December 9, 2007

I love coffee. Loud people? Not so much.

I love coffee. This is no secret (see above). I also really enjoy going to Starbucks, partly for the coffee, and partly for the music, but there is something that Starbucks unfortunetely has fallen prey to on several of my frequent visits.
Loud people.
Now, I understand that if you're at a Starbucks with a friend, two friends, or a mob of Fergie fans you'd want to talk with them. Perhaps you may just want to ask them about their ridiculous choice in music or what the hell "my humps" is even about. Still, I beg of you, respect your fellow starbucks patrons. These people just want to enjoy their coffee, maybe a muffin, and listen to the XM Starbucks channel. They will probably KILL YOU VERY SOON IF YOU DO NOT COMPLY. To wit...

One morning I went to my neighborhood Starbucks before my science class to caffiene-up so I could stay awake for the whole lecture. I was sitting by a window on a stool and there were these two guys behind me talking in a foreign language (Chinese? Japanese? Korean? Thai? I do not know, and do not want to guess as I have no way to know and would feel bad making an assumption based solely on a guess. I would probably also offend a whole lotta people, well, at least the 2 people that read this). Normally, I can block conversations of any language out when I am reading, working on homework or planning world domination (I won't tell you which of these activities I was engaged in on this particular morning. Not even you, NSA man!). As these men were talking, I quickly realized this would be harder than normal. One of them talked in a normal voice, easy to block out - no problem. The other man, however, was talking REALLY LOUD. SERIOUSLY, IN ALL CAPS (that is, if I had even the slightest clue as to what he was saying.) Needless to say, I was very distracted and tried to read The Onion, but was not very successful.

Last weekend, I went to Starbucks (the same one) on a Sunday afternoon to do some reading for one of my classes. I needed to get out of my room and hadn't had a latte in a really long time so I trudged on over. I sat at a desk sort of thing that has 2 lamps on it and several strategically placed power outlets that I proceeded to not use. I'm not sure why I included the whole power outlets thing. Anyway...there was a girl nearby with probably all her textbooks, 3 notebooks and a laptop spread out on a small table and the extra chair nearby. She first was on the phone with someone telling them how she had to do all this work blah blah, I don't care. It was obnoxious and distracting because she was about 8 feet away and practically yelling into her cell phone. This was annoying for several reasons. First of all, you don't have to talk that loud. Cell phones these days work quite well, and you're in a Starbucks, you have good signal. Second of all, get off the freaking phone if you have so much work to do. A few minutes later she called her mom and talked on the phone for 15 minutes or so mentioning again how much work she hadn't done and other boring crap that no one, including your mother, cares about. After that, by the grace of God, she was quiet and I finished a chapter. Then disaster struck. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed her go to both the front of the store and the bathroom in a short span of time. Then, big surprise, she called someone and on the verge of tears relayed a story to both them and THE ENTIRE STARBUCKS about how she had spilled coffee on her computer, got nothing done and now like her like space key and enter key are like not like working. *Sob*

I wish I could say that I'm not proud of the fact that I had to hold back laughter, but I'm neither a liar nor that nice of a person.

Consider your expectations met.