Cart Cartels
The Line Lady was quite upset this morning. She was ready to get on the bus behind a guy that had shown up ahead of her when the guy did the unthinkable and let two young ladies who had just arrived at the bus stop board ahead of him. Mr. Polite had no inkling about the upset he was throwing into a fellow commuter’s day this freezing Monday morning, nor did he have any idea how entertained I was as I watched him smile and wave the girls on the bus while Line Lady’s face contorted into expressions of disgust, outrage and horror all at the same time. I boarded behind everyone and noted that Line Lady was so disturbed she switched seats at least once and seemed to be fussing with her coat a great deal, still agitated from the injustice of our boarding sequence.
It’s the small things that can start your day well or poorly.
There’s a different coffee guy in the cart I go to every morning now. He doesn’t make small talk which is good, but his sugar-adding technique is poor. He uses what I call the “lateral flip” method of sugar adding which is when you hold the cup parallel to the ground and flip the sugar toward its mouth with your spoon. This is a poor method and one based on the faulty assumption that it is somehow quicker than the traditional way of spooning sugar into a cup held with the top facing upward. The real result is you almost always end up with too much or too little sugar. This morning’s coffee is too sweet. Maybe I need to start going to another cart.
Sometimes I wonder where the guys who work the cart come from. You have one guy at a corner for a long time and then suddenly one day he’s gone, replaced by another guy. All the cart guys around my building seem to be of Middle Eastern extraction. I wonder if there’s some network of cart guys (and they are all guys – I’ve never seen a woman work a coffee cart). It reminds me of when I was in college and the rumor was that the rotating cast of Irish bartenders at our 3rd avenue hangout were all members of the IRA and when the heat was on someone they sent them here to work anonymously until things cooled off back home. It seemed plausible since, other than the people we knew as owners the faces behind the bar would come and go with no discussion or explanation and the only common threads were their thick Irish accents and the fact they never discussed where they came from or where they were going.
Of course the reality of the situation is probably a lot more boring than the conspiracies we dream up. Still, it is fun to imagine that there is the “coffee cartel”, secretly negotiating commodity prices with purveyors in Colombia, and parceling out the plum street corners in Manhattan. Those guys are the ones really in control of Big Business in America. Think of all of us office workers who rely on “The Cart Cartel” for their daily intake of a psychoactive drug that makes it possible for us to do our jobs. I submit to you that if, for some reason the carts should disappear one day American business would face a crisis that would make the current economic meltdown pale in comparison. Think about it. Meanwhile, I need another cup of coffee.
It’s the small things that can start your day well or poorly.
There’s a different coffee guy in the cart I go to every morning now. He doesn’t make small talk which is good, but his sugar-adding technique is poor. He uses what I call the “lateral flip” method of sugar adding which is when you hold the cup parallel to the ground and flip the sugar toward its mouth with your spoon. This is a poor method and one based on the faulty assumption that it is somehow quicker than the traditional way of spooning sugar into a cup held with the top facing upward. The real result is you almost always end up with too much or too little sugar. This morning’s coffee is too sweet. Maybe I need to start going to another cart.
Sometimes I wonder where the guys who work the cart come from. You have one guy at a corner for a long time and then suddenly one day he’s gone, replaced by another guy. All the cart guys around my building seem to be of Middle Eastern extraction. I wonder if there’s some network of cart guys (and they are all guys – I’ve never seen a woman work a coffee cart). It reminds me of when I was in college and the rumor was that the rotating cast of Irish bartenders at our 3rd avenue hangout were all members of the IRA and when the heat was on someone they sent them here to work anonymously until things cooled off back home. It seemed plausible since, other than the people we knew as owners the faces behind the bar would come and go with no discussion or explanation and the only common threads were their thick Irish accents and the fact they never discussed where they came from or where they were going.
Of course the reality of the situation is probably a lot more boring than the conspiracies we dream up. Still, it is fun to imagine that there is the “coffee cartel”, secretly negotiating commodity prices with purveyors in Colombia, and parceling out the plum street corners in Manhattan. Those guys are the ones really in control of Big Business in America. Think of all of us office workers who rely on “The Cart Cartel” for their daily intake of a psychoactive drug that makes it possible for us to do our jobs. I submit to you that if, for some reason the carts should disappear one day American business would face a crisis that would make the current economic meltdown pale in comparison. Think about it. Meanwhile, I need another cup of coffee.
Comments
One day one of them were gone, we asked his friend where he went and he told us home, to some middle east country which I cannot remember now. His friend told us that they make enough money to take home, then leave for several months before coming back and working some more, rinse/repeat. I am not sure if this is what they all do, but I found it interesting.
I do not get cart coffee anymore, I find it horrible, all the ones by ground zero anyway. I miss that 18th street cart! But now we have freshly brewed coffee that I make in the morning with the other managers so we can save even more cash. When Daniel and I realized we spent about $1000 on coffee a year, it sorta woke me up to decide to make the stuff... and it tastes so much better too!