Four (skywalking) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2020-09-26 21:35:00 |
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Ben loathed errand day, so when he got to the point that he had to go into town and pick up necessities, he compromised with a trip to the bookstore to end the ordeal. Do what he had to do, what he didn’t enjoy in the least, and then splurge at the bookstore to celebrate getting through the necessary errands.
Of course no trip to the bookstore was complete without grabbing an overpriced coffee at the cafe. He was in line, the line was five people deep and the lady at the counter thought the barista was there to chat with her. The line hadn’t moved for several minutes because the lady kept asking questions. The person in front of Ben stalked off in a huff, and Ben turned to the person behind him.
“So this is fun,” he said. Because he really didn’t know what to say, but he felt like he should say something. Maybe striking a conversation with a complete stranger would make the time go faster.
Most of the time Billy wasn’t out during the day, but with school starting up for the kids, he got a little time in the day to just go do adult style things rather than glorified babysitter stuff. Although he didn’t have a lot of adult stuff to do, he’d ended up deciding that a coffee before heading home would be a decent way to kill some time.
At least until he got into the slowest moving line of all time.
“So fun,” chatting to strangers wasn’t really something Billy was overly prone to -least of all since he had strangers calling for IT support for hours on end, but California seemed way more friendly than New York or Texas. This kind of thing had always happened in San Francisco after all. “Like, half the time people are the issue when ‘fast food’ gets slowed the hell down.” His London accent started to come through a little with the frustration, just a little thicker than usual, but Billy hadn’t ever really kicked the accent in all the places he’d been before.
“Oh, you’re definitely not wrong,” Ben agreed. Sometimes there were other legit problems, but a lot of the time the problem was the customers. So many of them expected to customise their order, but took their time figuring out exactly what they wanted. It was a nightmare from the other side of the counter too.
He had the feeling the guy didn’t want to talk, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “I’m about ready to decide the coffee’s not worth it. Even if it is usually pretty good here.”
“I dunno if I’d go that far,” leaving before getting the coffee would be like standing in the street for five minutes before just carrying on. Billy was nothing if not determined to make any length of time he did something be productive. “For the coffee, I’d probably tolerate like, another twenty minutes and just passive aggressively glare at people taking too long.”
Which was not a lie, in any way. “If I’m feeling really petty I’ll take my time ordering too.” Only on those days when he’s feeling like he has to share all his suffering with other people, they tended to only crop up from time to time, but that wasn’t the point. “I’m a bit of a drama queen.” Something he openly admitted to.
Ben worked in food service, at one of the concession stands at the theme park. He absolutely loathed the people who got up to the register and had no idea what they wanted, then hemmed and hawed about it, taking their sweet time making a decision. It made things ten times more difficult, for everyone.
“Good to know,” he said about the drama queen comment. He appreciated the frankness. It was good to know one’s own bad habits. And really, Ben wasn’t going to hold it against him. At least not as long as he wasn’t the one trying to take his order when he was being petty.
It just felt pointless and unnecessary to him. “I’d rather just give my order, get my stuff, and be done with it.”
Everyone had their little things, and while Billy tried not to be a peeve to people in the food service industries, there were days when he just really couldn’t help but be petty -usually it was for the benefit of the people behind him.
“I at least have the consideration to not screw around with people behind me.” It wasn’t like he was going to be a total dick. Although glancing behind him, hearing some sighs and moans, he wasn’t exactly about to hold these people up any further today.
“I wish we had those Star Trek things, y’know? Where you just get anything you were asking for. That’d make fast food actually fast.”
“That would be so cool,” Ben agreed. Putting the fast back in fast food would be awesome. He was young enough he didn’t really even remember when fast food was fast, and hot, and decent. Getting a hot meal in a fast food joint seemed to be a rare occurrence anymore.
“But until then, we have to deal with this bullshit.” He sighed. At least it seemed like the person at the counter was finally satisfied enough to step away. That in itself seemed like a miracle.
“I half wonder if it’s like something trying to encourage us to do it ourselves,” the service industry took hits all over the place, shitty pay and terrible customers most of the time. But Billy couldn’t help but contemplate that it was all a conspiracy theory. “If the service sucks enough, we’ll stop using it.”
But then, it wasn’t like people weren’t lazy enough to just suffer too, and complain about it.
There was a sigh of relief as the person was finally moving away, satisfied, and Billy hoped the few others wouldn’t be just as awkward.
“That’s always a possibility,” Ben said. He could see the logic. “But you’d think the company would want to ensure the customers keep coming.” The problem was the people physically providing the service didn’t get their pockets lined by the company’s profits, so what did they care, really?
Thankfully the line started moving at a decent pace once that problem customer was out of the way.
Companies rarely really seemed to think too much about what people wanted, just that they’d most likely keep buying things if they made them desirable enough. Given that he’d worked with enough people having issues with Apple products, Bill knew that very well.
“You’d think so, but it doesn’t always seem to be the case.” Probably around the same way that companies didn’t really care too much about the people who worked for them. “Probably a little important in the scheme of things.”
“Definitely,” Ben nodded. The line moved again. Sad, that the line moving felt almost exciting at this point. Ben was simple, in that he liked simple pleasures. The line moving was definitely one of them after the wait they’d had.
It felt like a natural end to the conversation, and Ben was content to stand in companionable silence now until he gave his order.