One time, between jobs I worked at Starbucks. Actually, working would be overstating things. I’ve never actually had a cup of coffee (truly) so I’d never actually been in a Starbucks, but I’d heard that it was where slackers and caffeine groupies and people on the dole often gather to poach free Wi-Fi, posture as if conducting real business and discuss the metaphysical merits of the scone, so one day I channeled my inner hipster and went there.

Over maybe a ten-day period I checked out the seven or so Starbucks that were within one square mile of my house and frankly, to borrow from the coffee klatch, it was an eye-opener. A parallel universe of posers. In many ways, each one of these stores was a remote unemployment office, but customers had also commandeered the real estate for use as a flophouse, an electrical way station, a communal conference room, a telephone booth, a drug transaction rendezvous, a filling station bathroom and your best girlfriend’s couch.

Some people buy things, some don’t. They jockey and jostle over a padded chair or mint-green sofa as if it were the last seat on a Titanic lifeboat; they huddle around electrical outlets like mushers in the Yukon warming their hands over a drum-can fire. Everyone here was doing the same thing: nothing. Everyone, me certainly included, was stalling, loitering, killing time, idling in a coffee parking lot, wildebeests at the watering hole, lingering as long as possible until reality forces them to resume the trek across life’s parched landscape.

The sociological underpinnings are both fascinating and pathetic. Being in the coffee club implies a degree of status and acceptance and with-it-ness, but the cup of coffee and cinnamon strudel bites soon turn into a three- or four-hour stay and this stay indicates that you’re not really in any club at all – you’re socially homeless and personally and professionally adrift. 

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My first few days at this new job I sat outside if possible and generally profiled and then passed judgment on the people that went inside. Look at this guy, that tie doesn’t match, must be a lawyer, I bet when he gets into his Range Rover he tops off that coffee with a liberal pour of Jameson from a flask...She must have just dropped the kiddies off at school, oh, and it’s Wednesday her favorite day of the week, the pool man comes today.

I drank chocolate milk with ice in it. It was nowhere near as good as Nestle’s Quik and it was awkward when the doofus making it had to scream what it was OUT LOUD when it was ready, but I was one of them now so I had to suck it up. I guess you gotta give those in the Starbucks cult credit for at least getting out of the house. That’s what I was doing, trying to keep some sort of forward momentum and dealing with being unemployed by continuing the ritual of having a job, and that meant rising early, performing half-hearted grooming and leaving the house.

I looked for work, called people I knew, people I used to work with, I went to the places online where people looking for writers might be. As you do when you need work, I reached out to people I can’t stand, I told people I had hoped I would never speak to again how great it was to talk to them, I sent no hard feelings vibes to guys that fired me though I wished them to rot in hell.

A few months passed, my confidence ebbed and I thought I should do something constructive, but instead I got a Twitter handle and started a blog (this was in 2011). The blog thing lasted for exactly nine posts, mostly book reviews. One of these entries was the ranking of all 212 Beatles songs in order, and in related news, I assessed and then ordered the best 144 music/rock acts of all time. Though it was a very brief run, the value of these posts to society is undeniable, and they constitute quite possibly the most important work ever achieved at a Starbucks.

For weeks I contemplated writing the world’s first Dinosaurus, that would be a thesaurus written explicitly for dinosaurs. I discussed the concept and a few people thought I might be onto something; the coffee drinkers, however, questioned whether dinosaurs as a group had the purchasing power to support the endeavor. I still think that giving longnecks and young Edmontosaurus access to just the right word with just the right Mesozoic flair would have been a winning proposition.

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At some point a replaced chocolate milk with beer, but one morning after maybe three months, I hit a Starbucks, on a whim really, like an old man making a nostalgic drive through his childhood neighborhood. Nothing had changed, different faces maybe, but still a flock of sheep looking for acceptance at the bottom of a coffee cup. Everyone was still in their designated spots, pretenders and losers, everyone in their personal disguises and strung out on Wi-Fi, and again, I was still the only one who was real and grounded and going places (mostly to the bar and the unemployment office).

I was sitting outside on one of those cheap, uncomfortable, latticed tin chairs next to the matching round table with the birdshit on it when my phone rang. I quickly walked out toward the street, not wanting to be that guy who takes a phone call in a crowded place and violates everyone else’s personal space so he can feel important.

On the line is a creative director and he’s called to inquire about an old coworker who has used me as a reference. After I told him a few lies about this guy I used to work with he asked me what I was doing, where I was working. We had a two- or three-minute conversation and I told him I was “in transition,” doing some freelancing and keeping my “options open.” I thought these vague code words were better than telling him that I was mostly plotting my next beer, charging my family’s electronic devices at Starbucks and thinking a lot about how badly dinosaurs needed a thesaurus.

He said we should talk again and I returned to my tin chair feeling fairly smug until I realized that the only time prospective employers contacted me was when they were trying to hire someone else.

Ever since then I’ve listed Starbucks on my resume … after all, a resume is really just a series of organized, formalized half-truths … and I did go there pretty consistently. If I get any questions about my role there I tell people I did market research and they usually shake their heads as if to say, that makes sense.

Almost everyone is a member of the coffee cult so if you just find a way to tie-in Starbucks they’ll essentially believe anything you say.

Homeless, jobless, clueless … Starbucks can happen to anyone.

Photo credit: Sean Davis on Visual Hunt/ CC BY-ND