Yuppa

Do you know why the tables in Starbucks are circle-shaped?

 

I suppose it’s probably something you’ve never bothered to question. However, strangely enough, there is, in fact, a reason for it. You see, a few years back, Starbucks customers filled out some survey, and one of the results drawn from it was that people going to the store by themselves felt lonely. Go figure.

 

The powers that be at Starbucks decided this situation needed to be fixed immediately. I imagine it was because some executives at a conference table were afraid of losing a few lonesome customers to other coffee shops. I mean god forbid they have some healthy competition.

 

Their solution: circular tables.

 

Apparently, they create the illusion that a person by themselves has company. This is achieved by making them feel included in other groups and not feeling cornered off.

 

It is quite a lovely sentiment, maybe it even works, who knows? What I do know is that it is not working for me. I’ve been sitting in this plastic chair for nine minutes now, and despite my table most definitely being a circle, I still feel quite alone.

 

I can feel my heart doing jumping jacks inside my chest.

 

Calm down, Zack. Breathe, you idiot.

 

I glance around the somewhat crowded coffee shop, in a vain attempt to distract myself from the fact that she is now eleven minutes late.

 

I analyse the red bricks on the wall, each brick forever separated by the dull, grey cement lines that criss-cross between them. Some lines being interrupted by the occasional black and white picture of Marilyn Monroe or Johnny Cash. If I didn’t know any better I’d say I’d been plucked out of Dublin City and dropped right into the heart of New York.

 

The neon lights on the window even suggest the world’s best coffee can be purchased here. Which I find funny because one: I don’t see any World Record certificate hanging up beside the fake autographed headshot of Audrey Hepburn. And two: this coffee tastes like shit.

 

The ringing of the pickup bell snaps me out of my analytical daydream and grounds me right back down to reality. Thirteen minutes past nine. I’m told this by clock hands that rest over a smiling Frank Sinatra. What the hell does he find so funny? Fuck you, Frank! I already know she’s late.

 

What was I even thinking? I mean, only I could find a date in a film festival held in the middle of an abandoned school building. I should’ve known that she wasn’t serious about meeting up tonight. How could I have been such an idiot?

 

Another pick up bell rings, and I suddenly notice all the people around me. Well, they’re all off in their own seats, but they may as well be seated right beside me. I can feel their eyes, judging me. They see me and they’re judging. They’re thinking; look at this loner, he actually thought Portia would show. What a sad man, sitting there alone. Sitting there in a crinkled shirt, baggy pants and a pair of converse with a hole in the left shoe’s inner rim. He looks awful.

 

I can feel them saying this. I don’t hear it. I feel it. I stare at my name scrawled across my coffee cup to calm myself down and analyse the barista’s handwriting when I hear the third pick up bell. I turn around to figure out who ordered the pumpkin spice latte.

 

My eyes meet a pair of Ugg boots, that turn into black skinny jeans, into a winter coat (the green one’s with the fluffy hoods that my friend Sarah likes to call “white girl coats”). I notice a familiar dimpled chin, a beautiful Cupid’s bow of lips, a square bottom nose and gorgeous brown eyes.

The Cupid’s bow before me has its string pulled back and shoots a smile aimed for me. It’s Portia, she is actually here.

 

She gently glides into the chair across from me and in doing so, removes me from the bracket of lonely Starbucks customers who rely on the shape of their table to regulate how lonely they feel.

“I’m so sorry I’m late, this snow is crazy to get through” she states with a softness only rivalled by her presence.

 

“Oh, you’re late?” I laughed.

“I didn’t even notice.”