CoffeeHouseBlog

Blog Entry #1
Starbucks Coffee, Ventura Blvd., Studio City, CA
9:58 pm

Yeah, today I got stiffed. Have you had people renege on an agreement or promise?

This is the inaugural installment of this blog, CoffeeHouseBlog.com and man-oh-man, could I use a new beginning today. Now, I’m not a person who regularly has people stiff him for things (or even thinks people renege on promises) – but today I allowed myself a few moments of feeling like God has it in for me. Of course, this also comes on a day I have a bible study in the evening that has now convicted me of my indulgence. And I am repentant. That’s where I’ve just come from and coincidentally, what we covered tonight – repentance.

BTW (By The Way, for you who are acronymically-challenged), in the spirit of transparency, I want to just get it out of the way and up front that I am unashamedly a beginning (after many years, I still count myself a beginner) follower of Jesus Christ, believe in the Bible, and will refer to my faith as often as I need to in order to give an honest picture of my life and experience. I’m also still a human bean, won’t sugar-coat anything, and recognize, as a human bean, that I am subject to all the foibles anyone else is… But be forewarned, there will be good with the bad! And regardless of anyone’s religion or faith or non-belief, all are warmly welcomed here and I hope to make a place for all.

So, here it is – I have a client for whom I was designing a website and last week on the phone they had promised to send out a check to me for $635.00 as a second installment on their website. I sent an email on Friday making note of the absence of their check in my little post office box. When I didn’t receive a reply from them by this weekend, I knew that wasn’t a good sign. Especially since, in all truth, I had advance warning of the possibility for the stiff. Am I to blame if I chose to believe that what I was told would happen, wouldn’t happen?

Question: How many times in my life was I given good advice or information that I essentially refused to believe? Answer: Too many. Looking back, I’m amazed at how many times well-meaning friends were actually right – if sometimes only partially right.

Take marriages. I’m a walking cliché of the guy who was told, “Run. Run for your life!” and didn’t. When I told one of my business acquaintances about the burnt offering I found my wife-to-be sitting in front of on the sidewalk by our garage, that’s what he said. I said, “Oh, no, she was just…” Fill in the blank, you people who have done the same – making excuses to allow yourself to keep rolling down the tracks of your mind’s and/or passion’s desire. Casey Jones, look out!

“No, she’s just upset because her mother was so repressive about her clothing choices”. “No, he’s just overly concerned about keeping things tidy in case company comes”. “He was just reacting to how bitchy she was, he’d never treat me that way”. “She’s just got a lot on her plate right now, that’s why she hasn’t called”. And on and on.

“I know better“. What? Who said that?

I said it. You may say it. We say it about the other person’s problem; we say it concerning ourselves; we say it about the advice we’re offered. It’s as yet an undeclared epidemic. Maybe it’s a product of the Information Age. Maybe it’s our last bastion of the apparency of control – our last domain of influence over anything; knowing better. But that’s another blog entry.

I hope another of my clients who gave me the heads up on this situation will forgive me for divulging this – I promised I wouldn’t tell the web client that they told me. FYI (For Your Information – that’s it, if you want meanings of future acronyms, you’ll have to look them up), the web client who stiffed me is related to the client who gave me the advance warning. I’ll get to that.

So, I get a call today regarding my email asking where the check was (the classic “in the mail” scenario). And I’m informed that the client is sorry, but they’re closing their business, selling their house to pay debts, and moving out of state – way out of state – and that I’m not getting that check that should have arrived already, and that I will get a letter from an attorney stating the situation and a promise to pay. I don’t hold much faith in the lottery, either.

On the phone with the client, I can hear how difficult it is for him to be calling me – one out of many, I can imagine – and I can only empathize with him. So I say, instead of yelling at him as one might be justified in, “I can imagine that’s a tough set of words to get out of your mouth”. He didn’t get it so I repeated it. Then he got it and agreed. Then the phone conversation just kind of petered out and we hung up. What do you say?

But afterwards, I was angry and had something to say. Angry because they had me working many hours in the last week while they were planning to cut and run all along.

“They’re quitting their business, selling their house, and moving to the east coast.” That’s almost exactly what the other client in the know said to me about four weeks earlier. I was concerned at the time, but then the web client and I started doing a lot of work on their site. They wanted some major changes. They loved the new changes, and now I could go toward finishing the site and my final payment as soon as their second installment came.

Please Note: Nowhere in any of my writing will there be any allowing of sympathy on your part toward/by me when writing about any hardships, misfortunes, or tough times. I don’t feel unfortunate. I’m grateful God has used everything that’s happened to me for good, in the end and in the process. So don’t take any call for sympathy from my stories, okay? I have a wonderful life! A good friend once asked me, when I was complaining about something that he needed to kick my butt for, “You know where you can find ‘sympathy’ in the dictionary? Between Sh_t and Syphilis”. I took that advice and so I don’t look for sympathy, as much as I would love to be coddled by it at times. End Note.

