My name is Brad. I am a writer, I am awkward in social situations, and I spend a lot of time in coffee shops trying to escape all of the terribly distracting things I find at home (video games, movies, tv, cats, comics, vitamin water, robots, etc.). I rotate amongst local coffee shops throughout the week so that no single location becomes too familiar with my presence. Spending any appreciable amount of time in one place is bound to make you privy to the occasional odd situation, but I have come to believe that coffee shops are breeding grounds for weird. The following is my account of the wonderfully weird and horribly awkward situations I have encountered.

I Like My Seats Like I Like My Women… Unavailable.

It’s been a while, so let’s see if I still remember how to do this…

Brad is at Coffee Bean when Old Dude With Bluetooth (ODWBT) approaches…

ODWBT: “Can I share your table?”
Brad: “Actually I’m expecting someone in a few minutes…”
ODWBT: “I’ll move when they get here.”
Brad: …

ODWBT sits down and starts txting (his bitches, I assume).

LA Is Too Easy.

Yes, I know it’s been a while.  Part of the reason for that is my move to LA.  It’s not that I’ve run out of crazy people… far from it.  It’s that there are too many crazy people and they don’t even bother to hide it.  They fall into stereotypes, openly talk about sex acts, and play boomboxes for everyone in a 50 foot radius to hear.

Just now, the man paying for his coffee in front of my paid entirely change, from what appeared to be a small hat box.  He also happened to be very Jewish, yarmulke and all.  Reality, please stop writing jokes.  That’s my job.  Let’s at least try to keep things sporting.

P.S. Sorry about the framing and blurriness of the photo.  I was pretending to txt.

P.P.S. What would someone even keep in a hatbox that small?

P.P.P.S.  Ohhhhhhhh!

Hobo Lesson #2

Order a medium coffee with no room for cream.  Ask for it in a large cup.  Fill the extra room with cream.  That saves you ten hobo cents!

The sad thing is, the man I saw do this was not a hobo.

Awkwardness Wears A Hat.

Even when I’m doing work at a coffee shop with a friend, sometimes I like to get my own table.  Keeps me focused.  This particular time, while there with my buddy AJ, there were plenty of tables open… which is what made it so funny when a random Guy in a Hat decided to sit at his table.  There were plenty of other tables to sit at, but Hat Guy liked AJ’s.

Because I’m usually the one in the awkward situations, I took it upon myself to photograph the moment.  AJ is the one not wearing the hat, though you probably could have figured that out yourself.

And since I’m usually procrastinating, I took it upon myself to make this image and mail it to AJ:

We Also Use The Metric System, Bro!

I’ve got a new local Coffee Bean. It’s roomy and within walking distance. Also, at night it fills up with a bunch of Douchey Persian Guys that crowd your personal space, glare at you, yell a lot as they play cards, and smoke like chimneys.

One of them was on his cellphone calling for another card player…

D.P.G.: “Yeah, come over. We’re European, dawg, we’re gonna be here for an hour!”

I Hate My Reflection.

One of the biggest problems with writing in coffee shops in LA are the other writers. I don’t like seeing other people do what I do. it bothers me. Especially one’s that say things like this…

Douchey Writer: “I just found out that my life is Ext. Poolside. Day. Hahahahah!”

Fade out.

Maybe You Can Find The Common Thread.

As I’ve mentioned before, sometimes I can only difinitively make out parts of a conversation. Sometimes I’ll have to throw away a whole post because I didn’t get the whole story, but sometimes the portions are all that you need. The following all comes from a conversation between two ladies who both sounded very opinionated, sarcastic and annoying.

In a very sarcastic tone, pretending as if she were talking to her husband…

Annoying Lady 1: “You haaad to make me park outside and walk two blocks in the dark while there is a rapist roaming around in our neighborhood because you had to have the garage… but whatever.”

Annoying Lady 2: “He was hanging out with a different drug dealing slut every night. Do you think they’d do DNA testing this day and age? Nope!”

Annoying Lady 1: “I guess if i just learn to live on just water… I could lose some weight, but really? Four hundred thousand dollars?”

Annoying Lady 2: “What do you think of these hybrids?”
Annoying Lady 1: “I dont like them. It flips me out. Its like when someone next to you is eating pizza and that is all you can taste. I’m eating an apple and it tastes like a grape! it just flips me out. Flips me out.”
Annoying Lady 2: “I dont even like these seedless watermelons. Watermelons taste better when they have seeds in them. The flesh tastes better.”

