Starbucks Drama: Old gals grab an apple fritter at Starbucks

It must be some law that if you hang around a Starbucks long enough, some old people will come in and act like fools. I had 45 minutes to kill Monday morning, so I got a mocha, flipped the lid on my laptop and waited. Cue the muy estupido.

WOACAS approacheth - these were the bane of my existence when I worked in retail. (Hover your mouse over the word for a tooltip.) Two of them. They only travel in packs you know, so that the joys of crankiness that come from old age is doubled with this group.

Number One (too bad she didn't have pointed ears and bleed green) had a princess complex. How do I know? She was too good to do anything herself.

She had a splint on her finger and used this as an excuse to wince a lot in a dramatic, sighing manner and then glance about to see if anyone had seen her. She also had a tendency to order #2 about - something #2 apparently had no problem with.

Number One orders for them - she's the alpha female, you know, and proceeds to find a table recently vacated by a busy morning mommy and her tooting, toothless, toddling toddler.

What to tooting, toothless, toddling toddlers leave? CRUMBS!

The crumbs proved to be a source of major consternation. You would think that Archduke Franz Ferdinand had just been shot from the furor these flakes created.

First, Number One puts her hands on her hips and "tsks" loudly, as of that is going to be enough to get the baristas to stop what they're doing - i.e. serving the 15-person line that was quite literally backed up to the door and causing people to enter, turn around and walk out - and come clean the table for her.

Seeing as how the passive-aggressive play wasn't going to work out, she tries to brush the crumbs off the chairs with the hand with the splint on it. This, predictably, ends badly. More wincing. More dramatic sighs. I watch in excited glee, although I cannot determine if her culottes are muddy green with a subtle hint of yellow, the victim of a tragic washing machine accident or just ugly.

Number One puts puts a quilted yellow satchel - which I later determined contained two Harlequin romances, a New York Times, a New York Post and a plastic Ziploc bag containing various medications - in a chair and went over to the condiment bar to retrieve napkins.

Before applying the napkins to the chair bottom, she looks around for #2, as if to say "Why am I doing all the work here?" Indeed. #2 is oblivious, wedged into a crush at the handoff bar between banana girl and a mother ordering chocolate frappuccinos for her daycare-bound daughters.

Napkins are smeared across the chairs and across the table top in a vain effort to eradicate the crumbs and flakes of the pastry glory days. The floor is the recipient of this largesse. Mice would grow fat on such a surfeit of bounty; the cockroaches sure as hell do.

Satisfied with the state of cleanliness (and possibly godliness) of the mesa, Number One sits and begins to unpack the quilted carryall. The detritus of the morning is spread across the table.

#2 arrives with coffee and then with pastry - an old-fashioned donut and an apple fritter. She offers to fix Number One's coffee and gets specific instructions on cream and sugar. Number One starts to carve up the pastries with all the precision of a drill sergeant and glee of a third-grader.

They begin to eat. Crumbs fly. They don't just fly, they take wing.

The pastries half-devoured and the coffee half-drunk, they decide to read. The Post for Number One, the Times for #2. Then they switch. They continue to steal bits of pastry from each other's plates, although they each got half a donut and half a fritter. Neither likes the fritter, although they're eating it with fair abandon. But it is clear the donut is gone first.

They turn their attention to the Harlequins for a brief moment before Number One decides it is time to take the morning pills. She sends #2 back to the register with a request for water, which she uses to swallow a number of large capsules removed from individual vials from the plastic bag tucked away in the quilted yellow carryall. I was expecting a pill-keeper. Maybe she likes to keep her pills separate. Easier to sell them to the other old folks that way.

They resume reading and fighting for the last bites of apple fritter. A sharp fork fake settles this in favor of #2 when Number One goes for the Times Arts section.

Suddenly, as if spooked, they start jamming stuff into the quilted yellow carryall. Newspapers, pills, books - everything is crammed willy-nilly back into the sack.

And they're gone. The place looks like a war zone from "Cocoon." Or an assisted living cafeteria.

Starbucks Drama: The Ultimate Starbucks Fashion Model Drink Order

Today's post is a riddle:

QUESTION: What is the ultimate fashion model drink order at Starbucks?

ANSWER: Please. Did you think it would be that easy? You gonna have to sit through some prose first.

I WITNESSED THIS ATROCITY WITH MY OWN TWO EYES. AND EARS. IF THERE WAS HALF A BRAIN BETWEEN THE FIVE OF THEM IT WAS A HALF A BRAIN TOO MUCH.

