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.