(no subject)

[damselfish]

Last week, I went to my usual Starbucks and saw it changed. Apparently, I wasn't the only one peeved by it, and the barista and I commiserated, and he said he'd get me the contact info of whatever nimrod changed things up.

I went today and he wasn't there, but the barista knew me. We had the usual greeting and I said "now let's see if I can find anywhere comfortable to sit down." She looked baffled but I didn't think much of it. I avoided the chairs I sat in last week, where I spent a good 20 minutes sticking napkins under the chair and table legs, and sat at a fast food table instead (actually, it was my old table, but with a chair instead of my usual comfy bench).

I was in there for maybe thirty minutes before I couldn't take it anymore, and I walked up to her to ask if she knew who had done this, because it was time for an angry letter campaign. She was utterly confused.

"There's nowhere comfortable to sit!" I exclaimed. "I miss my bench!"

"But... what about those chairs?"

"They wobble."

"...Those?"

"They also wobble."

"Oh...." She looked amused, in the way that people do when I shoot down all their options because man it's so funny when I've thought of things before you, aren't I precious.

Another barista: "You don't like that there's more seating?" No, because there's nowhere for me to sit, I don't care if you put in 300 seats.

Then a woman in line pipes up with how she likes it. Everyone in the store likes it. They like the chairs with the raised edges that dig into the bottom of your legs, with seating too short to sit in comfortably without your ass sliding half out of the chair if you try to rest against the back. They like the super deep microsuede chairs that wobble at the wobbly tables, chairs that I can't sit without tucking my feet up because the distance from back to edge is longer than my upper leg (and if you think I'm gonna spend hours sitting on the edge of the chair, you got another thing coming). They like the fact that it looks straight out of McDonalds. They like the industrial beige paint.

So apparently I'm the aberration, and so is the first barista, who had nothing but complaints about the place, too (it takes two people to move a table), and stories of other people who hated it. Apparently, all the Starbucks in the region are going to become uncomfortably unpleasant.

Which means I need somewhere else to write my books, if not at home. I spent 2 or 3 days a week in Starbucks (more, on vacations), and there's... really nowhere else to go. Panera cuts off the wi-fi at 30 minutes (and I don't know my data plan well enough yet to run Pandora over my phone), and we have no other coffee houses.

It feels strangely like being evicted. I've been going to that Starbucks long enough to write two novels and give them both a once-over editing. I've written countless short stories there. I knew everyone that worked there, and they knew me. Unlike Panera, everyone was nice, they all were more than happy to shoot the breeze with me.

Oh well. I'll save a small fortune on vanilla lattes and white mochas, I guess. I'll miss all the freebies the first barista gave me, though.