An Evening at Starbucks

Can you tell that we are Starbucks fans? Amanda and I make a habit of heading down to our "third place" (Starbucks), almost every Friday or Saturday evening. (thank goodness for gift cards!) We kinda do this as a date night, or take a break and reconnect after busy weeks. Now normally, it is a quite evening spending time talking, reading books or playing games, but tonight (Saturday night) was a different story. We got in, ordered our coffee and went looking for the comfy chairs (of which there are only two), only to find that there was disheveled man occupying just one of the two comfy chairs. We sat down at the table next to him, in hopes that he would move fairly quickly and we could take his seat. We are patient people! However, he ended up falling asleep and we move tables so that we could hook up the computer to an outlet. After we moved tables, one of the baristas, Jess, came over and asked us if we moved tables because the man smelled bad. We didn't smell anything. A few minutes pass, and we see another barista, Jen, go over and nudge the man awake and politely ask that he either stayed awake or that he needed to leave. It took her a bit to wake him up, and he seemed not to answer her. A few more minutes pass, and Jen returns to wake him up again. It took her almost 30 seconds to rouse him and he still didn't move. More time passes and this time, Jess goes over and tries to wake him. Still no movement, and no response. This time there was a warning that more action would be taken if he didn't move. He promptly fell back asleep after Jess left. Tyler, another barista, comes by our table and tells us that the cops are coming but that he wishes he could have at him. We tell him that we'll take our camera and record the action, but the man has to hit him first so that its self-defence. We also joke that "what is starbucks going to do? Fire you?" (it was his last day at work, as he is going to join the army). Needless to say, about 10 minutes pass and two cops walk in the door. Everyone just smiles and turns to watch. The cops take nearly a minute to wake the man (he was obviously on something). They proceed to talk to the man for a moment, and the next thing we hear is the sound of handcuffs being put on him. They take him out and grab his jacket. Seeing the seats empty, Jess told us to get up and move over to them. We walk over, but realize that the seat needs a wipe before we can sit down. She gladly sanitizes the seat for us (she really does like us!) and goes to grab a glove to remove the man's hat from the floor. She needed to wear gloves, since there was an unknown substance crawling in his hat. We proceeded to enjoy our evening at Starbucks, while listening to the music that Jess and Tyler had on their ipod. (no standard company music for us!) When they were putting this music on, we were the only ones in the entire establishment that they asked permission to put on the music. We gladly agreed and enjoyed an eclectic mix of music.

Tyler and Jess from our local starbucks