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Thursday
Aug192010
I Think I'll Start Calling the Woman Who Serves Me My Before-Work Coffee "Muffin"
Thursday, August 19, 2010
I grabbed a coffee at my usual coffee place on the way to work yesterday. The woman who usually gives me my coffee had been at the same movie as the Palinode and I the night before, so we chatted a bit about how Salt was okay but a waste of time if you'd seen any of the Bourne movies.
I took my coffee to the small counter around the corner so I could doctor it up with some cream and sugar. The counter is on the other side of some taller coffee machines, and the woman is fairly petite, but I could still see the upper half of her head where she leaned against the wall, so I continued chatting at her.
"We actually wanted to go see Scott Pilgrim, but it was sold out by the time we got to the front of the line... blah blah blah... We should have known better than to go on a cheap Tuesday... blah blah blah... I liked Jolie, but she's basically Jason Bourne with a vagina... blah blah blah..."
I'm a little pattern-oriented when it comes to certain behaviours, so I take a long time to fix my coffee the way I like it. I pour in a little coffee cream, add two packets of raw sugar, add a little coffee cream, top it off with some 2% milk, add another packet of raw sugar, stir, smell, taste, smell, make the necessary adjustments, put the lid back on, slide on a cardboard cup sleeve, and smell the coffee again through the little drinking hole in the lid. It can take several minutes to get the whole operation performed to my exacting, if a little lunatic, standards.
I may be a little off, but I am not thoughtless, though, so I noticed that not only was she not contributing verbally to the conversation, but she was also not even nodding along to show that she was paying any attention whatsoever. In fact, she was eerily motionless.
"I'm sorry," I said in my best Canadian, "you've probably got work to do," and I looked up to smile at her.
This is where the story takes an embarrassing turn, because it was at that moment that I realized that this was not a simple case of her not listening to me anymore because I was some boring-assed customer taking up her time. This was a case of her not even standing there.
Do you know what it turned out I was babbling at for at least five minutes? In public? A poster with a picture of a chocolate muffin on it.
I SPENT AT LEAST FIVE MINUTES CHATTING UP A GIANT CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFIN. IN PUBLIC.
My peripheral vision is obviously for shit.
I was going to grab a picture of the muffin poster from my coffee-doctoring vantage point to show you how much that chocolate chip muffin could totally look like a small head with curly hair on it if you weren't paying too much attention, but I didn't want to be that crazytown mall person who both talks about Angelina Jolie to a giant muffin and takes pictures of said giant muffin to prove it looks like a human head.
I still have my pride.
----------------------------
Three years ago today: Ph-ph-ph-phases.
I took my coffee to the small counter around the corner so I could doctor it up with some cream and sugar. The counter is on the other side of some taller coffee machines, and the woman is fairly petite, but I could still see the upper half of her head where she leaned against the wall, so I continued chatting at her.
"We actually wanted to go see Scott Pilgrim, but it was sold out by the time we got to the front of the line... blah blah blah... We should have known better than to go on a cheap Tuesday... blah blah blah... I liked Jolie, but she's basically Jason Bourne with a vagina... blah blah blah..."
I'm a little pattern-oriented when it comes to certain behaviours, so I take a long time to fix my coffee the way I like it. I pour in a little coffee cream, add two packets of raw sugar, add a little coffee cream, top it off with some 2% milk, add another packet of raw sugar, stir, smell, taste, smell, make the necessary adjustments, put the lid back on, slide on a cardboard cup sleeve, and smell the coffee again through the little drinking hole in the lid. It can take several minutes to get the whole operation performed to my exacting, if a little lunatic, standards.
I may be a little off, but I am not thoughtless, though, so I noticed that not only was she not contributing verbally to the conversation, but she was also not even nodding along to show that she was paying any attention whatsoever. In fact, she was eerily motionless.
"I'm sorry," I said in my best Canadian, "you've probably got work to do," and I looked up to smile at her.
This is where the story takes an embarrassing turn, because it was at that moment that I realized that this was not a simple case of her not listening to me anymore because I was some boring-assed customer taking up her time. This was a case of her not even standing there.
Do you know what it turned out I was babbling at for at least five minutes? In public? A poster with a picture of a chocolate muffin on it.
I SPENT AT LEAST FIVE MINUTES CHATTING UP A GIANT CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFIN. IN PUBLIC.
My peripheral vision is obviously for shit.
I was going to grab a picture of the muffin poster from my coffee-doctoring vantage point to show you how much that chocolate chip muffin could totally look like a small head with curly hair on it if you weren't paying too much attention, but I didn't want to be that crazytown mall person who both talks about Angelina Jolie to a giant muffin and takes pictures of said giant muffin to prove it looks like a human head.
I still have my pride.
----------------------------
Three years ago today: Ph-ph-ph-phases.
Reader Comments (12)
... this is kind of adorable ...
i've done that walking down the street talking to my partner (where he's stopped at a store window two blocks down)...
x
Thanks for my before-work, during coffee laugh, Muffin. You paint a compelling picture of that age-old, classic embarrassment.
LOL. Excellent... (and brave of you to share; I think I'd have disappeared into the floorboards, never to be seen again).
oh my god I need that laugh!
lol :) I am the person who goes to the store with baby food smeared all over my shirt and two different shoes on.
Oh Schmutzie you are wonderful personified!!!
hahahahahhahaa
This? Caused me to LOL while reading on my phone put in public. Though I must say, what a rude muffin poster.
I would like to thank you for making me full on cry-laugh tonight. OMG how I needed it today. I even made my husband read this I loved it so much. Thank God for your crap-ass peripheral vision.
Thank you for making me laugh so hard!
I am in the library reading this before work and I just laughed out loud. Hilarious! Thanks for brightening my morning. :)
Oh man. Mighty Hunter and I laughed ourself to tears at this, so thank you and your shitty peripheral vision.