Last week amidst Starbucks’ Q3 earnings call and the unveiling of its unmarked 15th Avenue Coffee shop concept, we received a number of call from institutional investors and reporters all trying to get some insight into what was happening with the business and its position relative to the specialty coffee industry.

Hawaii Standard Time is rarely the most convenient to conduct business on the U.S. Mainland and sometimes leads to interesting complications, like this one. It was about 9:00 AM HST last Monday or Tuesday and I had just gotten to the eye in the morning hurricane of urgent email and phone messages, so I decided that it was a good time to break and shower. Were it not for the client phone call I was expecting, I never would have taken my Blackberry along for the ride.

Not 10 seconds after dispensing the shampoo, the phone rang and I answered: “This is Will Sterrett at newsradio 740 in Houston,” the deep voice boomed “can you come on the air for a few comments about Starbucks?”

Um, Houston, we have a problem.

My responses in the resulting interview were a little repetitive, but it’s the best that I could come up with as the soap suds dripped down into my eyes:

Andrew Hetzel on KTRH

…still, it gets the point across. I’m just happy that it wasn’t a television interview and so are you.