'm not sure that people in small towns are necessarily less discerning when it comes to coffee. Independent coffee shops and bakeries are actually fairly common in small towns. Sure they're not ubiquitous, but lots of towns with no more than a couple thousand people have them, while larger towns often have several. They're usually on the historic main street while the local Tim's is on the outskirts relying on drive by traffic. For people travelling or commuting to work, Tim's is undeniably convenient (unless the lineup is out the door) while you have to seek out the indies on the main street.

It's not only Tim Hortons. The cafeteria where I work serves up food that's basically on the same level - bland and tasteless for the most part. But people rave about it. I'm sure that experience can be repeated thousands of times across the country, and this is what allows Tim Hortons to exist.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Are you on the spectrum?

Autism, no.
Rainbow, sort of.

The answer you're looking for is that I suffered from depression earlier in life and self-medicated and did self-therapy with CBT. All signs of depression with suicidal tendencies are fully gone now. Look, I even quit smoking because it would lead to a quicker death.
Part of the trick is beating down the ego and realising that the universe doesn't give a toss about your problems.
Is that spectrum?

What was in the water in 1985?

Anyway, @gabe brought up a good point re: the relatively toxic (yes, that's the correct term) food at Tim's. Why isn't toxic food held to the same warning standards as acutely toxic legal psychotropics? Eating at Tim's once a day probably has the same negative health outcomes as smoking five cigarettes and drinking two beers daily.

 

[SunriseChampion]

5 am and work. Moving to a job closer to home and with a saner schedule.

Good call!

 

[lenaitch]

I'm not sure that people in small towns are necessarily less discerning when it comes to coffee. Independent coffee shops and bakeries are actually fairly common in small towns. Sure they're not ubiquitous, but lots of towns with no more than a couple thousand people have them, while larger towns often have several. They're usually on the historic main street while the local Tim's is on the outskirts relying on drive by traffic. For people travelling or commuting to work, Tim's is undeniably convenient (unless the lineup is out the door) while you have to seek out the indies on the main street.

It's not only Tim Hortons. The cafeteria where I work serves up food that's basically on the same level - bland and tasteless for the most part. But people rave about it. I'm sure that experience can be repeated thousands of times across the country, and this is what allows Tim Hortons to exist.

Perhaps. The concept of "historic main street" to me conjures up a small town that caters to tourists, like Picton or Unionville. I was thinking more of small towns that still exist for the surrounding economy; the farmers, loggers, miners, etc. and where the main street is little more than it traditionally has been. You are correct, many do have bakeries, some mighty fine ones at that, and some might have some tables for customers, but often consist of not much more than a Bunn machine and the freshness often depends on how busy they are or how diligent the proprietors are.

In its beginnings, Tim's and the others were part of (or the reason for) a bit of a cultural change; the transition from a sit-down driving break to a grab-and-go. Traditional restaurants weren't always directly enroute, might have had questionable coffee when things were slow and might not have been thrilled with a customer taking up a table for just coffee. For a traveller unfamiliar with the area - particularly in the days before the Internet - they represented a known. I think McDonalds was the same; nothings spectacular but a known qauntity in terms of product, price and speed of service.

 

[PinkLucy]

The small town I lived in had no bakery, no indie shop, nothing. The local Chinese restaurant wasn't open mornings. When Tim's came to the next town over, there was much rejoicing because finally we were "civilized" (ok, so we already had a McD's which means we were already partially civilized). That was years ago. Today, the McD's is still there and thriving, there are now two Tim's and still no indies although a couple of them tried and failed -- small town Northern Ontario won't pay those prices and they don't want "fancy".