Daily Grind

For the past few weeks, I've been studying a latte. I usually chai to study at coffee shops, since I can get tasty beverages and snacks easily. I espresso-ly enjoy the more indie places - less noisy high schoolers and sorority girls. One of the other perks is that you get to do some excellent people watching. Here are some of the observations I've been able to mocha†:

Baristas (no, not the english attorneys)
At Raging Sage, I was listening to the baristas complain about making blended drinks. How they hate doing it, how it's a pain, how the drinks should cost $10 so nobody will order them, blah blah blah. From what I could tell, the reason they hate it is because it cuts into their "chatting with friends" time. And this seems to be universal among all coffee shops. I know making blended drinks takes more effort, but it's kind of your jorb. You're not being paid to talk to friends. Would I hear the same complaints if I studied at Xoom Juice?

I later heard one of those same baristas describing a movie he was making for film class or maybe as a personal project. His decription: a guy is wrongfully imprisoned, sees more corruption in prison guards than in prisoners, and eventually escapes. I wanted to ask if he was talking about The Shawshank Redemption because that is exactly what it sounded like. The other barista said "sounds good" in a painfully apathetic voice, to which the oblivious Film Barista responded "I know, I'm really excited, too." Obviously we can't all start our directorial careers at the level of Steven Spielberg or Lawrence Guterman, but at least come up with an original idea. Maybe you need that blended drink time to work on your script.

One last barista observation: it is extremely awkward to place your order when some loser dude is hitting on the barista. It happened last night at Coffee X-Change. She was trying to shrug him off, but he was a persistent little cretin. I just felt uncomfortable for her. And this wasn't his first attempt, because I heard the following line, "You have my number, right? Because last time you didn't call me." So sad. I was overcome with sympathy, followed by amusement, then a brief moment of elation for some reason, and ended with a return to annoyance. Give it up, guy.

Stereotypes
You know the stereotype of guys only being interested in sex? It always bugged me, but after getting my drink from poor Hit-On Barista I discovered that it's true. I group of frat boys sat at the table next to me and proceeded to talk about sex. A lot. I eavesdropped the following lines: "Tommy just wants ass" "I don't remember her name, but the sex was good" "Just get her drunk" "Donkey's are people, too" "I'll probably hook up with some chick this weekend" "I dumped her because she wouldn't go down on me" "Just go see D-Rock's mom." Swear to Hermes, I heard all but one of those. That validates guy stereotypes and frat stereotypes. I felt gross after that.

After they left, a group of high school guys sat down. I assumed high school from immature behavior and the low-level-subject summer school group study that joined them a little later (but I suppose those could be frat-related as well). I'll just stick with high school. Their topic of conversation? Exact same thing. Sigh. There tone was a little more frustrated, but the subject was still getting sex. Come on guys, you're making me look bad by association.

Bane of my Existence
Loud sneezers. Is it really necessary?

New Celebrity Sighting
I'm at Bentley's right now. I just saw a guy who looked exactly like Tom Arnold wearing a sleeveless shirt and worrisomely (it's a word, look it up) short shorts fix a wobbly table with 3 napkins folded in half. That's totally something sleeveless, short short Tom Arnold would do...


Back to last minute studying...

†okay, that one just sucked