This story has Kasamba written all over it. I think this story was supposed to have happened to Kasamba, but there must have been a mix up and I witnessed it myself. Go figure.
So I had to visit a client in New York City this week and took the LIRR (the train) into the city in the morning. As I was walking to the office, I decided to stop at a Starbucks on the way to grab an iced coffee. This particular Starbucks is on the corner of Broadway and 52nd Street (I had to clarify that considering there is a Starbucks on almost every corner of NYC).
For those who don't frequent a Starbucks -- especially a rather large one such as this on in NYC -- let me describe the scene:
There are about 12 tables with people hunched over laptops, reading novels, staring out the windows, talking (loudly) on cell phones, and peering at NYC street maps (aka tourists). The place is noisy. There are an average of 20-25 people in a line waiting to place their order.
Behind the counter is an extremely efficient group of college-goers (attempting to make money to pay for their high tuition and NYC apartments) who work in tandem like a well-oiled machine. Each employee behind the counter wears a headset so they can communicate with each other. They have codewords that they yell out to each other as they take orders from the ever-growing line.
"DOUBLE LAT SKIM!" "GRANDE NO WHIP MOCHA!" Like an elite unit of Navy Seals, orders are barked, cups are marked and passed to each other, machines are humming, milk is frothing, ice is chinking -- it's a sight to be seen.
To be even more efficient, one of the guys behind the counter takes orders from the line so that by the time you get to the register to pay, you order has already been placed. By the time you finish handing over your week's salary for a solitary cup of Joe, someone at the end of the assembly line is shouting out that your beverage is ready for pickup.
The guy taking the orders ask me for my order and I place it. After barking the order into his headset mic, he looks at the guy standing behind me and says "good morning, what would you like?" The man looks a bit lost with everything going on around him. The guy with the headset leans forward, waiting for the order and then it comes...
"Um, I'll... I'll have a coffee"
As those words leave his mouth, the entire store comes to a screeching halt. Silence. The guy with the headset has this look on his face that can't really be described. You can tell that he WANTS to say something like "Hey everyone! This guy want's a COFFEE!" Instead, he is speechless.
I myself wanted to turn to the guy and say "Dude, of COURSE you want a coffee -- that's why you walked into this place in the first place, no?"
Meanwhile, the entire store is watching to see what will transpire next.
Finally, the guy with the headset finds his voice. "Um, what KIND of coffee would you like?" The guy responds that he'd just like a coffee -- a plain one. "OK" the guy in he headset replies. Now he starts to talk slowly, using his hands alot "and what SIZE would you like for your plain coffee?" After a slight pause, the man responds that he'd like a "medium". The headset dude sighs, barks some code into his headset (probably instructing the man behind the Barista machine to spit into the cup) and just as quickly, the hustle and bustle returns throughout the store and all is back to normal.
Someone like Google should really create a translation module for converting regular English into Starbucks ordering lingo, just to help tourists get an expensive cup of coffee in NY...
Wherever I order my coffee, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael
Showing posts with label Kasamba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kasamba. Show all posts
Friday, June 29, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
A Kasamba Guest Post: Grab and Move
(Coming out of retirement for a special guest-posting...it's Kasamba!)
There are many things in the world I just loooove and very few I detest.
Buffets are one of them.
By buffet, I mean what some of you would call smorgasbord. You know, where huge mountains of food are lavishly displayed, inviting one to help themselves.
It is the ‘helping of oneself’ that I take umbrage to.
Put it this way, if I am invited out, I want to be served, thank you very much.
Maybe it’s because I am just not a hunter-gatherer.
I don’t like standing holding a plate in my hand waiting for my turn for some underpaid waiter to dole out some rations my way. It makes me feel too much like Oliver Twist.
(Tiny voice)‘Please sir, may I have some more?’
I watch those women who rush to the buffet table only to bring platters full of every type of food for their family, while their husbands and kids sit like Pashas. I admire them, I truly do. They remind me of little ants scurrying around shlepping fare larger than themselves for the benefit of the generously proportioned, therefore more immobile ants.
My husband, Boruch Hashem doesn’t mind serving himself at these types of shindigs because he loves buffets. This is just another example of how opposites attract. He actually finds food tastes better when eaten while standing up balancing grub on a paper plate. I have essentially tested him on this. What I found was really, truly, well… disturbing to say the least. One Shabbos, I dished out chulent in a plastic bowl with a plastic spoon to husband while he was standing and got all the kids to crowd him into a corner.
He said it was the best chulent I ever made.
I rest my case.
But to me, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Kiddush, wedding smorgasbord or hotel buffet, I find them equally as frustrating. Nothing is ever really hot and you never know how many eons everything was left out of the fridge for, or who touched what and how. Then there is the etiquette involved. You know, how people are supposed to behave. The problem is the protocol involved seems to be as well known as the Coca-Cola recipe or the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffas body. But, for Heavens sake how difficult is it for people to understand that as soon as they take their food, they must MOVE AWAY FROM THE TABLE. Unfortunately, most people do not. They stand proprietarily next to the table trying to figure out what the sauce covered lump is or enjoying a discourse with their mates while the rest of us look longingly at food we can never reach.
