Tag: coffee shop

Wednesday’s Wandering Thoughts

When I returned from the coffee shop writing session yesterday, my wife related a story she’d read.

A man began a new habit of going to the coffee shop every Saturday morning. He enjoyed the atmosphere and would surf the net on his phone and text friends while nursing a coffee drink and nibbling a pastry. After a few weeks of this, he discovered he and the owner had once been friends. Then, life happened. This disconnected but now reconnected in a casual way.

One day the guy received an email from the coffee shop owner. The owner said that the barista complained that the man was ogling her on Saturday mornings and that the owner was going to have to bar him. The man refuted what was happening. Through a back and forth series, he convinced the owner that wasn’t the case.

Meanwhile, the barista was moved off Saturday morning to another schedule. Therefore, the owner said, the man would be welcomed back.

Fuck you, the man wrote back.

I wholly understood and agreed. That place would never be the same for him, and other coffee shops would probably be tainted for him as well.

Sad that it came to that. Made me wonder, as I sit in the coffee shop and people watch, what did that barista think she saw?

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Tuesday’s Wandering Thoughts

I’ve been writing. Now I pull my head out of the morass of story and look around.

The burst of activity which took over the coffee shop like a late spring storm has faded. Regulars have come in. Parked at tables as I’ve done, they pursue their personal agendas in a public forum.

One of them is a woman. I have no idea what she’s doing. I wonder, but, shrug. I try to give everyone the same privacy I seek.

Today, though, I see that her toenails are bright mango. They match her shirt.

I haven’t noticed these things before but now I’m thinking, did she select a shirt and paint her toenails to match it, as is this a coincidence?

Now, I know, I’ll need to see her again and make a note to look for her toenails. Yes, it seems weird to me, too.

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Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

Sitting in the coffee shop, I sometimes take a break to pay attention to the people waiting for their coffee. Some are jittery, constant movement. Like they’ve already ingested a significant amount of caffeine, buzzy as little kids on a sugar high.

Then we have the impatient customer. Frequently tapping a foot, normally with hands in pockets or arms crossed, they look like they’re sighing over the unfairness of having to wait so darn long for their drink. Many of these will turn to their cell for comfort, chatting, texting, reading stuff, watching videos.

Others waiting for coffee assume a cool Steve McQueen demeanor, leaning back with mild indifference. The coffee will come and nothing they do will hurry it, so why bother? It’s not surprising to see some of them casually check cell phones, oozing as they do.

Fourth are those with the coffee stare. Stiff as a bronze statue, usually with their arms crossed, they posture right up against the counter’s edge, eyes opened wide, unblinking, waiting for their order. As drinks are made, you can almost hear their neurons shouting, “Is that mine? Is that mine?”

Finally, we have the laissez coffee set. Ordering, they find a table or sit until their order is called out.

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

The coffee shop was busy. Only a few tables were available.

But I found one with what I needed: table and seat, a smidge of privacy, ‘puter power.

I set myself up, turned on and tuned in. Then amused myself. When coffee shops and cafes are busy like this, I always entertaining a thin fantasy that we’re in a business on a starship heading to another planet.

No real reason for the fantasy except that I find it fun.

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Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts

I was skateboarding the net yesterday, swerving from click to click. An ad bounced up for an Ashlandia coffee shop I used to regularly frequently. It permanenly closed due to the pandemic, Jan 2021.

My backstory is that I enjoy coffee shops as a place to write. I began doing that when I started working from home and began writing short stories in parallel. I use the process of going to the coffee shop as a method to put on my writing hat and throw off the rest of the world. Finding the right place is a challenge. There’s the taste. Location. Prices. Staff. Decent writing surface and a place to plug in. Wifi is a nice convenience to add.

The coffee’s shop closure during the pandemic was the abridged edition. Located in a hotel, a husband and wife team managed it on behalf of her father. He owned the hotel He came in one December day and told them that plans were changing. They protested. The exchange grew angry and loud. The husband and wife were fired.

I’d been loyal to them. The staff walked out with the managers in protest. Long-time customers like me left and didn’t return. They made changes. I visited once a few months later. It wasn’t the same. Management declared after that that only hotel guests were welcome. That was only in the morning.

Replacing it had been difficult. An ad to come patron it surprised me. I checked online: permanently closed, according to its FB page and website.

But businesses are often shoddy about keeping their social presence online up to date. I drove by. Dark. Empty. Closed.

I went on to my new favorite coffee shop. I’ve already lost four Ashlandia coffee shops in the nineteen years I’ve lived here. Hope I don’t lose a fifth. Yes, it’s all about me.

Still, I had to ponder the business intricacies that had an ad for a closed business riding on the net. Sometimes, it’s still garbage in, garbage out.

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Thursday’s Wandering Thoughts

The man at the table beside mine is a coffee shop regular. Don’t know his name but I know his habits.

A woman approaches him. I’ve seen her once in a while. They chat for a bit. He mentions that she’s back from her travels and elaborates, remarking that she returned to Reno to see friends and family, like, her daughters and parents still live there. “Oh, yes,” he responds, “you left everyone back there, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but I love living here in Ashland. I think it’s great.”

Then he asks, “Remind me your name again?”

“Donna, and you’re?”

“Jack.”

I‘m a little amused by the sequence. Then again, I’ve gone through those sequences myself. A face and history is recalled, but the name is swimming through the mind’s lower depths, beyond your reach.

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Saturday’s Wandering Thoughts

They were a couple, with those socks. Skin-tight, displaying every angle and curve of their ankles and feet — they both wore sandals on this warmish winter day — his socks were as golden as a Trump Towers sign, while hers were hot pink. Though he wore loose trousers and she wore capris, both garmets displayed a good six inches of their interesting socks.

They raised some questions, they did.

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Tuesday’s Wandering Thoughts

She entered with a confident stride, scoped the coffee shop and selected a seat. Little was special about her: about five two or three, slender build, upper twenties for age, disheveled crown of golden curls, average clothing. But those shoes, those bright mango-colored running shoes.

You can write a lot of stories about a woman in mango shoes.

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Saturday’s Wandering Thoughts

One of the baristas seemed angry with him. He didn’t know why, but she appeared to act colder toward him, like he’d offended her. Searching his memories, he didn’t find a triggering episode. It could be other things, he told himself, like he’d imagined her being nicer and friendlier before, or he was imagining now that she was angry with him. Or, she might be upset with something happening in her life, and he’s just reading her interaction with him and misinterpreting it.

Really, though, while all of those were logically possible, it felt to him like she was angry with him, and that bothered him.

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