If you don't have anything nice to say...

Check out the comments on this CBC story about the 'upscaling' of Tim Horton's.

Very few of them are at all positive. You would think, based on these comments, that Tim Horton's, far from being the most profitable quick service chain in the country, is instead about to go bankrupt.

As usual, there is no moderation in the negativity, either. Only a tiny minority of the comments say something to the effect of "if you don't like it, don't shop there". Over and over the coffee is referred to as 'swill' and the food as 'crap'. One-off horrible customer service stories are upvoted as if they are universal Tim Horton's policy.

Full disclosure: I like Tim Horton's. I love their coffee, which I can't quite recreate at home no matter what I do. I love their hot chocolate, which is far and away the best on the market. And their breakfast sandwiches are phenomenal. Yes, their donuts are not baked fresh anymore and of course the quality has suffered because of that; but for me Tim's has never been about the donuts.
Tim Horton's, like just about everywhere else, used to allow smoking in designated areas of their restaurants, as if you could somehow contain the effluvium from twenty cigarettes. Their Timbits had one flavour back then, as far as I was concerned: nicotine. By the time I had another donut from Tim Horton's, they had abolished smoking and gone to prefab pastry. Let me tell you, a pre-made donut free of yellow death tastes considerably better than a fresh donut that's been steeped in tar.

Is Tim Horton's perfect? Hell, no. There's actually a hefty lawsuit going on right now about those pre-made donuts. Seems they're actually more expensive to the franchisees than they were initially told. Down at store level, before Timmy's tries to upscale its decor, they might consider adding tills. The lineups can get ridiculous. And not that this will ever happen, but I'd have a whole lot of respect for the place if they got rid of their drive-throughs. It's not exactly health food they serve, but do you have to poison the environment when you buy it?

But upscaling is something that's going on industry-wide. McDonald's was the first to move on this, and Tim's is just playing catch-up. It's dangerous to ignore your competitors' innovations. Occasionally they'll flop, but can you really afford to take the risk?

If you hate Tim Horton's--and I know some readers of this blog that do--that's your prerogative. And of course you're free to bitch on any online forum you like about how tasteless their food is and how you wouldn't drink their coffee with a gun to your head. But do bear in mind that you're slagging the most popular quick-service chain in the country. There are millions of people who adore the place and are no less Canadian for doing so (and nor are you for despising it).

The same hatred exists in other areas. Music, for one. There's this group called Nickelback that, according to the intelligentsia, is the music industry equivalent of Tim Horton's: pre-fab rock with no musical redeeming quality whatsoever. Nickelback, like Tim's, is Canadian. And also like Tim's, they are insanely popular. They have sold almost as many albums as Tim's has cups of coffee. The people who hate Nickelback (and they are legion) never seem to account for this beyond mutteringly, darkly, that anything popular sucks by definition.
Punch in "why do people hate Nickelback" and one of the answers you'll get is "because they keep making songs that sound the same, and they play them over and over until they get stuck in your head." Call me naive, but I believe that makes their music pretty good. Isn't that what musicians aspire to? Writing a song that gets stuck in millions of heads and won't get out?

Pardon me, it's coffee time.