Chicken, chairs and the opportunity of a lifetime at Starbucks

Today we meditate on chicken and chairs. An unlikely combination, but one that bears much fruit for the thoughtful mind to digest.

Before we go any further - I want to thank the many, many Kindle subscribers. I'm humbled - humbled - that you're spending your hard-earned cash on my words. Thank you. 

I have a mild break in my day - and instead of spending it lounging on my couch, surfing the Internet ad infinitum (how much FailBlog can one person consume?), I decide to decamp to the Starbucks and gape at the fashion fails of bored housewives and walrus-mustached tourists. Tons of fun.

I'm also driven from the apartment by hunger - there's nothing in the fridge but a four-month-old carton of peanut butter from Publix and assorted containers of chicken nugget dipping sauce from KFC. Cooking requires effort.

Also, I want a Cake Pop. It will be my reward for virtuously eating the three cherry tomatoes in one of those chicken pesto pasta salads. I despise tomatoes, but eating those three round red fruits of the devil gives me a feeling of accomplishment.

And it should surprise no one that the only food left in the cold case at 3 p.m. would be two chicken salad sandwiches and two protein plates. I'm not a fan of that hard-boiled egg thing. Nor am I a real fan of the chicken salad - but beggars can't be choosers. At least the chicken salad I got wasn't soggy.

But the real news? Chairs are disappearing. Gone, poof! Some time in the night. Patio chairs that is.

If you're keeping score, this is now the second Starbucks in the area code that is having problems keeping track of their new wicker-style patio chairs. The downtown store - which has a huge patio and about 25 chairs - saw a pair "walk off" - and started bringing theirs in every night. This one failed to profit from that lesson. And now profits shall fall ..... For want of a chair, the quarter was lost ....

Keep in mind these things aren't anything special. They're probably a step (or three) below Wal-Mart patio furniture. Just cheap wood with some webbing over the seat and back. But someone - or several someone(s) - now has a matched set of four.

Note that the metal cafe tables were left outside every night for at least the past ten years - and never grew legs - even though scrap metal prices boomed. Makes you wonder what sort of "metal" these were. Certainly not anything valuable. Tin perhaps? Style trumps substance every day kittens.

Three hundred and eighty-plus words later, we come to the meditative portion of the article.

Chicken and chairs. Chicken and chairs. Less fun than chicken and waffles, to be sure. Man. I wish someone would open up a chicken and waffles chain around here.

The whole chain of events started me to thinking about scarcity and human dynamics and how I looked at my entire Starbucks experience.

Most people tend to think in binary - choices either "ARE" or "ARE NOT" - and then you proceed down the decision tree to the alternatives. Yes, I know that is overly simplistic, but bear with me.

For instance, I prefer one specific parking space at "my" Starbucks. If it IS NOT available, I have a backup, then another backup - after that, it's pretty much wherever. But I have a process.

I wanted a chicken pesto pasta salad. It was not available. I complained (mildly). It did not net me a free Cake Pop, sadly. Nor did I expect one, but there's always that hope that faint hope that you'll be rewarded just for voicing disappointment. Somehow, it never happens to me. I usually get rewarded for being an AWESOME customer. I couldn't handle the bad karma from being a shitty customer anyway.

All the cafe tables were occupied. I had to resort to sitting at the table immediately by the condiment bar - which I don't like because of the constant traffic. But tables were - or were not - available until I found one.

Bear with me. I have a point.

The chairs. They happened to be available to someone driving by. Whether it was legal to acquire them seemed to be beside the point. They're gone now.

So maybe everything in life is about opportunities. Legal or otherwise. And how you define "opportunity."

I missed the opportunity to get a chicken pasta pesto salad - but I had the opportunity to see a woman who was a dead ringer for Margaret Hamilton, circa "The Wizard of Oz" get out of a Cadillac, order two shots of espresso in one of those tiny for-here cups, knock it back like it was a shot of Jägermeister and head right back out the door. IT DEFIES EXPLANATION.

I didn't get the opportunity to sit at my favorite table, the one by the window with the full view of the register, the handoff bar and the comfy chairs - but I got the opportunity to watch a girl over-fill a cup with milk and stick her nose into the cup and slurp to get the level of liquid down to a level where the cap would fit back on. PRICE-LESS.

I didn't steal a chair - because the things are ugly. Also, I don't have a patio. I will cop to thinking about lifting a roll of toilet paper once or twice.

Opportunities. Do you take them? I do. I feel my life is richer for it.

Thank you again to all the Kindle subscribers and Facebook fans.

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