Who eats a frappuccino with a spoon?

On the heels of the re-post of the adventure that inspired the first Starbucks Drama post, I was gifted with another "very special" crew that came in to the Starbucks very late tonight. About 45 minutes before closing is when all this went down. As luck would have it, they managed to catch the newbie barista on like his second day. And the drama unfolded like newly folded sheets snapping open over a naked mattress, enveloping everything it touched. DRAMA! But not just any drama - STARBUCKS DRAMA! - and of the highest order. 


I love the smell of newbie barista in the morning. Not really though, because it invariably causes problems when you're trying to get a drink and they're trying to learn. But we were all new at something in our lives. Shiva only knows what the heck my customers thought of me when I was trying to learn how to run a cash register - I specifically remember one old man SCREAMING at me "YOUR FAST LANES ARE NOT FAST! YOU NEED TO SPEED IT UP!"

Anywho. Let's talk about - gosh, he needs a nickname - Tall Tony, no, how about Quiet Quinn, because he has that sort of scholarly personality about him. Dunno why he's working at a Starbucks, because most baristas I've run across are over-caffeinated, hyperactive electrified livewires. I'm going to start re-using them - if I remember. There WILL be a test later.

Quiet Quinn - who's very cute, in that nebbish sort of way - was attempting to hold down  Fort Frappuccino all by himself while Super Cindy snuck out for a cigarette and probably a potty break. He'd been calling her all night. "How do I? How do I? How do I?"

This wasn't an annoyance thing - he was obviously new - and she'd introduced him as such earlier in the night when Super Cindy herself made me my very own sample of Starbucks Via (the verdict? Thumbs Down; I don't like plain coffee anyway, why would I like instant?).

Anyway. I was staring at a blank screen - yet again - tapping idly and wondering if I could find inspiration in the smell of roasting coffee beans - when I hear something that sounds like this question - "I can use that thing to make drinks, right?" I look up and he's pointing at either the blender or a mop. 

Admittedly, it is hard to tell the difference that results when we're talking about the smoothies (I do not like Vivannos), but in general, I'd wager that you use the blender-thing, and not the mop-thing to make drinks at a coffee bar. Unless we're talking about the mop-bucket and that's what you use to brew the Starbucks Via. Anyway. File him under cute but not too bright. 

You can tell Quiet Quinn is praying that no one comes in during the next ten minutes. All he wants to do is wash some dishes and mop the floor.

No such luck. Unless you're a Starbucks Drama reader. Then baby, you hit the jackpot, lucky seven, row of cherries with a bar at the Palms. Gold coins wrapped with chocolate covered espresso beans are pouring out and green-apron clad barista dancing girls are bring you lattes garnished with whip cream and cherries. Pastries are floating from the ceiling on clouds of clotted cream. This IS your lucky night.

I hear the door swish and feet come clip-clip, clop-clop inside. It is obviously a crowd. Three of them. A fairly well-put-together woman, who's dressed in a clean, but worn tan skirt, some sort of seashell print top and a cardigan on over that. She's young, maybe in her thirties, although you can never tell. Her face doesn't have that "been through the wringer 87 times" look yet. She's got a really interesting woven leather purse with her.

She's accompanied by two dudes who are either on the way down or just starting back up. One is wearing a dirty pair of blue jeans, what looks like a T-shirt out of a pack of undershirts from a Target or Wal-mart and a heavy green and black plaid overshirt over that. The overshirt is unbuttoned, but he's obviously cold all the time. Unshaven and he looks visibly to be barely in control. Nervous, jerky and entirely antsy. I'd say 50, but he could be anything from 30 to 60.

The other man, what I'd call "skinny white boy" is probably 25-ish. He's wearing clean blue jeans, a white T-shirt and again, a heavy blue plaid overshirt. I wonder if they were sleeping outside? Or used to it?

They order Frappuccinos. Well, one orders a Vivanno. Which is the cause of the consternation, because Quiet Quinn apparently hasn't graduated to actually making drinks yet - except for pulling the handle on the drip coffee.

