Coffee Culture: Are You the Asshole?

What a waste of my time.

I don’t drink coffee. I know, it’s shocking. I don’t enjoy the acrid taste of a piece of chocolate dredged in battery acid and dropped into an ashtray, then boiled. I’m also not a huge fan of jumpstarting my heart every morning and the impending palpitations, and I’ve been taught, in every other instance anyway, that chemical dependence on a substance is a negative thing.

But I’m in the minority. Two-thirds of Americans drink coffee every day. That leaves a third of us who are original.

That’s fine, do whatever you want, but I’ve observed that Americans collectively engage in other mainstream behaviors which will be looked upon as peculiar a few decades from now, such as basing their political beliefs off of casual conspiracy mongering on the internet.

I truly don’t care if you have an unhealthy habit. What bothers me is the hubris these people have to think it should also dictate my life, as a non-coffee drinker.

Trust me, I get it. I was never a weed smoker, but growing up literally everyone I knew was a pothead, and I spent several hours a day driving around with people who were chasing after it.

It was an annoyance to be sure, but not as off-putting as hanging out with someone who thinks their fiending for coffee is a more rational endeavor.

At least when you’re out scoring drugs it’s something of an adventure. You will meet interesting people, usually interesting in a morbid way admittedly, but it’s better than chatting with the anesthesiologist softball coach wearing nut huggers and knee-high socks in a packed Coffee Bean while the sun is shining outside and you’re listening to an auctioneer screaming, “David! David! David? David!” while Michael Bolton is on and you’re shivering from the AC.

Wait. What just happened? Why are we here again?

Let’s see, 365 days in a year, minus weekends let’s say 251 days times twelve excruciating minutes per Starbucks visit, equals 2892 minutes or 48 hours.

That’s your average salary man in America’s time spent in a Starbucks or the equivalent, maybe something more pretentious where the homeless check their emails.

Two days your average union-buster-enabling Starbucks supporter could have spent in Cabo, an easy trip to cover if you figure a coffee is 6 bucks, times 241, equals 1500 dollars.

You’ll have to stay in one of those ghetto all-inclusive joints but still, which would you rather have, that or stained teeth?

These people will fuck up the itinerary, the schedule, the route, the program, the timetable, the plan, of every outing, very selfishly, and without repudiation.

Picture you, the reader, most likely a coffee drinker, in a non-coffee drinker’s shoes, and be honest, how many times per week do you pull a move like this?

Me and my (completely hypothetical at this point) girlfriend go out on a Saturday afternoon, the first free day in several weeks, been looking forward to it for a month now.

I don’t like to over-plan, nor does she, so tentatively we’re going to hit up the farmer’s market and stock up on some organic honey and beets, then drive down the coast to a boutique hotel, check in, do some wine tasting, grab dinner, and have a quiet night, maybe hit the hot tub under the stars!

We’re leaving the farmer’s market after moseying around and taking our sweet time, but even though we’re a little behind schedule, no big deal, we’ll get on the road, everything should be fine.

That’s when these people drop the bombshell. As a non-coffee drinker, your heart sinks.

It’s like hearing that you’ll just have to visit the DMV to renew your tags right quick. Just have to stop by the nursing home for a sec and see my syphilitic uncle. It will be real quick. Just a casual stop to get my blood drawn, just a load of whites real quick, just gotta balance my checkbook for a sec, just a quick stopover to pop by my house and vacuum the carpet for a sec, just gotta go dig through the attic and find my childhood 4H blue ribbon real quick. Just gotta grab a washer and dryer from IKEA real quick.

“Let me just grab a coffee first.”

FUCK!

Now the momentum is gone. Done. You’re standing in a chilly Starbucks like a chump.

Hey, let me just go order and then eat one chicken wing in the alley while we’re waiting. Let me go buy a canister of loose-leaf tobacco and some zigzags and roll myself a hobo cigarette maybe, as long as we’re engaging in unnecessary activities. Is there a fucking Norwegian restaurant nearby, I need a pierogi, and maybe some tiramisu, in fact, I’ve been looking for a Don Mattingly rookie card, any memorabilia joints around?

