Get the Fuck Out of My Way

I got somethin' to say.

I'd say that pretty much everyone who lives in a place with a mall has been in a mall. I don't care if you say you've never been there, that's a lie. You've been there. So, consequently, when you've been in a mall, you've been in a line-up, or a queue, or the soul-sucker (that's where you stand in a line for more than five minutes, and all you have is one item). And if you've been in a line-up, you know the procedure. It's pretty fucking simple. So simple, in fact, that it's kind of fucking automatic. The cashiers are there to help speed this along. Here is the procedure:

1. Present items to purchase/order food/drink/tickets
2. Wait for cashier to tally prices, then tell you how much you must pay (this is also illuminated on nifty cash register screens, so you don't even have to listen if you don't wanna)
3. present method of payment
4. take goods/drinks/food/tickets and leave the line

Does this happen all the time, like it should? Now, I'm what I call a commando shopper. I don't even leave the house until I know exactly what I want, where to get it, how much to spend, how I'm going to pay. I get in, I get out. Rambo and Chuck Norris have got nothing on me. In and out like the fucking wind.

Sadly, where I live, I am almost alone. This is a far more likely scenario. I will use a Starbucks as my locale.

1. Order a moccachino/mocha latte/caffey laddie/ask what's good to drink/ask the fat content of the buttermilk cinnamon role/ask if they have a snack food not sold since the 80's.
2. Get horribly confused by size of drink (small, regular, big, bigbig --- don't let the fancy faux-Italian names fool you), forcing barista to rely on monkey see-monkey do style selling (holding up drink cup and pointing to it, mimicking a person drinking)
3. Order five or six different drinks from a napkin in your pocket (forgetting that their is one more on the back until you're at the other end, picking up drinks, and the new line is twice as big)
4. Ask that drinks have names printed on them.
5. Ask for one very specific cookie, at the bottom, in the back, underneath all the other cookies, that is only different in so far as it possesses a mildly different geophysical location.
6. Send it back when it has nuts in it because, fortunately, you will die if you eat nuts.
7. Drop your keys, pick them up, knock down a bag of coffee.
8. Quibble over the price by mentally calculating how much it should cost in crazy world, forcing barista to go over the entire order line by line, complete with GST and PST breakdown.
9. Try to pay by debit.
10. Try to pay by credit card.
11. Pull out half a dozen Starbucks pay as you go cards and hope you have enough.
12. Let a friend at the back of the line put their order on yours.
13. Realize you have enough cash in your pocket after all and pay with cash, intentionally shorting the barista a quarter but getting busted anyway
14. Turning around and looking at the line then having the indeceny to 'apologize' by saying you've never been to a Starbucks before.
    

Let me tell you something, you cockass motherfucker. Starbucks is like, final year of University interaction with the outside world. You don't just jump in with both feet and hope to come out standing. The variables involved in a successful coffee/cash transaction are so dense it makes quantum physics math look like grade school counting with apples (JOhnny has six apples, he gives you two apples, how many apples does Johnny have left?) Everyone else in the line is suffering from the Jones, and they can hardly breathe by the time they make it to the line, the last thing they want to go through is BoBo The Chimp trying to sham his way through a Grand Magus level exchange of goods and services. The baristas can see you coming a mile away, and they've protected themselves by throwing the least efficient barista in the front counter (this is also a way to thin the herd) in the hopes that his/her/its communication skills will be to your level. They don't like it when you see the syrup rack after you've ordered and then try to con your way into some vanilla. We all hate it when you act as though your ignorance is, in some way, humorous and not your fault.

It is your fault. Your ignorance is entirely your fault. If you can't handle the line at a Starbucks, if you can't get in and get out without more than five minutes going by, go to Timmy's or McDonald's. Do I sound like the Soup Nazi? Maybe a little. I jibjab with the kids on the counter as often as I can but only when there is no line. Have I been going there a long time? Yes. More than ten years. Should I give people the chance to have my level of experience?

Fuck no. If life was a MUD, I'd be PK'ing those motherfuckers left right and center.

And I don't even wanna get started on what happens when there are children involved in the ordering process, other than to say I almost stabbed someone to death the other day with my index finger.