He rings up the orders, then has to go run OUT THE DOOR and grab Super Cindy to come in and make the drinks. I don't actually see her sigh, but the set of the shoulders says it all.

"Our Gang" specifically request no plastic tops on the glasses. And extra whipped cream. Which is nothing too unusual so far. Although the girl has gotten two packages of those Starbucks madeleine cookies and is gracefully, delicately unwrapping them one cookie at a time, carefully cracking them in half and eating them in slow, careful, ladylike bites. Almost as if she were some long-lost Spanish princess or something.

Back to the frozen drinks. Super Cindy finishes those up and whips them across the bar. There's not enough "extra" whipped cream for any of them - they want yet more - so she really lathers it on - and throws on some chocolate sauce for good measure. They're in sugar shock heaven. Or at least they think so.

Then, we get to the home staging portion of the evening.

The furniture in the Starbucks lobby - said lobby which has been occupied SINGULARLY since 9 p.m. by me, myself and my various personalities, otherplanar beings and assorted invisible deities named Bunisha, Loretta and Vohnquisha. Oh yeah, and two bored baristas who've already swept, mopped and set the lobby for the next day.

"Our Gang" decides that they don't "like" the purple recliners in the spots that they're in. They're too close to the windows, too far from the pastry case (the skinny white boy has a sweet tooth apparently and just wants to "look" at the pastry) and not close enough to each other.

This necessitates a complete furniture move of nearly everything in a good eight-foot radius as they start shoving four recliners, the two coffee tables that go with them, magazine racks and everything else together until they've created what can ONLY be described as a NEST in the middle of the store. All the other tables and chairs are ringing the recliners in a defensive formation - and the recliners are drawn RIGHTUPCLOSE to each other. Apparently, togetherness is a virtue. I know. You want photos. Do you seriously think I'm going to pull my phone out and start taking photos of crazy people? I might be eating that BlackBerry - and it didn't grow on a vine. I don't even like blackberries.

The two coffee tables are awarded pride of place in the middle of this collection of furniture. They are swiftly anointed with what seems like half the condiment bar, brought over one piece at a time, under the direction of the princess, with the two gentlemen in waiting doing the fetch-and-carry honors.

• One napkin dispenser
• One cinnamon shaker
• One chocolate powder shaker
• One water pitcher
• Three cups of water (I don't know why!)
• Sugar packets
• Splenda packets
• Every other kind of sweetener
  
• Coffee stirrers
• Straws and an extra loose straw apiece
  
• Enough loose napkins to paper the walls of the Louvre
• Don't forget all three drinks, with the tops - which they didn't want ON the drink but had to have anyway
• And for good measure, Unshaven Andy heaves up a gallon-size Ziploc bag full of phone chargers and cables and cords. My eyes bugged out at this one and I really had to make an effort not to make noise.

AND SPOONS. I almost forgot the spoons. They had the whole thing set up - and the woman sent the skinny white boy up to collect three spoons. At the time, I seriously wondered "Who eats Frappuccino with a spoon," but it was obviously for the ginormous load of whipped cream they had in the cups. I was a step slow in processing all this - I was still marveling at the furniture moving and the drink table decorations.

The woman proceeds to curl into the seat, place her purse on the table - where she found room I don't know - and do the sensual straw, tongue, mouth thing with the whipped cream. Past master of the art of seduction, that one. I bet that came in handy in a few places.

She gets the skinny white boy so excited that he slups off half his Vivanno or Frappuccino or whatever and he starts prowling the lobby, looking for something, anything to eat or do or touch to get his mind of her and that straw and that whipped cream.

Because she's not paying him ANY attention. She's all wrapped up about two feet from Unshaven Andy over there, watching him do something with his bag of cords. I tried not to stare too closely, because as oblivious as they were, you never knew if something mental was going to snap. And they ALL looked like they were going to snap at any moment. The baristas kept making themselves scarce in the back room, peeking out every few minutes or so. I was thinking, "Great. Leave ME out here alone with them."

After about ten minutes, they are all halfway through their drinks - and suddenly, it is apparently whipped cream refill time.

The skinny white boy goes and taps on the pastry case. Super Cindy is behind there doing something with trays and I can hear her let out an audible *OH* as he raps his knuckles on the glass.