It is Spring Break in most of the land and the waifs and wild things descend upon the crystal beaches, warm sands and billowing palm trees of Florida. At least, they would be if the temperatures weren't forty degrees and old people huddle in sweaters everywhere. But still, the bright young things flock to the relative warmth of the summerlands from the frozen frigid wastes of the north.

Five fashionable females prance into the Starbucks.

Five fashionable females stare at the pastry case with sad, dead eyes. They have been whittled down to icepicks and carbs are a Stone Age memory. They want them though - even if they can't have them.

Five fashionable females queue for the bathroom and stare with disdain at the old people drinking coffee and occupying the comfortable leather sofa. That should be *their* throne.

Five fashionable females stand, chatter and can't decide whether or not to order anything.

ONE of the five fashionable females finally makes her intrepid approach to the register. Of the quintet, she's one that looks closest to having a figure instead of a few extra folds of skin in places. Her one major asset is a curvaceous and downright bootylicious rear end, which gives every impression that she's not wearing much more than a thong under her flimsy canary yellow skirt. What curves she has left are in *exactly* the right places.

She clip-clops toward the register.

And orders in a tremulous voice.

"Can I get a ......"








Wait for it .....














Wait for it .....


















Wait for it .....
















Half a glass of water. No ice.

Starbucks Drama: Date Night at Starbucks

For the purposes of this post, we'll pretend that the cafe at Barnes & Noble (which serves Starbucks) is, in fact, an outpost of Starbucks. Even if it isn't.

I watch people constantly. One of these days, as my friends say, that's going to get me smacked upside the head. But you see so much more interesting things that way.

Do you ever "see" things - people, places, couples, groupings - that make no sense unless you assume some unsavory things? Occam's razor goes right out the window in times like this. And they always seem to occur at coffee shops - which are a breeding ground for the weird and the wonderful.

I'm reading - because I've been working on a trashtastic book that I'm too cheap to buy for months now and nursing an iced mocha. My friends are doing whatever - one has an obsession with cookbooks and will spend hours flipping through the pages of gourmet food bibles. Then *THEY* sit down.

OK. Tell the truth. What do *you* think of when you see this combo: An older man (late 60s) wearing jeans, a pullover and loafers. AND. A skinny white boy, with floppy hair, wearing slacks, jacket and tie. He had an air of terrible sophistication about him and was all in blue - baby blue shirt, navy blue pants and jacket and and piercing blue eyes. I would say late teens, early twenties. There was at least a 40-year age difference between them, at a minimum.

And there was some decidedly odd body language going on between the two of them.

They drifted around the magazine stacks and came to sit at a table. The older man selected "Powder," which is for snowboarders. Our effete young sophisticate selected a weighty tome dedicated to woodworking.

They flipped through them with a display of feigned interest that would have rivaled that of any monarch at any court function in history. Flick went the page, flick went the eye across the table. Wash, rinse, repeat.

There is almost no spoken communication at the table - just looks exchanged between the two. The older gentleman gets up to get a coffee and comes back with a frappuccino for the young kid. He toys with it.

They finally put the magazines aside and sit there for a while. The kid is sitting crosswise in the chair, with one knee on top of the other. He draws patterns on the tabletop with his finger as he gazes idly at the room. The older man sighs and finally reaches his hands out across the table.

They stare at each other. I never see them touch. I never hear them say anything.

And suddenly, they're gone.

Friends, lovers, NAMBLA, family members - I will never know.

Spilling Coffee at Starbucks

I absolutely adore mornings at Starbucks. It is the intersection of Drama Street and Caffeine Deprivation Avenue.  All the hopped up coffee junkies aching for a fix flock to the welcome arms of the green apron espresso pushers before they're able to see straight in a bid to get their neurons firing.
I do my best to stay out of their way. Well out of their way.

This particular happened on a Monday - always a lovely day - because people have been cooped up at home with their family, birds, cats, dogs, children and husbands for two days and are either desperate to get back to the office or dreading facing the music of the cubicle-go-round. Either way, they NEED SOME COFFEE!

I had gotten my iced venti mocha and wedged myself into an out-of-the-way corner trying to reply to an URGENT! email on my phone (for the love of little apples people, it is 8:05 a.m., can it wait until I get coffee?). Then, this happened.

I'm jammed into the corner, sighing and trying to get enough coffee into me to think coherently and reply to a crisis not of my own making, when I hear the slap of expensive sandals coming toward me on a tile floor.