Oh, just to own my own bullhorn…
And then there are the little ones; the ones dependant on us big people for sustenance. Well, when they are invited to partake of a buffet, they are counted as a number and paid for but they end up eating four slices of red pepper and three slices of cucumber. I felt so happy when my little one goes for seconds. I feel like at least the Baal Simcha is getting thirty cents more value for his money. But then you take them home and the notion kicks in; they are now hungry and start to cry about starvation. Starvation? I still don’t understand why it is that when my kids see plates piled high with a small countries natural produce it puts them off their food. It doesn’t put me off mine. Not even gastroenteritis puts me off my food. I’m made of tough stuff. However, you have to appreciate the wonderful irony; the very same parents that encourage their kids to finish everything on their plates because people are starving in Bangladesh are the same parents who, at a buffet, will encourage those same kids to pile their plates like pagan offerings. All because it’s there.
In my forty years of partaking from these feasts, I have never heard anyone request that the remainder be shipped off as foreign aid.
It’s never really necessary anyhow, because there is always at least one woman who piles loads of the food on offer into her handbag. To have perhaps, ‘for later’.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear there is a table laden with fresh waffles at the Muquata compound.
Therefore, I’m telling you all, respectfully and in a most dignified manner, to make way… pronto; when it comes to buffets, I fight dirty.
Mazal Tov Muquata members!
Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael
Buffets are one of them.
By buffet, I mean what some of you would call smorgasbord. You know, where huge mountains of food are lavishly displayed, inviting one to help themselves.
It is the ‘helping of oneself’ that I take umbrage to.
Put it this way, if I am invited out, I want to be served, thank you very much.
Maybe it’s because I am just not a hunter-gatherer.
I don’t like standing holding a plate in my hand waiting for my turn for some underpaid waiter to dole out some rations my way. It makes me feel too much like Oliver Twist.
(Tiny voice)‘Please sir, may I have some more?’
I watch those women who rush to the buffet table only to bring platters full of every type of food for their family, while their husbands and kids sit like Pashas. I admire them, I truly do. They remind me of little ants scurrying around shlepping fare larger than themselves for the benefit of the generously proportioned, therefore more immobile ants.
My husband, Boruch Hashem doesn’t mind serving himself at these types of shindigs because he loves buffets. This is just another example of how opposites attract. He actually finds food tastes better when eaten while standing up balancing grub on a paper plate. I have essentially tested him on this. What I found was really, truly, well… disturbing to say the least. One Shabbos, I dished out chulent in a plastic bowl with a plastic spoon to husband while he was standing and got all the kids to crowd him into a corner.
He said it was the best chulent I ever made.
I rest my case.
But to me, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a Kiddush, wedding smorgasbord or hotel buffet, I find them equally as frustrating. Nothing is ever really hot and you never know how many eons everything was left out of the fridge for, or who touched what and how. Then there is the etiquette involved. You know, how people are supposed to behave. The problem is the protocol involved seems to be as well known as the Coca-Cola recipe or the whereabouts of Jimmy Hoffas body. But, for Heavens sake how difficult is it for people to understand that as soon as they take their food, they must MOVE AWAY FROM THE TABLE. Unfortunately, most people do not. They stand proprietarily next to the table trying to figure out what the sauce covered lump is or enjoying a discourse with their mates while the rest of us look longingly at food we can never reach.
Oh, just to own my own bullhorn…
And then there are the little ones; the ones dependant on us big people for sustenance. Well, when they are invited to partake of a buffet, they are counted as a number and paid for but they end up eating four slices of red pepper and three slices of cucumber. I felt so happy when my little one goes for seconds. I feel like at least the Baal Simcha is getting thirty cents more value for his money. But then you take them home and the notion kicks in; they are now hungry and start to cry about starvation. Starvation? I still don’t understand why it is that when my kids see plates piled high with a small countries natural produce it puts them off their food. It doesn’t put me off mine. Not even gastroenteritis puts me off my food. I’m made of tough stuff. However, you have to appreciate the wonderful irony; the very same parents that encourage their kids to finish everything on their plates because people are starving in Bangladesh are the same parents who, at a buffet, will encourage those same kids to pile their plates like pagan offerings. All because it’s there.
In my forty years of partaking from these feasts, I have never heard anyone request that the remainder be shipped off as foreign aid.
It’s never really necessary anyhow, because there is always at least one woman who piles loads of the food on offer into her handbag. To have perhaps, ‘for later’.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear there is a table laden with fresh waffles at the Muquata compound.
Therefore, I’m telling you all, respectfully and in a most dignified manner, to make way… pronto; when it comes to buffets, I fight dirty.
Mazal Tov Muquata members!
Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael
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