Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Coffee Schopenhauer

The past few weeks, I've become a fixture at the Starbucks at Jennersville. I've been proofreading a 1,200-page philosophy textbook on hard copy, and this required more spreading-out space than I could find at home. The tables at Starbucks are exactly the right size and height, so I could work for literally hours without slouching or getting a crick in my neck.
(You may ask: Why not Longwood Starbucks, or the Bayard Taylor library, or Cafe Lindo? Answer: I'd see too many people I know and would get no work done.)
Apparently a lot of folks besides me use Starbucks as their office or a daily stopping-off spot, and the extraordinarily friendly and dedicated staff greeted regulars by name and knew exactly what drink they'd want.
Because a lot of my work was pretty mechanical, I could amuse myself by people-watching. One day at the table next to me I overheard a woman give a sales pitch, complete with little flip charts, for her jewelry "home party" business. I wouldn't say she was exactly pushy, but she obviously had plenty of experience overcoming objections. When this one demurred, she asked her to set a date when she might be ready to reconsider. "Go home, talk to your husband," she advised. "He can call my husband if he wants."
Then there's the music Starbucks plays. I never knew what to expect: the Beatles, Bob Dylan, "Saturday Night Fever," reggae, squawky progressive jazz. It was surreal, proofreading Marx's "Communist Manifesto" while listening to a swingin' Frank Sinatra medley.
So now I'm finished, all the way from ancient Greece to Martin Luther King Jr.'s amazing Washington D.C. speech. And I think it'll be quite a few days before I have another Tall Iced Non-Fat Caramel Macchiato.

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