I look up and a well-appointed woman in a black business suit with her hair pulled back in a blonde pageboy is juggling a briefcase, a cell phone and a venti coffee. And juggling *IS* the appropriate term for this.

Madame Moneymaker is taking the door at a dead run, except that she wedged the phone into her ear and has neglected to get the lid back onto the coffee after dousing it with cream, sugar and milk.

Instead of taking the time to go back to the condiment bar and FIX THE PROBLEM, she keeps walking, attempting to fix the problem in mid-run. She's barking into the phone and jiggling the lid of the coffee.

Splash. And a wave of coffee slops out and onto the floor. Miraculously, none of it hits her, the suit or the briefcase. She shrugs, slows a step and keeps adjusting.

She's halfway between the condiment bar and the door now, and still working. More furious orders into the phone and the briefcase has fallen into the crook of her arm, hampering efforts to adjust the coffee. No matter, she hikes it back up - and sends another splash of coffee onto the floor. This one gets her hand, which she slings into the air in disgust before wiping it down with a napkin and mouthing some unmentionables into the phone.

The lid still isn't on the coffee. She finally takes the lid ALL THE WAY OFF and kicks the door open and goes out to her car, phone crooked between shoulder and ear, briefcase on the elbow, coffee in one hand and lid in another.

Two coffee spots are on the floor. I'm agape. I look up, and a barista has witnessed the entire thing. She rolls her eyes and goes for the mop. I go for my camera.

I had to capture the moment for posterity. I only wish I had had the daring to switch on the video and capture the full flight of this magnificent species in full walk, talk and coffee-juggle.

What I learned from my mentor

For starters, this is not a Starbucks Drama post. If you only attend for the musings of the coffee-addicted habituees of the green-apron shop, then leave now.

This is a blogger's roundtable post, courtesy of my former co-worker Holly Hoffman. She's the force behind worklovelife.com and co-owner of Neovia Solutions. I hope she does me the honor of counting me among her friends.

You can read more about the format for this blog happening here ("It's not a rave, it's a happening!"). The subject is mentors.

I have had many mentors in my life. I count myself fortunate enough to have been touched by any number of extraordinary people - but one remains with me more than 25 years later.

I grew up in one of the poorest Delta parishes of Louisiana. Almost 30% of the population of Richland Parish is below the poverty line; there are only 20,000 people in the entire parish. The largest town, Rayville, has a population of 4,000.

I did not grow up in "town." Until 1997, the year I graduated from college, people driving to my parents house - which they'd moved into when I was four - included "Turn off the paved road." My two-hour school bus ride took me to Holly Ridge Elementary, home to 400 K-4 and later K-8 students. The school no longer exists.

I could not read in kindergarten; several other students could - and our teacher made those of us who could not read feel ashamed. I had difficulty learning to read in first grade because the prevailing educational theory at the time taught phonics.

I was - and am - about 30% deaf, so "hukd on fonyks" didn't really "wuryk 4 me." Once I *got* reading though, how letters made up words, how words went together and how words made up sentences, I got it all at once. I went from "Pug" to third-grade level books in a matter of weeks; I even read textbooks for practice.

I still process information this way. I think of it as the "Big Gulp" theory - I have to completely wrap my head around something - and then once I have it, I have it completely, but until then, nothing.

Back to mentoring.

I won't reveal her name - we'll use Mary Smith - but she was my Gifted & Talented (as it was called in Louisiana) teacher from 2nd through 8th grade. Under her tutelage, I didn't just practice critical thinking, I learned what critical thinking was, how and when to apply it and how to actually use it.

Think of an oak tree. I was the acorn that had to first discover what heat, light, water and the soil were - and then how to convert those elements into the building blocks of life. I could never have done it if someone hadn't shown me that I had to grow up, toward the light.

Gifted & Talented was something *SPECIAL* at our school. Through the first half of the second grade, only one person in the entire school got "Gifted" classes. The Gifted teacher commuted in special for that one student and drove a diesel Mercedes that none of the regular teachers at my in-the-sticks school could afford. The girl that had that class was "special," because she was the only one who got Mrs. Smith's attention for an hour a day while the rest of us did social studies.

At the end of the first grade, all students took achievement tests. In somewhat of a surprise, I ran the table and finished far, far ahead of the rest of my class - including the one girl who was in the Gifted program. Of course, this was the first grade.

