Now Entering the Dark Times...

Term-end madness has officially arrived, and as such my posts will be short and likely incoherent from now until the end of April. But before I completely lose the ability to think in sentences that do not include quotes from textbooks and lecture notes, I feel like it's time for another edition of Tales from the Coffee House.

Ch. 3

Some people are actually in disagreement with me on this story, or at least, with the umbrage I took to the incident. I acknowledge that I sometimes take things too personally, especially at work - it's hard to work in a tiny, independent coffee shop for 5 years and not lose objectivity, though.

So anyways, I was at work last week and in comes this guy, who seats himself at a computer. Not an unusual event, to be sure, although it is annoying - often in the past, people have done this while I've been busy and then tried to claim that they were using the machine for as much as an hour less than what I end up charging them for. We've actually banned people for being persistently and blatantly stupid in this way. Stealing network time, however, was not this guy's crime.

(I'm going to interject here and point out that these stories are about my work. In a coffee shop. Which sells coffee.)

The guy had actually come in to my shop to use a computer, carrying a Tim Horton's coffee and donut. Now, some people have pointed out to me that if he was only there to use the computer, it might not have occurred to him that bringing in coffee from a corporate competitor was kind of a no-no; he was, after all, just looking to check his email. Still, I was a little upset. So I let him know, in the politest way possible, that we frowned on bringing foodstuffs from other restaurants in to ours; it's not very good for business. I mean, if you walked in to a small, family-owned pizza place and saw someone eating Domino's Delivery, it probably wouldn't engender a great deal of consumer confidence, would it? And, to the guy's credit, he made minimal fuss about putting it back in his car.

But still, come on. Either support my business (which is really not mine, but that's neither here nor there) or don't, but don't be an ignorant ass about it.

Moments on the Ice....

One of my favourite things to do lately between classes is go down to Hawrelak Park and skate, sometimes for hours on end. I love the solitude of it when I'm there by myself; it's the one time of day to be completely alone with myself and my thoughts. I get a lot done out there on the ice - outlining papers, reorganizing my schedule, even writing some really, really bad poetry with which I will not burden you. And usually, I pay little to no attention to the other skaters, with the possible some-time exception of the speedskaters.

I love to watch them, especially when I'm out on the ice with them. It's one thing to see them flying by when you're on the bench, or watching them in the Olympics on the television. It's an entirely different experience to be there, pushing as hard as you can, knowing you as a skater can't possibly go any faster than you already are - and then see one of them blow by you as though you weren't moving, taking long, lazy strides and, to all appearances, doing nothing more strenuous than taking a leisurely stroll around the park. It's a very humbling experience. But not as much as what I saw yesterday.

I was out on the ice, and, as is usual on days that end in y, a speedskater flew past me. I usually keep track of them while I'm out, so that I can gauge my progress as I become more comfortable on my own skates. But this particular skater only did three laps, in about the time it took me to complete one - I was disappointed, because there weren't any others out there, and also a little derisive; I, after all, had already done 9 laps and had no intention of quitting. But about ten minutes later, he came back out onto the ice, towing a four or five year old child. It was one of the most touhing scenes I'd ever witnessed; he held his child's hand, still moving with those long easy strides (albeit not at quite the same speed), and the boy, on miniature hockey skates (I don't think they even make speed skates in that size) was mimicking his dad's strides, step for step, his balance aided by the steady hand that gripped his own.

Horror Stories from my Coffee Shop - Ch. 2

I had a really busy day yesterday at work. In my restaurant/coffee shop/cyber cafe/bar, I am the final authority during my scheduled shift (and sometimes for a short while afterwards). I am the cashier, the coffee girl, the server, the cook, the busser, the dishwasher, and the bartender; I do it all. Mostly because at any given time, there's actually only one person ON shift here. And yesterday, my final till ringout from my shift was just about twice that of an 'average' day. So it was busy - but good. Right up until my very last customer of the evening.

She walked in while I was shelving some stock my boss had just brought in, and my very first thought was "You may not laugh at your customers!" She looked like she had fallen out of the 80's, and not on a good day. For starters, she was wearing this sweater. Pink doesn't even began to describe it; it was somwhere between salmon and coral, and it hurt my teeth to look directly at her. She was also wearing capri pants (and yes, last time I checked, it was still -10 outside), and had about 3 inches of ash brown roots beneath her platinum blonde home-bleach job. Apparently, though, her hair colour choice (however sporadic) was in earnest; she'd come in to use the computers, but had exactly no idea how to do so. So I spent the last 20 minutes of my shift trying (and believe me, it was extremely trying) to help her out. She couldn't remember her password for her email, she couldn't remember her user name for her email, and she didn't understand why, when she started a new hotmail account, the message she was expecting (and had, presumably, come in to the cyber cafe to check for) wasn't there; I honestly thought that my face was going to crack under the strain of repressed laughter.

I know that not everyone has more than an extremely basic understading of how computers work; I know that there are people in this very city who have never used one; but there are certain basic concepts that, to me at least, are only logical. Such as, you have to know the address you're retrieving your mail from in order to retrieve said mail. This is true for the world as it exists outside computers; it follows, therefore, that it would also be true for the world OF computers. People like this woman are why I classify being here as work.