This Is What Happens When You Go To a Shop Instead Of the Coffee Cart Guy
So they switched my coffee cart guy again. One morning he was there, the next it was a completely different guy of indeterminate Arab-Eastern European-Hispanic origin (I’m really bad at pegging people’s ethnicity unless its really obvious, for example I initially thought Andrew “Dice” (don’t forget the quotes) Clay was Italian until I found out he was Jewish, though I suppose he could be Italian and Jewish because he’s from New York and growing up I thought everyone who wasn’t me was Italian or Jewish but that’s just the top of the South Shore of Staten Island in the 1970’s after all close parenthesis or this won’t work in Excel).
So it’s a different coffee guy for the last few days, one who doesn’t know large milk two sugars and a lightly buttered everything bagel before the words come out of my mouth. For some reason the cart itself still has above average coffee for a cart so I will continue to patronize the same location if not the same man. However Friday is a two cup day as you may recall or if you don’t it doesn’t matter anyway because it is whether you recall it or not. I usually go to a different cart for my Friday second cup because I don’t want to walk up to the first guy and have him try to give me another bagel out of habit because all I want is another cup of coffee not another bagel thank you very much and have a nice weekend. Today I instead decided to patronize the organic hippie breakfast- lunch place that opened in my building instead for reasons that are unclear to me even to this very moment.
Dumb move.
First of all, it’s got one of those self service coffee islands. I’m fine with that actually, unless I run into the sort of people I ran into today. You know the kind. This particular breed of nitwit is almost always a woman, sorry to say ladies (not that there are any women among my fictive readers) and she is the one who is always at the head of the line at the deli or the supermarket and in the process of paying for say, a sandwich she has managed to spread her purse, umbrella (even on a sunny day) briefcase, cell phone, wallet and date planner across the entire counter in a quest to get that 13 cents so she doesn’t get more change in her purse and upon realizing that she can only come up with 8 cents insists on making a five dollar purchase with her Visa check card. Yeah, that one. Only I ran into two. And their behavior at the coffee island is no better as they take a cup, move laterally to and fro in front of you examining the label on every container as you’re trying to get to your pot of choice and if they do happen to finally decide something (probably decaf hazelnut vegan organic free-trade shade grown picked by disabled squirrel monkeys in a rehab program) they proceed to lay out their purse, umbrella (even on a sunny day) briefcase, cell phone, wallet and date planner across the entire coffee island blocking you from every single goddamn pot while they pour their coffee and start searching for the fat free organically grown soy milk and Splenda.
Having survived that little instance in part by simply reaching around the young lady and proceeding to fill my cup as she still fiddled with the artificial sweetener and commenting “Boy, they should design these so more the one person at a time can get their coffee, huh?” By which I really meant “Please get the fuck out of my way so I can get back to my dimly lit closet to continue eking out a living.” I proceeded to the cashier where another real doll was in front of me, this one fumbling for her credit card to pay for an egg white sandwich. I’m reasonably sure I saw her pull out five different mascaras, three packets of tissues and a mace keychain that also had a tag reading “I heart Yorkies” before finding her wallet at the bottom of her messenger-bag sized “purse” but I can’t be certain. Upon reaching the register I was charged the absurd sum of two dollars and forty-nine cents for a cup of coffee that costs $1.25 at a cart located mere steps from the entrance to this establishment. Oh, and did I mention the tip jar next to the register, in a place where I just poured my own god-damned coffee?
“The only upside to this adventure” I thought as I walked back to the elevator bank “is that I have material for a post, and Grebbie always tells me my posts about ordinary everyday annoyances are the funniest ones.” Then I remembered that Grebbie ain’t reading this or anything anymore and my stomach dropped out through the bottom of my shoes.
So it’s a different coffee guy for the last few days, one who doesn’t know large milk two sugars and a lightly buttered everything bagel before the words come out of my mouth. For some reason the cart itself still has above average coffee for a cart so I will continue to patronize the same location if not the same man. However Friday is a two cup day as you may recall or if you don’t it doesn’t matter anyway because it is whether you recall it or not. I usually go to a different cart for my Friday second cup because I don’t want to walk up to the first guy and have him try to give me another bagel out of habit because all I want is another cup of coffee not another bagel thank you very much and have a nice weekend. Today I instead decided to patronize the organic hippie breakfast- lunch place that opened in my building instead for reasons that are unclear to me even to this very moment.
Dumb move.
First of all, it’s got one of those self service coffee islands. I’m fine with that actually, unless I run into the sort of people I ran into today. You know the kind. This particular breed of nitwit is almost always a woman, sorry to say ladies (not that there are any women among my fictive readers) and she is the one who is always at the head of the line at the deli or the supermarket and in the process of paying for say, a sandwich she has managed to spread her purse, umbrella (even on a sunny day) briefcase, cell phone, wallet and date planner across the entire counter in a quest to get that 13 cents so she doesn’t get more change in her purse and upon realizing that she can only come up with 8 cents insists on making a five dollar purchase with her Visa check card. Yeah, that one. Only I ran into two. And their behavior at the coffee island is no better as they take a cup, move laterally to and fro in front of you examining the label on every container as you’re trying to get to your pot of choice and if they do happen to finally decide something (probably decaf hazelnut vegan organic free-trade shade grown picked by disabled squirrel monkeys in a rehab program) they proceed to lay out their purse, umbrella (even on a sunny day) briefcase, cell phone, wallet and date planner across the entire coffee island blocking you from every single goddamn pot while they pour their coffee and start searching for the fat free organically grown soy milk and Splenda.
Having survived that little instance in part by simply reaching around the young lady and proceeding to fill my cup as she still fiddled with the artificial sweetener and commenting “Boy, they should design these so more the one person at a time can get their coffee, huh?” By which I really meant “Please get the fuck out of my way so I can get back to my dimly lit closet to continue eking out a living.” I proceeded to the cashier where another real doll was in front of me, this one fumbling for her credit card to pay for an egg white sandwich. I’m reasonably sure I saw her pull out five different mascaras, three packets of tissues and a mace keychain that also had a tag reading “I heart Yorkies” before finding her wallet at the bottom of her messenger-bag sized “purse” but I can’t be certain. Upon reaching the register I was charged the absurd sum of two dollars and forty-nine cents for a cup of coffee that costs $1.25 at a cart located mere steps from the entrance to this establishment. Oh, and did I mention the tip jar next to the register, in a place where I just poured my own god-damned coffee?
“The only upside to this adventure” I thought as I walked back to the elevator bank “is that I have material for a post, and Grebbie always tells me my posts about ordinary everyday annoyances are the funniest ones.” Then I remembered that Grebbie ain’t reading this or anything anymore and my stomach dropped out through the bottom of my shoes.
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