At the start of the second grade, the school district asked my parents (and the parents of two other students) if we wanted to be tested for the Gifted program. I remember going into a tiny room at the School Board building in town and running through what seemed like hours and hours of tests that made no sense to a second-grader. Of course, they were pretty average - shape and pattern recognition, sequencing and basic logic test. I passed, whatever passing would have been. The two other students "failed" to advance. Maybe this was some sort of proto-Gattaca or something.

It took more months for the paperwork to get processed, during which the girl who was already in the Gifted program was absolutely wretched to me, because she was afraid that she'd lose her "exclusive" place. She lost it.

It has taken me 747 words to find the right words to say that "The Gifted program was the first time in public education that I felt challenged, stretched, pushed and made to think." This continued for the next seven years. Every time I felt complacent, I was pushed farther.

Mary Smith inherited a lump of formless clay. She left a Rodin. How did she do it?

814 words later, we get to the point.

Every single thing we did in class was fun. Every single thing we did in class was educational. Every single thing we did in class we did taught me something.

In the fourth grade, I spent a week sewing and beading a sweater.

In the fifth grade, I wanted to study art, so the entire year was spent finding images in magazines that I could duplicate. I ripped paper to duplicate a mod Marlboro ad. I spent a month trying to recreate a Christmas ad out of wrapping paper and shopping bags.

My December project was a full-size gingerbread house. This was an experiment of grand proportions. I learned geometry (cutting sizes and shapes), budgeting, chemistry (mixing icing) and art, art and more art.

In the third grade, I started a series of what was called T.O.P.S. - Techniques Of Problem Solving. These were a series of cards in a Trivial Pursuit-size box, each with a critical thinking problem or logic puzzle on them. The box had to be done by the end of the year. I remember one of my lesser successes - "Candy Cane Cola," which was the solution to "Design a new soda, including can, slogan and marketing campaign." For some reason, I didn't think that soda had enough sugar.

Geography was my favorite. This was my first introduction to Carmen Sandiego. And to the meticulous approach to life that would serve the rest of my my days.

Mrs. Smith was a dedicated fan of note-taking, remembering details and paying attention. In many, if not most of the lessons in my curriculum, these were always at the heart. I played the computer version of "Carmen Sandiego" religiously, only to one day complain that I'd missed a villain because I'd forgotten a clue. "Why didn't you write it down?" I never missed a villain again - and was soon making connections within the game faster, because I recognized what villains were trying to do.

I was always supposed to be the best at whatever I did. Every game we played, every project I started, every problem I solved - finishing wasn't the goal. I was supposed to finish it *well.* I marvel at how different this philosophy is from today's public education.

Mah jong was another favorite. We played the entire week before Christmas in my eighth grade year, both in the name of culture and to teach me to think beyond the obvious patterns of "remove the first tile you can."

At some point, I learned the alleged longest word in the English language -  "Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis." (Thank you, I typed it out correctly from memory! - just like I can still recite the Greek alphabet from memory!) My test on that word included identifying the largest number of individual words I could make out of it within 30 minutes and trying to come up the single longest *other* word from the component letters.

And so we went. I made bulletin boards; tested myself on speed-reading (398 wpm); spent two weeks on learning Esperanto; read "Call of the Wild;" filled out vocabulary papers on what a "flume ditch" was; drew ghosts, unicorns and bats; spent two weeks exploring M.C. Escher; solved logic puzzles; found out what quahogs were before "Family Guy" made them cool; discovered I was nearly 80% right-brained; painted; sewed; read the entire Chronicles of Narnia and the entire Newberry shelf at the Richland Parish Public Library; milk-fed a pumpkin; read Orwell's "Animal Farm" (yes, in the sixth grade); solved Brain Teasers; created homemade Christmas cards; wrote about everything I found out and learned that I was *supposed* to be smart, well-read and intelligent. Along the way, I discovered that not everyone saw the world with the same pair of eyes that I did.

I left my K-8 school in 1989. I did not enter Gifted classes in high school. It was an elective that required giving up some things in your schedule; in addition, I had met the person who taught Gifted at the high school level and we *did not* get along. I opted for history instead. Which served me better in college anyway.

I saw my Gifted teacher one more time, at my high school graduation. I thanked her for everything she had done, but four years later, she had other students and other proteges to worry about.

To this day, I don't know if she ever knew how much she influenced me. She had many other students in her career - and she drove to three other schools in her circuit - but for me, she was the path to enlightenment. Thank you, Mary Smith.