Sometimes when you see something from someone else’s eyes it looks way different than what you had gotten used to seeing it as.
That really stinks when it’s something you like — or, at least, used to like.
Sweetheart and I like different things, but we get along really well and indulge each other our delights.
He never had set foot in the ultra-common but still-aiming-at-fancy coffee shop chain my daughter and I go to until he went with me.
He wasn’t impressed.
Whenever my daughter and I go out of town and need a stop, we stop there. I like to get a cappuccino, and she gets some kind of frothy fancy drink.
So when Sweetheart and I went on a little getaway last weekend, I was hoping to indulge my travel habit, but shy about asking, considering how I knew he felt about it.
On the way home, though, he gave me a chance to pick where to stop.
He was offering, and I did have a hankering for a cappuccino.
“Well, there’s a Such-and-Such coffee shop up ahead two miles,” I said, after checking the Maps app.
He didn’t look too thrilled but he didn’t complain out loud, either.
He pulled off the highway and made the turns to get to the coffee shop.
Its parking lot was packed. The drive-in line circled around the building, but we were going to go in to take advantages of the facilities. After slowly squeezing the pickup truck in and around the traffic, we saw the sign on the door that said the inside was closed.
Ah, shoot. You know that feeling when you extended yourself and it didn’t work out. That was the case here.
However, he agreed to an attempt at a second branch of that coffee shop just a couple of miles down the road.
We got there. It was crowded, busy and noisy. The “decor” was stark and industrial black and grey. You could see the crumbs and trash all over the counters where they made the coffee. This coffee chain that used to be so comfortable and inviting 10 and 20 years ago now just looks like a warehouse to get to people’s money with as little effort as possible.
I ordered while he went to the restroom, and then I headed back there.
This place made its bathrooms for both men and women a few years back, which always has disconcerted me. I don’t like sharing bathrooms with men. When I got in there, I couldn’t even tell if the door was locked or not. It was a computer-type lock rather than a manual lock. Not even knowing if the bathroom door is locked or not makes it exponentially more unpleasant to share a bathroom with strange men.
The man waiting his turn behind me started to go in as I was fiddling with the lock. I told him I wasn’t leaving yet, just trying to figure out how to tell when the door was locked.
The man suggested I shut the door and try to lock it and he’d pull on it to let me know if it was locked or not. That seems kind of helpful and kind of creepy, but I didn’t see any other solution, so we did that.
That totally unpleasant bathroom experience behind me, I rejoined Sweetheart in the coffee line.
“This woke place has those bathrooms for both men and women,” he said. “I don’t like that. I’d rather us men have our own bathroom.”
“I wish y’all did too,” I replied.
We got our drinks and went back to the truck.
A few miles down the road, he asked me how much his plain coffee cost.
I mumbled an avoidance of an answer.
“It isn’t worth it,” he said. “That hotel coffee that you won’t drink is a whole lot better than this.”
I took a sip of his.
It was disgusting.
He was right.
I felt sorry for him being stuck with that bitter drink.
Though I like my usual order, going to this chain coffee shop has been worse and worse over the years.
By now he’d never believe me if I said some of those coffee shops do make good stops.
