The Coffee Choice Commando and Microwave Time
I stepped off the bus Monday morning onto the east side of 6th avenue just north of the block where my usual coffee cart sits. Normally the bus stops at the corner a full block north of the cart and I cross the street there and then walk back one block south to get my coffee and bagel. Some mornings the crowd of buses on that section of 6th is such that the driver will discharge all of us a block short of the stop rather than wait until the buses in front of him clear out. Monday was one such morning.
The current coffee cart guy had gotten used to my routine and had on the occasions where I de-bused directly east of his cart and had to wait for the light to change before I traveled west to his cart he had my coffee and bagel bagged and waiting by the time I crossed the street. I found this really annoying because I sometimes order and extra-large coffee instead of a large and his spotting me and putting everything together before I even got to his cart destroyed any opportunity for a choice. To combat this on mornings where I am dropped off south of the normal stop I now walk to the corner one block north of his cart, cross 6th avenue and then walk back south to his cart staying as close to the building that filled the block as possible so he can’t see me until I was a couple steps from his cart. Think of me as the Coffee Choice Commando.
I followed this routine Monday morning and was disappointed to see that once again by some mysterious alignment of the stars or other circumstance I had a new coffee cart guy. I thought perhaps that he was a fill-in (even coffee cart guys take time off) but he was there again today. I asked for an extra-large coffee today and he said “no sir, I only have large, I bring extra-large tomorrow” which seems to me to indicate he may be permanent. I wonder if he’ll start anticipating my desires and if I’ll have to start sneaking around to avoid being given his choice of coffee size and not mine. My last coffee cart guy told me he was from Parsippany. Maybe he got a local cart out there? Do they have coffee carts in Parsippany? I have never been to Parsippany so I don’t know, all I can tell you is that Parsippany is an easy word to type on the QWERTY keyboard.
My normal transaction time with the coffee cart guy is probably about a minute on those mornings where I successfully evade detection and actually get to his window to place my order before he guesses what size coffee I want. That minute is relatively painless, usually there’s some small talk about the weather or other miscellany. That’s how I found out my ex-coffee cart guy was from Parsippany. This is in contrast with the sometimes very, very painful minutes you can spend in the modern American office. For example, one of the longest minutes you will EVER spend, friends, is that minute that begins when someone you absolutely can’t stand walks into the break room while you’re microwaving your lunch and you still have that last minute to go. You are trapped like you are trapped in no other office situation. The elevator you say? Oh c’mon, that’s when you do the old snap your fingers – “I forgot something” move and head back down the hall out of sight toward your office and wait two minutes until the coast is clear and then head back to the lobby. The bathroom? No, a lot of folks don’t like chatting in the can and you can just go into a stall and close the door. Most people won’t hang around outside the door to continue a conversation.
In that last minute at the microwave in the break room though, there’s nowhere to hide. You have to stand there and suck it up. Either engage in some inanity about the weather or what you’re having for lunch or just stand in silent mutual hatred. That last option is what I often choose when this one particularly evil woman comes in to get her Lean Cuisine out of the freezer while I’m still nuking my tasty home-made food. I will admit that I sometimes hit the switch 15 or 30 seconds early just to get out of there; slightly under-warmed food is better than having to spend an extra half-minute that feels like a half-hour in her presence. With other folks the auto-pilot conversation about the weather usually carries one through these difficult minutes, though if you still have say 90 seconds on the clock when the other person walks in you have to resort to the five day forecast. What's an auto-pilot conversation? That's what I call those chats you have with someone purely to keep the old wheels of decorum lubricated. The ones that you can just mouth some words and the other person says something equally innocuous and you can move on because you've each feigned interest in the other without expending any mental energy. In other words, 90% of the interactions we all have with each other.
The break room sometimes presents an even trickier scenario. One you can't escape from via the auto-pilot conversation. Sometimes you walk into the break room and there’s food in the microwave that has finished heating but nobody is in sight to pick it up. What do you do then? Sometimes I take it out and nuke mine, escape and put the abandoned meal back in the microwave. Sometimes when I try that I don’t escape in time and the person returns to pick up their lunch I quickly ask them “Is this yours?” pointing to the food on the counter, “It was there when I came in”. Hey, the way I figure it is if you’re going to abandon your food while it’s heating you take your chances. There are a lot of employees on this floor and only two microwaves. People should be considerate, dammit. Those seconds ticking down on the microwave until you can escape are pure agony, though. It’s like the most excruciating sports event you ever saw but with even larger, real life consequences.
