Bright and sunny morning again but dressed for the cold, before heading for the free shuttle bus to Fort Lauderdale – free seems to mean that you are dropped at a shopping mall.
Soon realised that temperature had changed – it was around 20 and humid. I had brought my backpack, in the vain hope of finding a wine shop but it was useful for storing the excess clothing.
We were here on the same day last year, to board the Queen Victoria for a cruise to Sydney and had plenty of time to walk around Fort Lauderdale – we also call again on the way back, so we were content to wander around the shops.
After about an hour, we decided to look for somewhere to get a coffee. There was a big “food centre” but they only sold fast food, with any type of sugar/caffeine overload soft drinks but no coffee.
We walked on and finally found a Starbucks, hidden in the basement of Macy’s.
Lynne sat at a table and I took my place in the queue, behind an elderly*, gentleman, who had ordered a Latte. Unfortunately, he tried to complicate matters, by saying that he wanted only one shot of coffee. The attendant asked if he wanted the same size of coffee – I did not see what deference this would make but to a professional Barista, it means “do you want the space left by the missing shot filled with water or milk?”
It became apparent that the gentleman’s first language was not English and that he did not fully understand the importance of his answer. He ventured “Milk?”
Barista rattled off “so that’s a single shot Latte, with an order of milk on the side. Will that be steamed milk, or cold milk?” – he chose steamed.
I started to shake my head, as I knew what was coming.
When the bill was presented, the gentleman said “what’s this? $12 for a cup of coffee”
The Barista explained – in the polite, contemptible, tone of someone who has taken great pleasure in doing you over – that it was the charge for the side order.
Fortunately, the gentleman was not as daft as the Barista thought and had the milk substituted by water.
I was trying to work out the volume of the missing shot of coffee and the stupidity of the whole argument.
The final straw, or coffee bean, came when the bill was presented. The Barista had one of those credit card machines, where you scroll down to indicate the amount of the tip you want to give, with zero somewhere in not the outer reaches of the Galaxy.
Another interrogation session:
“how much?”
“that’s the tip”
“I don’t want to give you a tip”
“I can’t do anything about it, the transaction has already gone through”
At this point, after waiting for ten minutes, I relinquished my second place in the ever growing queue and decided to do without the coffee and the Pythonesque ordering process.
We returned to shopping and bought a few things, before trying to find an alternative source of coffee – there were none – so started to make our way to the pick up point for the shuttle. On our way, we passed a stall, selling beauty products. The attractive young lady attendant managed to engage Lynne in conversation and despite all of my efforts, persuaded her to enter her lair, for a trial of non surgical wrinkle remover.
It was a typical time share trick and the more effort I put into putting Lynne off, the lower the price dropped – but only from ridiculous to exorbitant. The final addition of a “twoofer” did it. I had to pay up and Lynne was escorted to the expensive store, who were using the stall as a lure, to pick up her goods.
I had to accept that it was a skilful, non-surgical, wallet extraction.
I followed sulkily behind and decided that I should be allowed to buy the “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, that Lynne had previously refused to sanction.
We were, after all, here for the inauguration. I doubt if I will dare to wear it.
The Latina girl who sold it to me didn’t seem to be impressed, even as I tried to explain that I wasn’t a supporter and simply wanted a souvenir – later, on checking the bill, I had the strong suspicion that she had borrowed the Barista’s card machine.
Feeling much better today, so the social calendar is back on track.
* The term is absolute and not relative to the age of the observer.