I've set up office in Starbucks. At least this month since I've prepaid for wireless access and desperately need a change of scenery from my dining room. I've spent long days there in the last few weeks and yesterday, I camped out at one of the three outlet-ready tables near the front of the store.
It was relatively quiet and although there was a short line of people getting early afternoon coffees, there was only one other person seated in the front with me. A young man was studying a large textbook intently next to the door and I was engrossed in my own Facebook Scrabble game blog posting. I looked up when a very old South American woman ambled in. She was wearing a woven long skirt, enveloping jacket and her hair was pulled back from her golden face in a tight bun. She looked at me and I recognized her as the woman settled into one of the big armchairs one day last week. She looked me up and down and limped into the heart of the store. I went back to work. The music was loud and I was making extra efforts to concentrate in my final hour at work.
And then I heard a strange metallic rustling behind me and I glanced over my shoulder. There, the old woman stood with her skirt hiked up completely, stuffing pound after pound of Starbucks coffee under her skirt!
UNDER HER SKIRT! She must have found a hiding place for four or five large 2-pound bags of beans from the display shelves just beyond the counter. WHAT!?
She looked right back at me and I turned away, my heart pounding, my thoughts pounding, "What do I do? What do I do?"
The adrenaline and nausea filled me up. My inner good grrrl was pummeling any apathy I had. And I looked over at her again and then the young man studying just to see if anyone else witnessed this scene. Then the lady slowly turned, craned her neck to check out the rest of the store and ambled back out. I began breathing deeper. She eased into a large old sedan parked just in front of the Starbucks and I reasoned with myself. Perhaps she needs the money. Perhaps she has some kind of problem. Perhaps there is more at work here than lifting $60 or more dollars worth of house blend.
And then an older man, not quite as old but still gray and retirement age, and better dressed, emerged from the line with two grande coffee drinks and a muffin tucked into a bag. He stopped at the cream and sugar station, opened the coffee lids and began mixing in half and half. I was still confounded but calming down when I saw him motion to the car where the old shoplifter sat, swallowed up by the velour seats and probably the pungent smell some kind of fair trade dark roast victory.
He seemed to be trying to answer her a glass door and car window away without much luck. He looked as confused as I felt. She was waiting for him. And he had at least ten bucks worth of goods! WHAT!?
And then -- and this is the freakiest kicker of them all -- as the man went back to work with his little wooden stick stirrer, the old lady ambled BACK IN TO THE STARBUCKS and calmly, slowly, with measured confidence, took her coffee from his hands and fixed it up to her liking. THE PERPETRATOR CAME BACK IN.
At this point, I just could not sit still and watch this CSI: Starbucks episode unfold for me any longer. I got up, moved past the line of customers and walked over to the barista as he paused in between making espresso drinks.
"Ummm, sir?" I said in a loud whisper. "That old lady over there just stole a bunch of coffee. She put it in her skirt and she is standing RIGHT THERE. Seriously."
He cocked his head to the side like I just told him a joke in some Slavic language. I repeated myself, this time slower.
This time, I added in, "THAT LADY right. over. there. Stole a whole shelf's worth of coffee. Just now. I didn't know what to do. I had to tell you."
And then this young man (or maybe even still a boy) in the branded baseball cap and green apron, probably paying for books and pot and five dollar baskets of wings with his earnings (or possibly hockey player cards and Matchbox cars, who knows?) and having no idea why he really needs all the insurance benefits anyway, shrugged his shoulders and stared back at me.
"Oh well. There's really nothing I can do." And then he went back to his cups and Sharpie marker.
WHAT!? Don't they train their employees on this kind of situation? Sure, I get that he was just too young or underpaid or lazy or overwhelmed by mocha frappuccino order calls to step out from behind the counter. Sure, there is probably not much he could do. But still. Still.
There was nothing left for me to say so I went back to my table. The old woman put the cap on her coffee, looked me over once again and she and the younger old man left, slid into the light blue sedan and slowly, slowly, pulled out and drove away. The young man studying was standing up at the window and looked at me with the face I'd seen on the barista and knew was smeared across my own expression. Our mouths were open but nothing more was said or done. He peered out at the empty parking space and then sat down.
My heart was still racing at the strange surreality of the whole scene. I yanked out my laptop plug from the outlet, threw my stuff into my bag and my empty coffee cups into the trash and walked past the now-quiet counter and out the back door. I just couldn't be there anymore.
On the way home, I thought about how glad I was that Lil E wasn't there with me. He would surely notice my panic and ask lots of questions that I would, of course, have to answer as honestly as I could. While that is a lesson that will inevitably be opened up, I wasn't sure how to negotiate it all myself, let alone explain it to a three-year old.
I was witness to a simple shoplifting incident. It has happened before. But I felt like the whole thing was so weird and so upsetting, maybe because no one responded to the blatant nature of it all. And even though it was, after all, just a heap of overpriced coffee, the pound-pound-pounding of my heart said it was much more than that. At least to me, sitting there at 1 pm on a Tuesday afternoon.
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is a single mama in the city, super-savvy editor, writer, video host and shameless shoe whore.
Thursday, September 27, 2007 
This month has come to a close in some strange and chaotic ways for my family. At the beginning of the month, a fellow blogger at Chicago Moms Blog, Mary Anne Mohanraj, wrote one of the most poignant, raw and courageous posts I've ever read. It made my heart swell up that women, mothers are using this venue to voice their true selves and that all the nonsense and exhaustion of building traffic and meta tags and whatnot could give way for even a few brief moments for such honesty and exploration. Mary Anne put her fears on to the screen and told everyone who read exactly what she was scared to write about. She made me think and weeks later, her post is with me as we three, Bruce and Lil E and I, tumble along in the tide of our lives.
