accidental feminist

I am home right now because of a fork. Yes, yes, I will explain:

You see, on the way home from work, I thought I would grab lunch at b. good. It’s healthy; it’s fast; it’s… on the way home. So I went there, got a Southwestern Chicken Salad since it contained half the carbs as the chicken burger, and since this week I am pretending that my love of food and my abnormally healthy body image will not cause me to go back to eating whatever the hell I feel like, then thought to myself: “You know what would be good with this salad, self? Yes, a Grande Non-Fat Latte”. Now, I’ve been cutting back on my Starbucks purchases (my small but manageable and mostly symbolic answer to the economic crisis), so I hadn’t had one in about 2 weeks. But there was Starbucks, right next door, and I thought “I will treat myself”. Oh, and it was a treat. After drinking that (free) swill that passes for coffee at school, tasting this had me convinced that I must have ordered ambrosia by accident.

Now, I had brought the salad with me into the Starbucks. You see, at that point I figured, Why go home just to eat this? I have to pick up the kids in an hour, and I have some other errands to do. I’ll just stay out. Now I could eat my salad and drink my coffee in this little oasis of time. All I needed was a fork to carve it out:

Me: (to the barista) Hey, do you have any forks back there?

Barista: They should be at the condiment bar.

Me: There are spoons and knives at the condiment bar (but thank you for not thinking that I, the customer, was right).

Barista: Oh, I think we’re out of forks. I’ll check.

Well, of course, he must have meant there’s none out front; that he would have to go back into the supply room and dig forks out of that gigantic, bulk fork box they keep around so that they will never run out. In a few minutes, the barista reemerges from the back room.

Barista: Nope, sorry.

That’s all you have to say? “Nope, sorry”. Do you think that the fact that you are a cute hipster will absolve you of your guilt? Do you think the fact that you made some pretty damn good foam on my latte will counteract your sin? What happened? Did the influx of holiday customers catch you unawares? Were the forks stolen in a midnight raid by Caribou Coffee? Did you use them to build a model of Barack Obama’s head? Throw me a bone, because I cannot for the life of me figure out a good reason why a chain store like Starbucks would literally run out of forks.

Me: Um…okay.

Oh, if only I had just gotten the burger and fries.