sizable k money

I have a thing with where I go to get my coffee in the morning. I never go to the same place for too long. I choose a certain coffee shop or café and frequent it religiously, stopping every morning for two or three weeks straight, getting a sense for the staff, the crowd – the rhythms of a place.

It’s usually just after I’ve gotten a general handle on a particular spot that I’ll choose to vanish and quit stopping there altogether. One morning, instead of hitting my turn signal and parking at the same space I have for the last week, I’ll hit the gas and accelerate by without even looking. The coffee shop might as well not even be there.

Why do this? Because two weeks is generally when people start to recognize me. They start smiling when I walk in the door or when I bring my coffee up to the counter. They ask me how I’m doing or make a comment about the weather. They start to believe, insanely, that my patronage implies that I’m looking for a delightful morning chat or a friend. “That guy with the glasses is buying coffee here again – he must be in the market for some refreshing verbal sparring about traditionally inoffensive topics. I believe I’ll ask him how he feels about the recent loss of a notable professional sports team!” I cannot stress enough how annoyed I am by this assumption.

Listen. I’m in a coffee shop for coffee ( “…elixir of the Gods,” my mother used to say), not for stimulating conversation. I do not want to exchange pleasantries with you, café counter person, before I can be fully classified as conscious. I’m really just worried about your safety, here - I am grumpy in the morning, and nothing exacerbates my petulance like a douchebag trying to be my buddy. I don’t want to lash out at you out of frustration anymore than you want to be physically intimidated by a geeky kid holding a boiling hot beverage. We are strangers involved in a business transaction. Let’s leave it at that, please?

-

I’ll give you an example. In my sophomore year of college I went to a coffee shop in one of the main buildings on campus every day before my morning classes. I always bought the same thing - a white chocolate mocha, which sounds very stereotypically like “coffee drinker,” but tastes very much like a handful of hershey’s kisses mixed with tar. As you might be able to tell, I wasn’t searching for gourmet blends as much as I was searching for something to give me a harsh, caffeine-laced boot to the teeth before I had to sit in a lecture hall for four hours at a time.

The girl who worked there deserves initial credit, because for somewhere around four months, she didn’t ask me anything or greet me. She pushed her glasses up her nose as I walked up to the counter. I told her what I wanted to purchase. She made it. I paid. I left. I can think of no human interaction more perfect, more profoundly symphonic in its simplicity. Give me my fucking coffee and let me leave, thank you, Jesus.

But something happened. Perhaps, blindsided by a moment of contented delight at having so easily gotten my daily fix, I smiled to myself. It’s not far-fetched; she saw me, bags under my eyes and half-awake, and imagined that look of happiness on my face to be gratitude towards her. It was not. I was just psyched, as I was every morning, that I wasn’t going to be forced to throw a temper tantrum and hold my breath in the fetal position until someone poured 32 ounces of joe into my fucking gullet.

Whatever the case, she must’ve convinced herself I had non-verbally communicated that I wanted our relationship to progress to the next level, because when I shuffled up to her counter the next morning, she squeaked, “You want your usual?”

In my mind, I saw myself from her perspective. A wall of flame rose roaring behind me - she covered her face to shield it from the heat. In one swift movement I tore the skin from my own face, revealing a skeletal demon with bottomless, black empty eyes. In a growling, guttural voice I screamed, “GET OVER HERE!” I uppercutted her through the ceiling. Goro, sitting at a table a few feet away, said “Sick, dude.”

In reality, I turned without a word and left the building. I didn’t go back.

-

Just yesterday, I stopped at a gas station for coffee before work.  This seems like the perfect place for me.  Most people who are working at gas stations in the morning are either in the middle of horrific day shifts that started at 5 am, or are ending even more horrific night shifts that started at 10 pm the night before.  Either way, you can’t imagine that person is exactly itching for energetic conversation, can you?

I poured myself a steaming cup of coffee from one of four pots arranged and labeled on burners.  As I poured a few sugar packets in, I sensed the gas station counter worker walk up behind me.  I stepped aside, thinking he needed to switch in a new pot of coffee onto one of the burners, but when I glanced back he just stood behind me, hands on his hips.  He had a mustache, glasses with large, black frames, and wore his hair in a long, greasy ponytail.

“You ever take psychology in college?” he asked.

“No,” I said, mildly disturbed but not yet enraged.  I was more curious - this was not the way they usually went about it.  “Why do you ask?”

“I did,” he said, stepping by me and finally switching in a new pot of coffee.  “No matter how many different flavors I put out, everyone always takes the fresh one.  You’d think they’d take it based on flavor, but it’s always based on which one is the fullest.”

I didn’t say anything.  He grinned at me, like he had just delivered a punchline.

“Sort of like my own behavioral study!” he said.  He walked away without anything else.

I took a second, pondering this.  I couldn’t help feel an odd twinge of admiration; this guy was annoying me during my routine and was clearly out of his goddamned mind, but part of me was impressed by his refusal to address me in the way most people would assume would be proper.  I can respect someone who doesn’t simply do what’s expected of them, even if that means they’re batshit crazy.

I walked up and put my coffee on the counter.  He looked down at it and furrowed his brow.  “Just the coffee?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

He made a dismissive motion with his hand.  “You’re all set,” he said.  “Go ahead, get out of here.”  He shook his head no at the two dollars I held ready in one hand.

“Are you sure?” I said.

“Oh yeah,” he said.  He leaned over the counter and fixed me with a giddy stare.  “It’s part of the experiment.”