John Y’s Musings from the Middle: Life Lessons (Remedial Version)

Life lessons. Remedial version.

This morning I was going through my routine at Starbucks:

1) Walk in;

2) say hello to the Barista;

3) order coffee and something to eat;

4) go to condiment bar to pour out 1/8th of my coffee to make room for the cream and sugar;

5) and walk back to car.

As a rule I try to keep all my daily processes to 5 steps or under to minimize chances of leaving out some critical step.

And that has worked well.

Until this morning.

I got to my car and realized I had failed to put in the cream and sugar. The lady in front of me had to re-scan her credit card while I was in mid-order. I made some joke to her about it and we both laughed. But that caused me to lose my mental place in my process chain. I confused step 4 for step 3.

At first I wasn’t sure what to do so I simply said an expletive to myself. After a few seconds it became clear that more needed to be done.

Then a flash a genius.

Obviously, it was too embarrassing to go back into the Starbucks. And as a rule (a second one), I hate to look foolish in front of Baristas or strangers with credit card problems.

So I drove across the street to Speedway and stealthily got a cup and put cream and Splenda in and tossed in a stirrer. I slinked back to my car as the cashier watched to see if I had stolen something. I held up my Starbucks coffee cup as I poured in the cream and Splenda and he finally looked away.

It tasted terrible.

And I learned yet again the important life lesson that it is better to “look foolish (at Starbucks) and be happy” than to “try to look cool but actually look really foolish (at Speedway) and be unhappy.”