Fake Margaret Hamilton stole my table!

I forgot to post my Fake Margaret Hamilton adventure from last week!!! Pondering the imponderable. Because it rained this afternoon - and the temperature dipped a little, the temperature inside the Starbucks feels like a penguin habitat.

I've got multiple layers, plus stored fat and I'm shivering.

But that isn't why we're here.

Fake Margaret Hamilton stole my table. As it turns out, she's as nutty as a fruitcake.

And to top it all off, she can't drive to save her life. After all the in-store excitement, she took out a hedge and  ran right over a storm-drain and a six-inch curb to exit the parking lot in the middle of a six-lane intersection on a red light. God bless tourists.

Let's back up a bit.

I enter the store and Faux Peggy has a laptop, two bags and a plastic shopping bag scattered across three chairs at the table I usually sit at. I'm fine, I'm fine. I'm totally not fine. But it isn't like I can make her leave. I deal.

I do ever so astutely notice that she doesn't have a cup of coffee with here - but she's sucking out of a big clear thermos of water. So much for "I'M MELTING!" She must have conquered that particular fear.

Anyway. I take a seat at the next table over and am unintentionally witness to her 45-minute conversation with CitiBank, during which I come to know more about her finances than I know my own.

Transcribing this whole thing would take an army of winged monkeys and a vast repository of typewriters, but here are the high points.

1. She has three Citibank cards - two Visa and one Mastercard.
2. She wants to a credit limit increase on the Mastercard AND a special interest rate on that card.
3. She wants to transfer all the Visa balances onto the Mastercard, with the new higher credit limit and new super-low interest rate.
4. For some reason (I can't imagine why?), the CitiBank rep on the phone seems to have some reservations about granting these requests.
5. After the request for a new interest rate on the Mastercard was denied, we go through a long conversation about balance transfers - and why she can't get a special rate on balance transfers from one Visa to the other.
6. After that, there's another conversation about how long the offers they have discussed are good for. This leads to a lot of scribbling.
7. Now, we start talking about how "I don't think I want to do this right now, I want to pay that card down before I transfer balances."
8. "But thank you for your suggestions though."

At least Faux Peggy is polite in having wasted 45 minutes of some poor phone monkey's time. I can't imagine what that will look like on their report at the end of the day.

After this epic conversation is over, she gathers up all her bags, shoves the laptop into a cloth diaperbag looking thing and heads out the door.

Just as I think about moving my stuff over to the table I'm used to working at, she's back.

Apparently it was just a cigarette break.

The laptop, cell phone, notes and credit card bills all come back out. And a calculator this time. Lots of number-crunching and paper flipping. I work at Starbucks all the time - I'm just not sure I'd bring credit card statements out here - seems like they'd be too easy to lose.

Fake Margaret Hamilton is at it for another half-hour - never with a drink or pastry mind you - just drinking water out of her non-Starbucks thermos. Then, she packs up again. This time she straightens up the furniture and goes outside to her car.

Then, the fun REALLY starts.

The parking lot here is odd. There are eight spaces along a major road, but you get into that lot about 50 yards back. You can't actually exit the parking lot and get back on the main road - you have exit at the corner of the parking and turn onto the cross street and then either hit an illegal U-turn or go into one of the parking lots and not do it illegally.

But that doesn't stop Faux Peggy. She's going out over the curb  - which happens to have a six-inch storm drain off to one side.

And is right in the middle of a crosswalk, with a giant WALK sign in it. Thank the heavens there were no pedestrians. The red light didn't seem to bother her either - I guess those are the benefits of driving a rented Chevy Malibu. Quite a step down from that broom though - or that Kansas bicycle.

I look out and see her and go "THAT'S NOT A ROAD LADY!" and hear the baristas behind me groan. Despite the plate glass, you could almost hear the car's undercarriage scrape across the curb. I groan again, and the baristas cheer.

Fake Margaret Hamilton sails off into the distance, sparks flying, debts sailing and winged monkeys flapping in the non-existent breeze.