Anyway, those 635 bucks weren’t the end of the world, but…

After standing at the kitchen sink eating soy mocha fudge ice cream out of the carton with a large serving spoon for a while, though, I had to admit the truth: that always, God has provided a car, or a boat, or a helicopter, or a kind friend. And God is not a cheat. My dear friend Betti told me that and you will hear it often from me.

But still, in the moment, I was pissed. I sent an email. In the email I first acknowledged my empathy for my client’s situation. But then I stated that I was angry and without letting on that I had gotten the advance warning, I told them I couldn’t believe that a decision like that just happened overnight and that it was unconscionable that they would have me spending all those hours doing work for them when it was going to come to naught.

Guess what? I received an email back from them saying that “no, of course we did not know until we called you – if we had known sooner, we would have let you know”. People lie. It’s an ugly thing and casts a light on the times when I have lied. I’m not a big liar, though (though at times I’m just plain ignorant of the truth!), and it really is a sad thing for people to lie to each other. There’s really no need for it, either. Except maybe in matters of life or death like when the family hiding Anne Frank’s family lied to the Nazis. But mostly, we lie to protect ourselves; to protect us from having to feel lousy about ourselves for doing what we did in the first place that we felt a need to lie about; and sometimes for what we think is protecting someone else. No profit in that. What do you think? Did I lie when I did not say that I knew about their plans weeks before? Maybe I’m guilty, huh?

So anyway, I got stiffed today. I took a long walk – just went out the door – after I got the call about the stiff. I’m beginning to do this often when I experience an upset. I’m getting tired of just sitting and stewing in an upset, aren’t you? Get up and go for a walk, hey? Ultimately, I will acknowledge my total dependence on the Grace of God in making sense out of my life and the trials I have found myself faced with. Along with this acknowledgement I will pray, listen for an answer – some divine direction – and if absent sensing any I’ll go out and do something anyway, knowing that if I’ve succumbed to the “I know better” affliction and do the wrong thing, I’ll be corrected.

Like when I came upon my wife-to-be sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk, her beautiful, long blond hair knotted up on her head, wearing baggy jeans and a wrinkled t-shirt with a large pile of smoldering ashes in front of her in the grass. On my way carrying some groceries into the house I said “Hi!” to her and she gave a non-committal “hi” back. I went in and put the groceries away, curious as all get out but reluctant to go back out and find out what was up. I went back out anyway and came to her and asked what the pile of ashes was about. Sometimes she would do these little Native American ceremony-type things. She’s not native, of course, but we lived in a town full of new-age nuts, counting my wife and myself at the time, and so I thought it might be something like that. I now prefer to leave the Native American experience to the experts – it wears better on them.

“I burned my dresses”, was what she said.
“What?! What dresses?”
“Those little dresses you bought me.”
Those little dresses were a number of dresses – expensive dresses – that I bought her that she really looked great in. Sexy, beautiful, etc. You know, the kind of dresses that guys really want their ladies to be seen with them in. Not sleazy or anything, but that really compliment the woman.

“What do you mean you burned them?” I was dumbfounded, shocked.
“I didn’t like what they represented, so I cut them up into little pieces and burned them”, she said.

What they represented?

“Run”, he said. “Run as fast as you can.” Oh, but I knew better, didn’t I? Right. Let me tell you about the next four years…

To be continued…

I AM the CoffeeHouse Blogger. Hear me type!

ABOUT THIS COFFEE SHOP:

Being my first visit to this coffee shop, and my first blog entry, I’m still developing the what’s and how’s of this endeavor. When I first ordered my medium hot Chai with soy milk and a low fat blueberry coffee cake, I asked the barista what term she would use to refer to a place like Starbucks – a Coffee Shop or a Coffee House? She said, “Coffee Shop” and that using the term Coffee House was a little fluffy for her. I liked her. Pretty, petite, and a very awake young woman. And blond. I’ve taken a vow of blondibacy, so blondes don’t do much for me in that way. But she gave me the answer I wanted to hear. Then she asked the young fellow making the drinks and he agreed – Coffee Shop. Good. A scientific sampling hitting 100 percent. I don’t need to ruin the stats by asking more.

NOTE: I asked some more anyway and got mixed results. The bottom line is that I while I thought I had registered the CoffeeShopBlog.com name, I mistakenly registered it as CoffeShopBlog, with one “E”. How silly is that! I found the person who owns CoffeeShopBlog who wasn’t using it and asked if I could please buy it from him for this little blog. He wanted something like $200 for it. Maybe he’ll come down if he reads this.. END NOTE

UPDATE: Wonderful Nancy, from Michigan, ended giving me the rights to CoffeeHouseBlog.com! Wow! Is she ever neat? Plus a fellow Christian. She and her husband now own Frenz Coffee House. Check it out! Thanks, Nancy!END UPDATE

This Starbucks was fairly clean, including the place where I leave the seat up (a future blog subject?), and had good seating including a bank of tables against a wall that many laptoppers were sitting at – that’s where the outlets were. It wasn’t too hoity-toity or noisy while I was there – although it was at the end of their hours and not during prime coffee-meet-yak-see-be-seen time. Go there. Next time I’ll take names and kick… I mean, make recommendations.

Starbucks Coffee Company
12170 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, CA 91604