January 27, 2007

Pain in the Panera


If you want to air your dirty laundry in public, start a blog. That is my advice to the man who walked into my satellite office, a/k/a Panera, the other day, and disrupted the place with his business call.

Panera is a public restaurant where couples, friends, families and others go to be with each other or to eat alone. It also is a place, due to having free WiFi, where people like me go to get online and work, send emails, etc. No matter why we are there, we all expect a certain level of civility.

Obviously, one man did not get the message. He marched into Panera, a flashing Bluetooth on his ear, in the middle of a loud cell phone conversation. It went something like:
"You need to get a hold of Pearlstein!"
"That's right, Pearlstein!"
"Because he owes me fourteen thousand, that's why!"
"He's on the goddamn ski slopes at Jackson Hole, and I can't reach him!"
"That's fourteen big ones!"

I tried to get his attention to give him the palm-down-hand-lowering-international-sign-for-shut-the-fuck-up, but he was facing the other way. This conversation went on for several minutes. Finally, a woman and child came over to his table and sat down. The woman said something to the man. He got up and walked outside, still talking.

Thankfully. Now I could finally get some peace.

Not so fast. At nearly the same ear-splittingvolume, the woman started talking to the kid:
"How was your day at school?"
"Did you do your multiplication tables?"
"What's two times four?"
"What's three times six?"
"What's four times five?"
"What's five times seven?"

I packed my things and got out of there before they could complete the multiplication table.

What makes people think they can behave this way in public? For a measly fourteen large?

1 Comments:

At 1:52 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

There are many out there who think the universe revolves about them. They do not for a minute consider that they might be disturbing others by spilling over into their space. Can you imagine how awful it might be if the population doubled? Twice as many assholes...

The pic is priceless!

 

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