I finished my chores at the office this morning and started thinking about my second cup of tea for the day. That's when I remembered that, when I made my first cup of tea this morning, I noticed that the office is out of the sweetener in the little yellow packets and I can't drink my tea without a little yellow packet.

 

So, I thought about running to the supermarket to buy a box of the little yellow packet sweeteners that I could keep in my desk for emergencies, but then I remembered that the supermarket makes me do "self-checkout" if I have fewer than five items (or, to quote them, "less than" five items) and I refuse to do this because the supermarket won't give me a discount if I do my own checkout and I told them that all I want is to split the difference between what they would pay the checker and bagger and what they save but they looked at me as if I was from Mars and so I don't go there to buy fewer than five items.

 

 

I thought about swinging by my house as I only live five minutes from the office but realized that I would probably get distracted and want to check up on the computer I had to repair this weekend because Microsoft pushed a Vista patch that broke the nVidia 10/100 connection in my big box but then I realized that if the connection was broken again, I'd probably end up spending a couple more hours working on it and end up in a foul mood because when I got the connection working again, Vista wanted to update itself and I noticed that the first patch was for the 10/100 nVidia Ethernet connection that they broke the last time they pushed a patch and I'm not sure I even want to use an nVidia 10/100 connection in the first place.

 

So, I told myself that I would go to Peet's and score a few dozen little yellow packets because, after all, if you buy even one coffee at Peet's I think that gives you the privilege of extra yellow packets now and then or maybe for the rest of my life. I mean, those prices! For coffee and milk? So, when I got to Peet's, the morning rush was over and all of a sudden I realized that, without a pressing, milling crowd to hide in, I would be strolling into the store under the eyes of probably three baristas, walk up to the condiment station and pocket a couple dozen little yellow packets and then turn around and walk out and this was going to be far too obvious even for me because they might not know I have the right to those little yellow packets or they might disagree with me in principle or they just work for The Man. There was potential for embarrassment.

 

 

So, I walked up between the unnecessary crowd control stantions and got behind a lady who was waiting for another lady in front of her to pay for five custom coffees with pocket change, mostly nickels and pennies, and she found a couple of wheat pennies in the pile of change she was sorting through on the faux marble counter. She didn't want to spend her wheat pennies because her father collects them. I could understand that.

 

 

Eventually, her transaction was completed and then the cashier looks up and says, "Sorry for the wait, who's next?" and makes eye contact with me. Well, two things come to my mind. First she shouldn't apologize for the wait because sometimes I pay with change and it is Real Money and I don't like to be rush but the other thing that crossed my mind was, "Why is she looking at me?"

 

The lady in front of me steps forward and the cashier challenges her, "Are you sure you're next?" The lady I've been waiting behind turns around and makes eye contact with me with an expression of "You know, I've practiced waiting in lines for more than thirty years and I'm pretty certain that I'm next but perhaps I've stepped into an alternative universe and whose side are you on?"

 

 

I shift my eye contact from the lady ahead of me to the cashier and say, "The lady's next."

 

 

The cashier asks, "Are you sure?" and I replied, "I'm quite certain." And I catch the eye of the lady in front of me and she's grateful.

 

 

I'm grateful that she orders to small coffees. Simple. Fast.

 

 

My turn.

 

 

I had formulated my purchase strategy and I worked out like this: I had come to Peet's for the little yellow packets for my second and subsequent cups of office tea today and now I'm stuck buying something at Peet's in order to get the little yellow packets. I don't like to order tea at Peet's because even though Peet's has better teas than Starbucks, I still feel as if I've gone to a good bar-b-que joint like Porta's back in Fort Smith, Arkansas and ordered the vegetarian platter (which Porta's doesn't have but you get my point). So I order a simple, black coffee, large, which I don't really want but I'll buy it and enjoy the caffeine buzz anyway.

 

 

"Room for milk?" the cashier asks. "No thanks," I reply.

 

 

"Then here you go, that'll be $1.90 and here, please accept this coupon for a free cup of coffee because I know that lady cut in front of you," the cashier says. Thankfully, the lady in question has gone outside to sit with her black terrier.

 

 

"The lady didn't cut in front of me," I said.

 

 

"I saw her do it and you were too nice to say anything about it," the cashier said with a big smile on her face.

 

 

"No, I'm not too nice to have not said anything about it," I replied, a bit befuddled by the complicated sentence construction I had just pronounced. "Look, I'm from New York and if she had cut in front of me, I would have let her -- and everyone else here -- know about it. I would have made a scene!"

 

 

"Of course you would," the cashier said as she slid the coupon towards me.

 

 

Now I'm awash in complex emotional currents. First, my very manhood is being assailed, not that it takes much to do that. But really, I can defend myself in lines. I know I can. I've defended myself in some very complex, over-heated lines like at the Fort Lauderdale Airport where I finally arrived at the security check point with a bottle of water and was told that the water wasn't allowed through and I said ok (and remembered that I should have remembered the thing about the water) and I walked over to the trash can, dropped in the bottle of water and then back to the security check point and was told that I would have to get in the back of a line that would have put the line at Disney's Space Mountain to shame. Then, I applied my NYC skills and convinced the security people that if they wanted to escalate this conversation they were facing a f**king Attica-scale riot and they allowed me to resume my spot in the line.

 

 

Then, the other thing I'm feeling in the warm wash of the cashier's eye contact is that I'm being patronized and I know that feeling very well because I patronize people all the time and in ways that are so subtle they don't even know that I'm being patronizing but this cashier doesn't have my skills and she's being patronizing and actually verging on condescending. And this annoys me because if you're going to use a tool you are obliged to learn how to use it well and this cashier hasn't. I'm at DefCon3 and am ready to call out the cashier.

 

 

Then, Abby's Voice, rises in my mind, the voice of my beloved wife. WWAD What would Abby Do? Abby would assess the situation calmly, take the coupon and probably score another free coffee on the spot and then learned the names of the cashier's children and where they go to school and then walked out with a "Box 'o Peets" (24 cups in a plastic-lined box) for the school office where she's a guidance counselor, a sleeve of hot cups and a sponsorship for the Elementary School Art Auction.

 

 

I broke eye contact. Collected my change. Pocketed the coupon. Walked out of the store. Got in my car. Turned on the radio. Drove back to work. Sat down at my desk with my large Peet's coffee. And I realized that I forgot the little yellow packets.