Modern office work is filled with pitfalls and hazards make no mistake about it my friends. You have to be a master of deception just to have breakfast and lunch.
The current coffee cart guy had gotten used to my routine and had on the occasions where I de-bused directly east of his cart and had to wait for the light to change before I traveled west to his cart he had my coffee and bagel bagged and waiting by the time I crossed the street. I found this really annoying because I sometimes order and extra-large coffee instead of a large and his spotting me and putting everything together before I even got to his cart destroyed any opportunity for a choice. To combat this on mornings where I am dropped off south of the normal stop I now walk to the corner one block north of his cart, cross 6th avenue and then walk back south to his cart staying as close to the building that filled the block as possible so he can’t see me until I was a couple steps from his cart. Think of me as the Coffee Choice Commando.
I followed this routine Monday morning and was disappointed to see that once again by some mysterious alignment of the stars or other circumstance I had a new coffee cart guy. I thought perhaps that he was a fill-in (even coffee cart guys take time off) but he was there again today. I asked for an extra-large coffee today and he said “no sir, I only have large, I bring extra-large tomorrow” which seems to me to indicate he may be permanent. I wonder if he’ll start anticipating my desires and if I’ll have to start sneaking around to avoid being given his choice of coffee size and not mine. My last coffee cart guy told me he was from Parsippany. Maybe he got a local cart out there? Do they have coffee carts in Parsippany? I have never been to Parsippany so I don’t know, all I can tell you is that Parsippany is an easy word to type on the QWERTY keyboard.
My normal transaction time with the coffee cart guy is probably about a minute on those mornings where I successfully evade detection and actually get to his window to place my order before he guesses what size coffee I want. That minute is relatively painless, usually there’s some small talk about the weather or other miscellany. That’s how I found out my ex-coffee cart guy was from Parsippany. This is in contrast with the sometimes very, very painful minutes you can spend in the modern American office. For example, one of the longest minutes you will EVER spend, friends, is that minute that begins when someone you absolutely can’t stand walks into the break room while you’re microwaving your lunch and you still have that last minute to go. You are trapped like you are trapped in no other office situation. The elevator you say? Oh c’mon, that’s when you do the old snap your fingers – “I forgot something” move and head back down the hall out of sight toward your office and wait two minutes until the coast is clear and then head back to the lobby. The bathroom? No, a lot of folks don’t like chatting in the can and you can just go into a stall and close the door. Most people won’t hang around outside the door to continue a conversation.
In that last minute at the microwave in the break room though, there’s nowhere to hide. You have to stand there and suck it up. Either engage in some inanity about the weather or what you’re having for lunch or just stand in silent mutual hatred. That last option is what I often choose when this one particularly evil woman comes in to get her Lean Cuisine out of the freezer while I’m still nuking my tasty home-made food. I will admit that I sometimes hit the switch 15 or 30 seconds early just to get out of there; slightly under-warmed food is better than having to spend an extra half-minute that feels like a half-hour in her presence. With other folks the auto-pilot conversation about the weather usually carries one through these difficult minutes, though if you still have say 90 seconds on the clock when the other person walks in you have to resort to the five day forecast. What's an auto-pilot conversation? That's what I call those chats you have with someone purely to keep the old wheels of decorum lubricated. The ones that you can just mouth some words and the other person says something equally innocuous and you can move on because you've each feigned interest in the other without expending any mental energy. In other words, 90% of the interactions we all have with each other.
The break room sometimes presents an even trickier scenario. One you can't escape from via the auto-pilot conversation. Sometimes you walk into the break room and there’s food in the microwave that has finished heating but nobody is in sight to pick it up. What do you do then? Sometimes I take it out and nuke mine, escape and put the abandoned meal back in the microwave. Sometimes when I try that I don’t escape in time and the person returns to pick up their lunch I quickly ask them “Is this yours?” pointing to the food on the counter, “It was there when I came in”. Hey, the way I figure it is if you’re going to abandon your food while it’s heating you take your chances. There are a lot of employees on this floor and only two microwaves. People should be considerate, dammit. Those seconds ticking down on the microwave until you can escape are pure agony, though. It’s like the most excruciating sports event you ever saw but with even larger, real life consequences.
Modern office work is filled with pitfalls and hazards make no mistake about it my friends. You have to be a master of deception just to have breakfast and lunch.
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