The Chick with the Check

I must have 'take all the time in the world, I have nothing else to do' tattooed on my forehead. I know it's not on my back because the people who can read it are always in line ahead of me.

Being 45 minutes early to a photography class, and knowing there wasn't a public restroom at the store where I bought the expensive camera and therefore earned these lessons, I followed my bliss to the large grocery store around the corner from my destination. Inside was a Starbucks, and while I didn't need any more coffee, I though a pastry would help deter the growling stomach since the class wouldn't end until past my regular lunchtime.

Of course, the Starbucks had been empty when I went in and had a line once I was ready to buy. No problem. I still had 30 minutes. I picked out my pastry, much as I would stand at the butcher's counter and select the steak of choice, and waited.

And waited.

The woman in front of me, said Chick (term courtesy of my son), was probably 40. Harried, in a hurry, with a burgeoning purse and a red all-weather coat. She was taller than I was and knew exactly what she wanted. Good, I thought, then I processed the order: decaf, Americano, tall but in a venti cup, no water, but ice.

Okay. Kind of defeats the idea of a morning jolt to have decaf anything, and an Americano by definition is made with water. What she wanted was iced decaf. THEN, to add insult to what-the-heck is going on here, when handed the beverage she wanted them to fill it the rest of the way with milk. Maybe it was 2%. Or soy. I don't know because by then we were in the payment problem.

She'd left home without her debit card. She didn't have the $2.44 for the beverage. Could she write a check?

A check? What's that in big urban Dallas? I haven't seen a check pulled out of anyone's wallet in ages. Everybody debits or credits or occasionally (like me) pays cash.

They agreed to a check and she dashed it off. Into the machine it went. Out. In. Out. By this time, she was consuming whatever coffee-like atrocity she had, so there was really no giving it back. The cash register (what an anachronistic name) stopped. It wanted a driver's license. For a $2.44 check. It was even, as she pointed out, drawn on the bank whose offices were inside the grocery store.

She handed her license over. Punch, punch, punch. The check goes in and out and in and out... and something else comes up on the screen and the clerk, herself now not feeling too well, calls over her superior. There was a problem she'd not seen before.

While Two takes over that problem, One asks to get my beverage started. I point out my special pastry and she pulls it out, then asks her boss if there's any way they can ring it up. Of course not. There's only one register. By this time, they're calling the manager of the grocery store over and I'm tapping my foot. Time has nothing to do with this. I have plenty of time. After all, that's what my tattoo proclaims, right? I'm focusing all my chagrin on the woman who doesn't know what coffee is.

"I have cash," I say. "How much is it?" Two eleven they tell me. I find the exact change (whew!--I could have ended up making a donation of pennies to them--and I would have), snatch up my ill-gotten gain and go to the car. There, I unwrap my package, decide where to take the first bite, and wait for the Chick with the Check to emerge from the store.

She flies out the door and down the sidewalk about the time I realize I don't care for this particular pastry at all.