Friday, February 11, 2005

You Run A Stupid Coffee Shop Day

You Run A Stupid Coffee Shop Day!

It was always your dream to have your own coffee shop. Well now you have it, and after a year and a half of operation, it's apparent that your coffee shop sucks. The chairs are uncomfortable, the tables are just an inch too high or too low, the "local art" on the wall is not only dull and unskilled, it also manages to irritate people.

note on the local art and how it can irritate: all of the paintings depict idyllic landscapes with US planes flying overhead dropping bombs marked with dollar signs. Looking at these paintings is like reading a paranoid International Socialist Organization pamphlet with all of its typos and grammatical errors

Additionally, your scrabble box is missing tiles. The shop will be shuttered within another 18 months, which will be sad. Far sadder than that, you're about to ruin your marriage by making a pass at your 19 year old counter-girl. You'll do it at 8:00 tonight, when the door is locked and the two of you are finished cleaning up (you close at 7:30 on a Friday? What the fuck?!) Anyway, she's small with ratty burgundy hair and a really pleasant face. And she wears tops that make plaintive presentation of her breasts, a choice you assume is intended for your appreciation and not for the 25 and 35 cent gratuities she's trying to lure into the plastic dish on the counter. Your wife is big and plain. Your counter girl is the kind of girl you always wished you could have dated when you were in your twenties (small, not plain). You're now 36, still not too far away from your twenties, you coach yourself.

So tonight at around 8:00 she'll tell you everything's pretty much taken care of and you'll lunge in and slosh the wet crumbs of the bagel you recently ate into her mouth, and her scream will be muffled by your face. She'll wriggle away and quit. You'll say you're sorry, that you're confused and the shop isn't doing that well. The both of you will look out the storefront window to find your wife watching from the car (she picks you up every night. Why'd you do this when you knew she'd be outside waiting?) Your countergirl will grab her bag and take off out the door, making a hard turn to avoid your wife's eyes. You'll shout at your countergirl's back that her job's still there for her if she wants it and that your son is being held back and it's frightening.

Finally, you'll turn off all the lights, lock the door to the coffee shop, and then climb into the passenger seat of your car beside your wife. She'll cry on the drive home.

Happy You Run A Stupid Coffee Shop Day!