In fact, let’s make a bet, could I score fentanyl on this same nondescript block before you get your stupid ass coffee that you could have just brought from home with you, because, guess what, you’re not the only asshole who is out and about on a Saturday afternoon and is addicted to coffee, so we’ve now, with the lack of a parking spot and the other fifty people in this cramped corporate abomination of a former respectable mom and pop storefront, added a good forty-five minutes to our forty-five minute jaunt, effectively doubling the travel time.

The wine tasting rooms close at three pm. Okay, we missed that. The rhythm is fucked, the vibe is off.

Coffee. It’s a selfish person’s embellishment. If you held everything up because you needed a shot of whiskey you’d be looked at as a degenerate, a derelict.

And yet…

Apart from fucking up your plans of going anywhere on time, coffee drinkers will also ruin a perfectly good evening of dining, destroying the candle at both ends essentially and preventing you from returning home on time, with their pseudo-gourmand attempt at regality, by ordering a coffee after the meal when everyone is ready to go, a real dickhead move!

Put yourself in the shoes of a non-coffee drinker and tell me, how many times you’ve pulled this bullshit stunt recently. I beg of you.

You and your friends went out to your favorite steakhouse for your buddy’s fortieth birthday. A few martinis, shrimp cocktails, strip steaks, and then maybe another round of martinis to close out the night, followed by a slice of carrot cake with a candle in it of which everyone partakes in a bite, and you’re happy and ready to call it a night.

This is when your server, in a last-ditch attempt to drive up your check, asks, “Anything else, anybody want any coffee or anything?”

Everyone shakes their heads, except for YOU, who likes to do gay Republican things like hang out in cigar rooms, and you say, “Yeah, I’ll take a coffee,” which they usually don’t even have ready at this point in the evening so they take fifteen minutes to brew it, and everyone is forced to glare at you while half-falling asleep as you sit there, very distinguished, enjoying your coffee (which is in a comically tiny cup for some reason, making you look even more foolish.)

I’m done with it. Next time you want to get a coffee you better either pull it out of your pocket in flask form or find a ride home.

Okay, you know when some teenaged spoiled future GOP congressman albino maga cracker antebellum asshole gets busted for vehicular homicide because he killed the entire cheerleading squad while drunk behind the wheel of a Cybertruck his daddy bought him and part of his lawyer’s defense is that he, “Comes from a good family,” well, if you’re on a jury, please convict any defendant who incorporates this into his defense base on principle, I beg of you, as a patriot, even if they’re innocent.

People from “good families” in the vernacular don’t come from good families. They come from corrupt, trashy, skeleton-ridden Trump Kennedy types of families. People who come from good families don’t even think to call it that, they just call it a family.

The term “good family” for all intents and purposes in American discourse actually means “really bad white collar criminal family with entitled sociopathic murderous rapist children,” family.

That’s all I have on that, it’s not a subtle thing, let’s just stop saying it. As if dynastic families on the local, state, and federal level don’t commit rape at a rate exponentially greater than that of the common person and their relatives, and yes, even in West Virginia?

Lastly, I’m always wont to point out double standards when it comes to gender issues, and they can’t all be rehashed here but I haven’t heard this particular one brought up before and I was thinking about it.

You shouldn’t ask a woman if she’s pregnant if you don’t already know. We all know this. It could really hurt her feelings if she’s just happened to let herself go recently, people are pretty fragile when it comes to their appearance.

I work out five times a week. I’m not a fitness model or a bodybuilder. I do not wish to be, nor do I do it for credit or recognition. I just keep myself in decent shape. It’s an important priority, it makes me feel good, and I think it’s part of living my best life, by which I mean that it staves off panic attacks and psychotic meltdowns, and sometimes I also take a picture of some oats and slap a filter on it and throw it on my IG.

Point being, whenever I am talking with a stranger or even anyone I know personally whether it’s an acquaintance or a family member or a close friend, and the subject of wellness comes up, they always say something like, “So, are you still working out?”

Slow burn. Let me clear my throat, glance at the watch I don’t have. “Uh, yeah, sometimes.” Sweat beads down my forehead. Not like I do it every day or anything. Not like I have an unhealthy obsession with it bordering on dysmorphia.

How is this any different from being asked if you’re pregnant as a woman, and when do I get to cry about daily life events where people make generalizations because they are just trying their best to carry on a conversation? Where’s my HuffPo op-ed. When do I get to be the victim Oh, the humanity.

My point, if you’re following me, is that those women who people assume are pregnant need to work out a lot more.