Since I'm still in the early-summer stage of I Do Not Want to do Anything, I accomplished absolutely nothing today. I did make it to the gym, but that has more to do with the ridiculous little orange bathing suit I got over the winter (which I will probably never really wear, being inherently prudish) than it does with any real motivation.
And, since it was a pretty day and not oppressively humid, I decided to take a nice long walk. Very little new under the sun of North Baltimore; the early crop of roses has petered out and only the perpetual-bloomers are still doing their thing. Wildflowers are doing nicely. Oh, and the Borg--er, I mean JHU--has finally gotten around to tearing down a row of pretty '20s rowhouses on St. Paul street to allow construction of some ugly, under-designed new megalith.
I swear, I don't get that university. Even W&M and UVa, which have plenty of reason to do so, never act so consistently and overwhelmingly impressed with themselves as does Hopkins. And, certainly not in this part of the country is there any other university so hell-bent on taking over its host city. I suppose it's a symbiotic sort of parasite; without Hopkins, Baltimore would lose a hell of a lot of jobs. That aside, the university seems bent on molding the city to its will. It appears that the place has a yen for the ugly. When it was founded it inhabited a clutch of spectacularly ugly buildings (even by Victorian standards) downtown; when it moved up to North Charles street it promptly constructed a clutch of singularly forgettable and nondescript neo-Georgian edifices, and ever since has been gobbling up space with never-ending bland institutional architecture.
Enough of that business. Hopkins has absolutely no interest in my opinion and is hardly going to go out and build something pretty just because I think that it should. Which was more or less my opinion when, after surveying the ruin of a block of houses I rather liked, I decided that it was time for a cup of coffee.
I've been dismayed lately by the number of Starbucks that are cropping up around Baltimore. I don't particularly have anything against Starbucks; though I'm amused at its fad/obsession place in the culture du jour. It's just that, really, we already had some very nice coffee places of our own and I don't see why we need Starbucks. Foremost among the local coffee contenders is Donna's. Thus: I stopped at Donna's, where I uncharacteristically opted for one of those creamy sugary icy coffee thingies that do not resemble real coffee in the slightest, but which are rather tasty nonetheless.
While one of the counter folk was creating my whatever-the-hell-it-was, a fortyish man walked in and ordered a regular old coffee. Since pouring a cup of coffee takes considerably less time to prepare than the frothy creations, he had his coffee before I had my thingy, so I got to witness the rather bizarre follow-up.
Once he had his coffee, he went to the cream/sugar/napkin area, surveyed it briefly, then walked back to the counter. "Do you have any Splenda(TM)?" he asked. The girl at the counter said that no, unfortunately they didn't. "Are you sure?" he asked. At this point, I thought No, dude, she's not sure. She only works here. She's just saying that to annoy you.
So, Spenda-man decides that if he can't have the yellow packets of the gods, he doesn't want the coffee, and demands a refund. I wanted to see how this played out, but by this time my sugary mess was ready and I didn't want to stare.
I think that some people aren't happy unless they're making somebody else miserable. I mean, come on. You're already drinking supercharged coffee, which probably isn't the best thing for you anyway. You have two other options of chemically enhanced sweetness, which are--like Splenda--probably a lot worse for you than real live sugar. (For the record, Donna's has pure cane sugar in addition to the refined stuff.) Besides, if you're hell-bent on having the least common of the three standard non-sugar sweeteners, don't you think you might check on its availability before ordering? And, having already ordered and put the counter staff to the trouble to fill your order, couldn't you accept the harsh reality of the situation, heart-rending though it must be, and suck up and deal with Equal? Really now, demanding your money back over an issue like Splenda is a bit much.
And I'm sure that guy is now sitting at home making a blog entry lambasting Donna's and the provincial Baltimoreans for their insensitivity towards the non-Splenda-enabled.
And, since it was a pretty day and not oppressively humid, I decided to take a nice long walk. Very little new under the sun of North Baltimore; the early crop of roses has petered out and only the perpetual-bloomers are still doing their thing. Wildflowers are doing nicely. Oh, and the Borg--er, I mean JHU--has finally gotten around to tearing down a row of pretty '20s rowhouses on St. Paul street to allow construction of some ugly, under-designed new megalith.
