Apr
Posted on 8th April 2006
The other day, as I was walking home from a long hard day of this and that, I couldn’t help but notice that the coffee shop on the corner near my apartment had suffered a bit of a blow in that it had totally gone out of business. This discovery stirred mixed emotions in me. On the one hand, I was bummed out as I really wanted this coffee shop to succeed since I drink coffee pretty much every day and prefer to get it from independently owned, non-Starbucks establishments whenever possible, especially ones that are right down the street from my house. On the other hand, however, I had a real big “I told you so” feeling about the whole thing as the f*ckers at this coffee shop had been pissing me off since pretty much the first day they opened for business.
Because of that whole thing about independently owned, non-Starbucks establishments mentioned a few sentences ago, I started going to the now out-of-business coffee shop pretty much every day from the first day they opened, even though they charged a quarter more for a large cup coffee than the place I had been going up until then. Still, I prefer to support local business, even if it costs me a bit more. Plus, this coffee shop was pretty large and had free wireless Internet access, so that was an added bonus. Up until that point, I had been pretty strongly against the idea of sitting in a coffee shop with my laptop. But since this place was brand new, I was pretty much the only one in the place most days- laptop or not- so I could actually sit there for a while and pretend to get some actual work done.
After a couple weeks of supporting the new neighborhood coffee shop though, I started to get fed up with their bullshit. Despite the fact that I had been a regular customer since day one, the lady that ran the place never once gave me even the slightest hint of recognition when I placed my order. I never thought that whole “service with a smile” thing really mattered to me up until then, but since I had totally been spending extra money and everything to support her new business, I guess I kind of would have liked at least a half smile or glimmer in her eye that seemed to suggest “Oh yeah, you’re the guy who has totally been coming in here since day one, sometimes even twice a day, and buying coffee and muffins and whatever other bullshit I might be selling on a given day even though you could totally be saving money by walking like one more block or something.” But no.
Making matters worse, half the time I got coffee at the place, they were out of lids or large cups, so I would have to walk out of their with a small, lidless cup of bullshit spilling onto my delicate wrist. One time when I asked for a large, they tried to get me to take two smalls instead. Since I didn’t want to walk down the street looking like some sort of addict or something, I decided to go with nothing at all.
The final straw with the now out-of-business coffee shop by my house was that they kept playing world music while I was trying to sit in there typing on my laptop. I f*cking hate world music. In fact, I have a theory that no one anywhere likes world music, not even the people who play it. World music is bullshit- everything from those annoying steel drums right down to the crappy album artwork. F*ck world music. F*ck.
On a side note that really didn’t affect me that much since I don’t wake up super early or anything, a lot of days no one would show up to open the coffee shop until late morning, so people who have jobs and stuff totally couldn’t get a morning cup of coffee from them. Some days there would even be boxes from the local muffin or bagel shop sitting on the ground outside the door since no one was there to accept the order from the delivery guy. A couple times I thought of stealing all the muffins and bagels just to teach the coffee shop people a lesson, but- dammit- I’m better than that.
Anyway, because of all of the above, at some point I decided to avoid the now out-of-business coffee shop for a while until they got their act together and were able to deliver some Dave-worthy coffee service. Unfortunately, however, that day never came and now there is totally no coffee shop there. In fact, I just walked by the place again today (sadly, with a cup of Starbuck coffee in my hand) and it had been completely gutted. I felt sad again for a moment. Then I thought about those small, lidless cups and crappy world music again and was all like “F*ck those f*cking f*cks!”
Guess who just totally tore that coffee shop a new one! Me- that’s who!
Okay, I just had to get that out of my system. Thanks for listening.
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