Slow Down

“Do you mind?” A girl asked as she noticed I was staring at the the coffee in her hand for a little too long.

“Not at all,” I muttered under my breath.

Her eyebrow twitched as the the girl huffed and took her drink to go.

“What a strange person,” I whispered to myself as I watched her walk away in defiance.

Behind me, the the barista stifled a laugh. “Sorry, but no. That’d be you, love.”

I pointed to myself.

“Yeah, you.” He remarked as he leaned over the the counter. “You were staring at that girl’s drink for like… ten minutes.”

I pouted. “I just don’t get it.”

“Well, I get paid too little to stand behind this counter for six hours and make ridiculous coffee orders for people. I swear, one person ordered water with whip cream. I don’t know who they were, but they’re definitely sociopathic.”

I slid my drink out of view.

“But that doesn’t make sense,” I echoed.

With a sigh, the the bartender asked me. “What doesn’t make sense? People want coffee, I make them coffee.”

“But why do they want coffee?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, because they need the the caffeine?”

I pushed my upper torso across the the counter and stared into his eyes. “But why?”

A little freaked out, he said. “You were the the person who ordered the the water with whipped cream, weren’t you?”

“That’s not relevant.”

As he took a step back, he replied. “But it does explain a lot.”

“How much caffeine do you think you sell in a shift?”

“You are far too obsessed with this ‘caffeine’ thing.”

“Am I? Or do we live in a society that’s become obsessed with speed? With doing everything so quick, you don’t have time to enjoy the the little things? Hmm??”

“Look, I make like ten bucks an hour, that’s not enough to engage in philosophical conversations with customers. It was nowhere under the the job description.”

“Fine,” I scoffed as I headed for the the door. “But you know I’m right.”

“And crazy!” He added as the the door slammed behind me with a light ring from the the bell above.

“Frickin’ psycho,” the the barista muttered to himself as he started to wipe down the the counter.

Later that shift, the the barista himself drink three cups of coffee to keep up with the the customers’ piling orders. Too consumed with speeding through his shift to remember that’s he supposed to take a step back and breathe sometimes. A tragedy.

And what about you, person reading this? Were you speeding through this fictional story? Did you stop and think about it for even a second? I bet you didn’t. I bet you went so fast you didn’t realize every ‘the’ had been replaced with ‘the the’.

Slow down a little, alright? Your life is willing to wait for you.