Practicalmadness

Speaking of horror stories, I have one: this afternoon a woman had been standing at my bar for a very long time. I finally cleared the buffer on Der Labelmaker so I asked her what her drink was. She said she was waiting to order. She spoke with a raspy, half-dotty unsure voice. Her lower mouth had a very, very old scar on it. She was probably not homeless, definitely old, alone and not totally normal.

I told her, as I tell everyone, that you don't order from me, you order from the registers, and I pointed to Caroline, Sammy and such. The registers. If I had had more energy, or had given myself more time to think, I would have asked her what she wanted, and then told her to go to the registers only to pay for it. But no, but that's fine, I thought. She'll just hop in line and I'll get her order and everything will be fine.

The woman reacted to my simple, bright, helpful instruction as if I had told her she couldn't keep her cat anymore, and she turned away. I thought she was turning to the registers. She walked towards the door. I was sure she was gonna turn into the roped-off line to get in the line to order. She kept walking, and too-long later she was walking out the door.

By that time I was making three or four drinks, and couldn't tell anyone to correct her, or go out there, or anything. I told her I couldn't take her order, because I couldn't, and she interpreted this as an eviction notice. "The siren has spoken, it's time for you to go."

(BTW, I followed my weekly ritual of programming my VCR to tape last night's Survivor: Marquesas to the letter except: I forgot to reset my VCR clock for Daylight Time, so in place of the pivotal (!) "merge" episode of Survivor, I have an hour of C.S.I. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just...(puppy dog eyes, little kid voice) I wanned my Survivor. Waah.)

Let's see, what else can I bitch about? I think I sold four or five pounds of beans tonight, which will certainly make my boss less annoyed with his onetime bean sales champ. (Why no longer the champ? I stopped caring when [name of other partner deleted] got my MUG Award. If I'm not going to get some cheap, petty recognition out of it, fuck it. If ten to fifteen pounds a week is underperforming, then call me a slacker. It's not like our customers at Le Hell have some burning need to find out what, exactly, is the difference between House Blend and Sumatra, and then to take a week's supply home. We -- Store Number 2548, 670 North Michigan -- are, to our customers, just one of ~100 Starbucks locations in metro Chicago, nearly 200 in the whole Chicagoland area, nearly 3000 in North America, every one of which will be trying to get them to take home some beans.

Our business is our customers' immediate needs -- coffee and a sweet to make them feel awake and happy like good little consumers. That's what the third place is: we are not work or home, you have no responsibilities while you are here, this place is now, will always be now, will never be then or tomorrow. The third place is nowhere, and our success is based on our ability to be nothing to everybody. To just say yes -- there is no red tape in the third place, there is no anything, just nothing -- to smile and be polite and amusing but not *too* memorable. You know, the human equivalent to white noise.

Side note: I've decided that adventure is, by definition, something you only appreciate looking back. I'm sure that all the Survivors *hate* living on rats and playing that damned game until they're sitting there, telling their last words to that last camera. Adventurous films or books or plays seem better after you've seen them than while you were watching, and adventurous people are compelling only *after* you've met them.