Yes, it took me a second also to realize they were talking about hybrid fruit, not hybrid cars.

No, Not In That Order.

Though this doesn’t take place at a coffee shop, it involves coffee, so it counts. I make the rules.

While doing some late night moving, I stopped by CVS at 3 am to buy some rope to tie down the TV in the back of my car. And because I had an hour drive ahead of me, I decided to also pick up a Starbucks Double Shot drink to keep me going.

It seemed normal enough until the Cashier Lady started ringing me up…

Cashier Lady: “You gonna go home and drink that frappachino then commit Harakiri?”

Working the 3 am shift at CVS puts a person in a dark place. I respect that.

Encore!

Two couples were congregated near the creamer station. I caught the tail-end of a Girl throwing a pity party saying…

Self Pity Girl: “…because my life sucks.”

At that very moment, a Happy Guy unassociated with Self Pity Girl claps and smiles. Self Pity Girl glares at Happy Guy.

Happy Guy: “Sorry. I’m not clapping about that.”

Well done, Happy Guy.

Revenge of the King Douche.

Remember King Douche? Of course you do. Well, I ran into him again, and unfortunately the only open seat was at the study station next to him. Though I try to look beyond these sort of things, I should mention that King Douche is Persian. It’s relevant to the story because sitting directly across from me was an Attractive Studying Persian Girl. And if there is one thing I know about Persian guys, it’s that they will talk to any Persian girl within a 100 yard radius.

Now imagine King Douche speaks in the most overly confident, exaggerated, fake manner that he could conjure… because he does.

Now I must preface all of this by telling you that “The Arc” is the giant gym at UCI.

After showering Attractive Studying Persian Girl (A.S.P.G.) with a bit of flattery…

A.S.P.G.: “Do you go to the arc a lot?”
King Douche: “All the time. Do you?”
A.S.P.G.: “I used to go but my gym buddy disappeared.”
King Douche: “What!? My gym B.F.F. just quit on me! Let’s set a schedule!”

I realize that it’s a bit hard to fully grasp how douchey this sounds without hearing his inflection and insincerity, but you’re going to have to trust me. Anyhow, it went on…

King Douche: “Do you have Facebook?”
A.S.P.G.: “No.”
King Douche: “Oh?”
A.S.P.G.: “Someone took pictures off of my Facebook and made a YouTube video that was a montage of my pictures and it was called “Beautiful Pictures of Persian Girls”, but it was just me. It got like a million hits and my mom called me up screaming.”
King Douche: “Oh wow, that’s very humble. “I’m a beautiful sexy genius–” ”
A.S.P.G.: “No!! I’m just telling you!”
King Douche: “Do you consider yourself attractive?”

Long pause.

A.S.P.G.: “Well I don’t think I’m ugly.”

Up until this point it was all well and good. He was just pestering a girl that seemed to enjoy the attention and he’d temporarily avoided talking about “fucking retards”, but that’s when he did something that bothered me a lot. Not even in the regular socially awkward way that I’m usually bothered. This was the first time in all of my coffee-getting escapades that I was genuinely pissed at someone other than myself.

For context, I have to explain that I wear a somewhat unique watch. Not that it’s anything terribly interesting, it’s just a brand that few people would have heard of. Because I don’t particularly care to discuss my watch, for the purpose of this story we’ll call that brand Timeco (which may or may not be a fake brand. I don’t know.)

Anyhow, King Douche’s Less Douchey Friend (L.D.F.) walks up (wearing a Tag Heuer watch) and starts to talk to him about going to med school…

L.D.F: “It’s still expensive to go there.”
King Douche: “If you need money you could just sell your fake Tag Heuer. Is it fake? Wait, you don’t have to answer that.”

Despite what he’s just said, King Douche waits for an answer anyway. L.D.F. just laughs awkwardly. Then King Douche looks directly at me (while I’m wearing headphones)…

King Douche: “You know what real men wear?”

Long dramatic pause as he stares at me.

King Douche: “Real men wear… Timeco.”

That is when I broke the act that I wasn’t listening and glared at King Douche with my best WTF face. There wasn’t much I could do. No one else had any idea what he was talking about. To the L.D.F. and A.S.P.G. it just seemed like a useless piece of opinion. To me, it was an e-vite into the world of douche to be the douche jester for his majesty. I just went back to my work. Douchebag.