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.

A Robot Sent From The Past To Steal Our Megabytes.

I’ve been dreading writing this post because I’m worried that my, despite the fact that I call myself a writer, I won’t be able to capture the oddity of this particular situation. Keep in mind, while I paraphrase what I said to her, I was writing down what she was saying verbatim, as she was saying it, in her words.

While on my maiden coffee voyage as an LA resident with my friend Mr. Matt W. we sat at the last table left in the Starbucks. It was near a woman sitting with her laptop, talking on a bluetooth headset. She kept spouting off random tech lingo combined with random numbers, so I jumped the conclusion that she was a robot. While that may have been just an assumption, here are some of the other things she said on her phone…

Robot Lady: “What about MySpace? Does that take meh-ju-bytes?”
Robot Lady: “I have my blueberry right here.”
Robot Lady: “Do you know where Google is?”

After a bit, I got tired of listening and put on my headphones. That’s usually my signal to the rest of the world that I’m not in a social mood. Robots apparently don’t understand subtle signals like that because moments later I heard something faint…

Robot Lady: “Hey… hey… hey!”

I removed my headphones and look up to see Robot Lady staring at me, and pointing at a USB device plugged into her laptop.

Robot Lady: “Do you know this thing? It’s a stick. I get the internet anywhere in the world.”
Brad: “Oh, wow. I just use the Starbucks internet.”
Robot Lady: “I don’t know if you heard me… I was talking about meh-ju-bytes.”
Brad: “Oh.”
Robot Lady: “Whatever I’m doing on the internet is using meh-ju-bytes. It’s 20 cents per meh-ju-bytes.”
Brad: “Oh.”

I start to put my headphones back on, but…

Robot Lady: “I’m making money on the internet. Do you make money on the internet?”
Brad: “No. I don’t make any money.”

I finally went back to my work. But just for a bit, before…

Robot Lady: “I’ve got a blueberry… or blackberry.”

At this point I seized an opportunity. I quickly brought up the camera on my phone, held it up, and took the picture seen above as I said…

Brad: “Oh. I’ve got an iPhone.”
Robot Lady: “Does it get Google?”
Brad: “Yeah, it gets Google.”

That’s when she started talking about her phone plan and said…

Robot Lady: “I’ve got minutes for when I’m on business and then I don’t have to worry when I’m in pleasure.”

Yup… “When I’m in pleasure.”

She left a few minutes after that, but the damage had already been done. I don’t know what it was about the conversation, but it completely ruined any further productivity for me that day.

I’m beginning to realize that Orange County was the minor leagues when it comes to crazy.

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1. Ron September 11, 2009 9:39 am

   She sounds like she could be an NPC from Fallout or something!