American Gothic Starbucks - a portrait of mocha in motion

Is there an "expectant relationship" that customers have with their barista? I need to start making a study of how people wait for their drinks.

Right now, there's a vaguely Midwesternish couple at the bar. They must have ordered something espresso-based, although it is usually the yuppies who abandon the simple drip coffee in favor of the frou-frou.

The espresso-based drinks take time - because espresso has to brew. That's pretty much a fact of life - and that's why Starbucks sometimes gets backed up. There's a maximum through-put, no matter how fast the barista moves.

Anyway. These people probably just wanted a mocha or something. But they didn't understand that it might take more than 30 seconds.

So now, they're standing at the end of the handoff bar, glaring at the girl trying to make the drinks, and giving her a stare that would drive nails through steel. Heck, they could probably drive a straw through steel.

It is the classic "defensive" pose. There's a dumpy, middle-aged housefrau from some flyover state, either visiting or retired to Florida. She has on blue jeans and a worn and faded blue pullover that's seen some washings. It is past the point of beginning to pill; drug dealers have long since claimed this shirt as a crack den.

This husband has that "worn" look, like his face has seen a thousand disappointments from life, the weather, crops beaten into the soil by wind, rain, hail and a plague of grasshoppers. Dreams were broken and lives that started with such hope were driven back into the dust of sorrow. Blue jeans and a orange T-shirt that likely comes in a four-pack at Wal-mart are his attire, along with boots still caked with the mud of the Midwest. Or else his wife's insistence on maintaining a "nice lawn." Either way, they're dirty.

And they're taking it all out on some poor girl who's slinging coffee on a Saturday night.

Ma and Pa Disaffected are standing, staring at the handoff bar, with their arms crossed and a slight curl of disapproval spreading across their face. They are silent, utterly silent as Kate Hudson's "Cinema Italiano" blares across the sound system.

They've never been to Rome. They don't think in terms of culture or the cinema. This coffee may be the closest they ever come to culture - and this girl dares to deny them the pleasure of getting their liquid caffeine 90 seconds earlier.

The barista subtly shifts into another gear, as if willing the stubborn machines to heat and brew faster. She slides the drinks across the bar and gives them a huge smile. She's rewarded with a glum grin as they take the coffees and trudge quietly, slowly, unhappily out the door.