Their drinks are all half-empty, but they want her to fill the glasses BACK up with whipped cream - the heavy, super-caloric Starbucks whipped cream. And add more chocolate syrup.

Deciding that discretion is the better part of valor (seriously, where are the cops wanting to cadge a free coffee when you need them?) in this case, Super Cindy pumps the cups full of whipped cream, layers on the chocolate and slings it back at them.

And I get a sight I must have missed the first time - either because I was typing or didn't notice.

They "doctor" the drinks.  This was why they have the full condiment bar over at the table. First the cinnamon, then the chocolate powder. Then sugar or Splenda ON TOP OF THE WHIPPED CREAM. My teeth hurt just thinking about it. And more cinnamon and chocolate powder. Witch doctors working a spell to yank the evil spirits out of Glub the Cave Man and into a possum or something would not have had the concentration these three had. Shake. Shimmy. Stir. It was AMAZING.

Finally, when they have the "recipe" just right, they dig in with the spoons again. There's a real hunger for sugar there. They're muttering something about a "house" - which I think is a halfway house, but I can't really make it out over the music. The baristas has cranked it up around 8:30 p.m. when the place really cleared out and they started cleaning. Now, I wish it wasn't so loud.

They're muttering and slurping whipped cream and the woman whips out a package of Starbucks biscotti I didn't even know she had - I seriously hope she paid for it - and starts dipping that into the had to be six inches of whipped cream in her cup.

And then puts the whole thing in her mouth to lick it off.

I can't even pretend not to stare any more. It is just surreal. I look over at the baristas, and they've pretty much stopped cleaning and are standing there at the register just pretending to wipe down the counters and stare at what's going down in the lobby.

The Spanish princess is essentially "performing" on a baked good, Unshaven Andy has six or eight phone chargers spread out across a coffee table and the skinny white boy is busy dumping half a bottle of chocolate powder and six packets of Splenda onto what's already a venti cup half-full of whipped cream.

I'm smashing away at keys as fast as I can, trying to get the details down before I forget anything super-good and not be TOTALLY obvious that I'm just staring up and down at this little tete-a-tete for all its worth.

I'm banging keys and suddenly, they're on the move. The skinny white boy is toting items back to the condiment bar one at a time while Unshaven Andy is wrapping up cords - and JUMPING JEHOSAPHAT - he had some plugged in at outlets along the wall. With nothing attached to them as far as I can tell.

The crazy, it is starting to buuuuuuuurn.

The princess sashays up to the barista and asks for more lids. Flat lids. I swear by all the powers of the Light that I thought she just might ask for more whipped cream to go. And I would hav paid for it just watch them eat it.

The lids go on the cups. The condiment bar is re-stocked. Every scrap of trash finds its way to a trash can. Most of the tables and chairs are put back to something close to their original positions. Even all the cords find their way back to Unshaven Andy's pouch. Which disappears up under his flannel.

Princess even sweeps the crumbs off her chair onto the floor. How kind.

I'm watching all this and thinking, "Please don't go. I'm sure there's something more you can do, like bite the head off a live bat or turn cartwheels or something. It can get even better!"

Princess and Unshaven Andy exit immediately. The skinny white boy stands by the condiment bar and decides to go for a few more shakes of chocolate powder. And then he stands there and slurps off the remaining half of his whipped cream concoction in like four pulls of the straw, neatly deposits the now very empty glass in the trash, takes a napkin, wipes his hands and mouth, throws the napkin away and goes outside.

They all get on bikes and ride away into the gloom. No one was hit by a car crossing the road, no tires squealed, no brakes were slammed.

After they left, the baristas came out of hiding and started putting the furniture to rights. And Super Cindy asked me what I thought they were on. Signs point to various things - given the extreme need for sugar and the fascination with cords and wire. I won't hazard a guess.

Of course, they could have just been a perfectly normal bunch of strangers with a sugar and caffeine urge dressed in thrift store clothes. Kali only knows what people think of me - sitting in a coffee shop, night after night, staring at a computer and then staring at THEM.