Texting

I went to an Au Bon Pain in Penn Station in NYC last year for coffee. I had dragged my boyfriend in there, rather than the million other places we'd passed, because I wanted to show him the cool oatmeal bar they have, where you can load up on nuts and raisins and sugar! But we were in a rush, as we always are, train to catch or some such nonsense, so we moved quickly over to the coffee bar and tried to get out of there as fast as possible (I had wasted precious minutes of ours by showing off the oatmeal bar, as if it were my own). My boyfriend has only milk in his coffee, and there was plenty of milk in the container, so he moved through quickly. Me, I need half and half, and the container was empty. I rushed over to the nearest Au Bon Pain employee, a young girl who was restocking the sugar container, and I handed her the half and half container, shook it, and said, "It's empty. It's empty. We need more." My voice sounded urgent. Well, I stood outside the swinging door to the kitchen waiting for her to emerge with the cream, and I waited, and waited, and waited. My boyfriend looked at me pleadingly from the cashier line, his eyes saying "We gotta go." I said one sec, and waited some more. Finally, I saw another cafe employee and said, "Excuse me. I need half and half, and I sent someone into the kitchen for it, and I've been waiting 15 minutes for her to come back." (I lied. It was about 6 or 7 minutes). Well, the woman, who was Russian, spun on her heels and stormed into the kitchen and seconds later, emerged with a cold, fresh container of half and half.

"Here," she said, in that warm way only Russians have.

"Thank you," I said. "What happened to the girl and my half and half?"

"Texting," she said in clipped English.