We decided to meet for coffee, and believe me, I tried to find one of the cutesy local coffee shops around here that is open in the evening, but all of them close at 4pm. So we sighed a millennial sigh and decided we had to meet at a Starbucks. She asked which Starbucks was best, and I was embarrassed that I'd been to all 4 in this city, and I knew which had the easiest parking and fastest service. So we agreed to meet there at 5:15pm. An hour ahead of meet-up, Kelsey texts me that she has a gift card and she'll use the app to order our drinks ahead of time. So I graciously accept her treat, and she orders my tall decaf coffee and her grande iced tea.
At 5:15 I drove up the the Starbucks, but the sign is torn down and the lights are off... the place was completely abandoned. I sat in the parking lot confused about what to do- wait for Kelsey, call Kelsey, maybe we could just share some garlic bread at the pizzaria right there, but she had already paid for the drinks... what to do! It took me a full three minutes to notice the Starbucks had moved to the building right next door, which used to be a Tilted Kilt that thankfully burned down and had to be demolished and rebuilt. Apparently now it's a brand new Starbucks and a Mattress Firm. So I swung my car around into the parking lot at the new Starbucks location. I parked and hopped out of the car.
As soon as I hopped out of the car, a young woman in a green apron ran up to me, yelling, "Are you Kelsey?!?" And I said yes, and she handed me our two drinks. She explained, "Our grand opening isn't until tomorrow. I don't know why the app let you place an order... but I made the drinks... you're our first customer!" She was friendly to me, but I could tell she was stressed to the max and really frustrated by the situation, so I didn't bother to ask for cream and sugar.
Kelsey arrived and we drank our drinks and chatted on the patio. She's one of those friends who you can leap right into real talk and skip the basic warm-up chit chat. It was great. We also laughed at the countless people who drive up, expecting to walk in and place an order, but the manager had to shoo them away. They looked at us on the patio with our drinks, and we just smiled like jerks.
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