I swear, I don't get that university. Even W&M and UVa, which have plenty of reason to do so, never act so consistently and overwhelmingly impressed with themselves as does Hopkins. And, certainly not in this part of the country is there any other university so hell-bent on taking over its host city. I suppose it's a symbiotic sort of parasite; without Hopkins, Baltimore would lose a hell of a lot of jobs. That aside, the university seems bent on molding the city to its will. It appears that the place has a yen for the ugly. When it was founded it inhabited a clutch of spectacularly ugly buildings (even by Victorian standards) downtown; when it moved up to North Charles street it promptly constructed a clutch of singularly forgettable and nondescript neo-Georgian edifices, and ever since has been gobbling up space with never-ending bland institutional architecture.
Enough of that business. Hopkins has absolutely no interest in my opinion and is hardly going to go out and build something pretty just because I think that it should. Which was more or less my opinion when, after surveying the ruin of a block of houses I rather liked, I decided that it was time for a cup of coffee.
I've been dismayed lately by the number of Starbucks that are cropping up around Baltimore. I don't particularly have anything against Starbucks; though I'm amused at its fad/obsession place in the culture du jour. It's just that, really, we already had some very nice coffee places of our own and I don't see why we need Starbucks. Foremost among the local coffee contenders is Donna's. Thus: I stopped at Donna's, where I uncharacteristically opted for one of those creamy sugary icy coffee thingies that do not resemble real coffee in the slightest, but which are rather tasty nonetheless.
While one of the counter folk was creating my whatever-the-hell-it-was, a fortyish man walked in and ordered a regular old coffee. Since pouring a cup of coffee takes considerably less time to prepare than the frothy creations, he had his coffee before I had my thingy, so I got to witness the rather bizarre follow-up.
Once he had his coffee, he went to the cream/sugar/napkin area, surveyed it briefly, then walked back to the counter. "Do you have any Splenda(TM)?" he asked. The girl at the counter said that no, unfortunately they didn't. "Are you sure?" he asked. At this point, I thought No, dude, she's not sure. She only works here. She's just saying that to annoy you.
So, Spenda-man decides that if he can't have the yellow packets of the gods, he doesn't want the coffee, and demands a refund. I wanted to see how this played out, but by this time my sugary mess was ready and I didn't want to stare.
I think that some people aren't happy unless they're making somebody else miserable. I mean, come on. You're already drinking supercharged coffee, which probably isn't the best thing for you anyway. You have two other options of chemically enhanced sweetness, which are--like Splenda--probably a lot worse for you than real live sugar. (For the record, Donna's has pure cane sugar in addition to the refined stuff.) Besides, if you're hell-bent on having the least common of the three standard non-sugar sweeteners, don't you think you might check on its availability before ordering? And, having already ordered and put the counter staff to the trouble to fill your order, couldn't you accept the harsh reality of the situation, heart-rending though it must be, and suck up and deal with Equal? Really now, demanding your money back over an issue like Splenda is a bit much.
And I'm sure that guy is now sitting at home making a blog entry lambasting Donna's and the provincial Baltimoreans for their insensitivity towards the non-Splenda-enabled.
posted by Daniel | 11:48 PM
2 Comments:
I am reminded, here, of a mother-daughter pair at a GS camping event I once ran. Mother kvetched about something; I stood firm. Mother bitched louder, and then some more, and I gave in. Mother tunred to daughter and said, See, honey? It pays to be the squeaky wheel.
That's right, I was part of the problem -- as well as witness to a parent instructing a child in how to be a pain in the ass. I don't even remember the incidnet -- an extra event t-shirt? Going to the head of the lunch line? -- just the lesson that we all learned. I've gotten better at standing my ground.
That type of behavior, of course, is the polar opposite of my own. I rarely complain. If I ask for a refund, it's usually because I bought the cone-shape coffee filters, not the flat bottomed ones. In fact, many's the time I used various chemical sweeters for my coffee because there was no real sugar. Can you imagine? Someone said, "Let's put coffee out for the meeting. Hmm -- there's only pink-n-sweet. That's okay, everyone's on a diet, right?"
Ah, the Little Miss Superior Virginia/Maryland Girl that I love to hate/love, depending upon her actions... "If I'm cute/bitchy enough, I will get what I want!"
Whereas I've learned to use this tactic myself, I hope never to be caught in the act of publicly congratulating myself upon it. This woman was evidently an "NOKD" Wendy West-End type, not a true Richmond girl, who would have waited until she was alone with her daughter before describing her tactics.
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