Jeff didn’t think too much about the girl who came in by herself, ordered organic tea, and sat down by one of the windows. If he had only known what was in store for his shift at the coffee shop.
About ten minutes after she arrived, a guy came in, ordered a drip coffee, and joined her. He was wearing torn jeans, a dark sweatshirt, and had blond dreads. She was wearing a denim jacket and thick dark-rimmed glasses. Her light brown hair was cut short.
She perked up when the guy with the dreads walked into the coffee shop. Her back straightened and her head lifted to watch him as he got his coffee. He smiled and said “hey” to her on his way to the cash register.
Jeff still didn’t think anything of it as he got the guy’s coffee and the couple started their first date.
But the coffee shop was a hole in the wall. The couple sat just a few feet from where Jeff worked behind the bar and he could hear every. Single. Word.
“Hey,” the girl said all giggly.
“Hey, how are you?”
“Good, you?”
“Good. I’m glad we decided to do this.”
“Yeah, me too. I have to admit I was pretty nervous.”
The guy cocked his head. “Really?”
“Yeah. First dates are always nerve wracking, aren’t they?”
“I guess. But it’s not like a blind date. We’ve hung out before, so we know we have stuff in common.”
“That’s true.” She giggled again and Jeff heard the awkwardness in the brief silence that followed.
“Do you like going to movies?”
“Yeah, I love movies!”
“I just saw ‘Steve Jobs’. Have you seen that one?”
“No, I haven’t. Is it any good?”
“It is. It’s really well done, but, I dunno, I’m kind of over the whole ‘oh this guy was such a genius! We should all worship him!’”
“I know, right? And from what I’ve heard about Steve Jobs, he was kind of an asshole in real life.”
“Yeah, the movie doesn’t paint him in a great light either. But at the same time, so many people look up to him and he has all these books and movies about him.”
“And it’s like, what does that say about our society if we worship all these people who are really smart, but they’re also really mean and that’s how they get to the top?”
“I know. What does that even mean? ‘Get to the top?’ The top of what?”
“The corporate ladder. What we should all strive for.” The girl’s voice was full of sarcasm as she said this.
“I know, but what kind of life is that?”
“Shallow. Did you ever see ‘Fight Club?’”
“Yeah, I love that movie!” The guy leaned so far back in his chair as he said this that Jeff was afraid he was going to fall off. Then Jeff would have to clean up his spilled coffee. The guy with the dreads did not fall off his chair.
“You know how at the beginning he’s got all this stuff he’s ordered from different catalogues?”
“Yeah, because corporate America is telling him how to live and he totally buys into it. Literally.”
The girl laughed harder at this joke than Jeff thought was strictly necessary. “Yeah, but it makes him so miserable that he starts going to cancer support groups because that’s less depressing than his life. I always wonder about that with people like Steve Jobs. He didn’t seem like a very happy dude.”
“Totally.”
Jeff thought he sounded like such a stereotypical surfer as he said that word, he couldn’t help mocking it under his breath, his back turned to the new couple.
To be continued …
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