so i was in the starbucks on the royal mile this afternoon.

we can talk about whether i should have been in starbucks later, but for now i’ll just say that there are a lot of things i like about the company, even if “forcing small coffeehouses out of business” and “feeling compelled to sell their own brand of breath mint” are both squarely in the bad column.

and today i just really felt like a peppermint mocha.

anyway those aren’t the weird things.

the weird thing was that, as i sat in the cushy chair for a while scribbling in my notebook and half-listening to the teenagers next to me discuss whether or not they should have to hang out with people they don’t get along with and how mature one can really be at the age of 16, i kept noticing people walking through this door on the other side of the room, kind of around a corner from me so i couldn’t see the door itself.

people were approaching it pretty often, but it had some kind of security lock on it, and they had to punch in a code, so at first i thought it was a staff room.

then, though, this lady in plainclothes kind of fiddled with it for a while and, exasperated, asked the people sitting at the table next to her if they knew how to open it because the lock was being fussy. she said, “i know the code, but it’s not working. its 513.” so it didn’t seem like something she did every day, and it was kind of weird that she would just tell the code to these other people without thinking about it.

but then again, some people tell their PIN numbers to you on the street if you ask them to fill out a survey, so whatever.

anyway, i was there a while, and a few more people had trouble with the door, so i was kind of perplexed by it. was it like some kind of meeting room and so people were visiting and not used to the lock and the security didn’t have to be that good? but then why was there a pretty steady stream of traffic? weird…

when i got up to leave i was still half curious about the door, but more curious about finding the bathroom after that peppermint mocha, so imagine my surprise when i glanced at the door as i walked past and it had the sought after little blue stick people and a sign that said: “In order to ensure the cleanliness of our toilets, a security code is required for entry. Please ask a barista for the code.”

???

someone was coming out right as I was standing there, so I didn’t need to ask a barista, and whatever, I knew the code anyway (513, remember?), so it didn’t matter.

but i remain pretty mystified about that one. what are they worried about? and whatever it is, how the hell does that stop it?

This entry was posted on Friday, December 1st, 2006 at 5:10 pm and is filed under fluff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.