Friday, April 3, 2015

Overheard: VIP's talking Smoothies

I'm at it again

 
 
I'm at the Starbucks in the hospital lobby during R's weekly wheelchair Pilates class.

Ten minutes ago, a group of people, five women and two men, flocked in. They pulled four little tables together, stole chairs from all over, and started a big, important meeting right next to me. Crap. I might as well put on my Intrepid Eavesdropper persona because this teeny little coffee shop only has these few tables; there is nowhere else for me to go. Besides, they took all the chairs.
 

Clearly, these people are VIP's from Starbucks. (The company is based in Seattle; my friend years ago was a nanny for Howard Schultz...) The execs are discussing their new product, just released a couple of days ago: smoothies! Oh, they are so excited! The barista has just delivered a tiny plastic cup of each flavor to each VIP and I hear:

"The customer doesn't know what we have unless they SEE it."

"500 a week. That's being conservative."

"A year. We could send that...we could expand that...a pretty good estimate."

"They could request blueberries."

...And so on.

Anyway, I'm going to try to tune them out and go back to my writing. "Try" is the operative word here...
 


I rather wish they'd offered me four tiny plastic cups of smoothies too.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Eavesdropping, Again

I Should Have Been a Sleuth
 
 

You never know who will be sitting at the next table at the coffee shop! Today was especially productive because the man and woman at the next table are talking so loud that it doesn't even seem like eavesdropping.

They are planning some huge event, something they take SERIOUSLY. They've got different-colored Post-it notes with names written on them in black Sharpie marker, and they're moving them around in little piles all over the table, representing the people who will be sitting together at their event (WHAT is it??) The notes get shifted back and forth to group people in baffling ways, then shifted again, and then all over again. They're never satisfied with the groupings.

The blue Post-its belong to celebrities. Steve Martin and Brad Pitt and Katie Someone-or-other (I missed her last name.) There were more names that I didn't catch, also some celebrities that turned down their invitation. The man and woman call the blue Post-its the "Important Ones".

The pink Post-its are for "Presenters" - whatever that is!

The yellow Post-its have the names of "Unimportant People" written on them. Yep. They've even set a few yellows aside for "Uninvited Unimportant People", so that they'll know what to do with them when they show up to the big event.



Apparently, the "Important" ones will stay put at the tables and the "Unimportant Ones" and the "Presenters" will move from table to table at pre-determined intervals. This is getting odder and odder! Is this a Hollywood-style Pitch Session? Food does not seem to be involved with this particular event.

Are the man and woman event planners? Agents? Fund-raisers?

I've never heard/seen anything like it before. What's especially galling is that I (a decidedly "Unimportant" person!) am left with no answers whatsoever. Sometimes eavesdropping is so frustrating...

Five minutes later: The man just left a bunch of crap on their table, used cups and napkins and pastry crumbs. The woman left five minutes ago...

Seven minutes later: I just cleaned up their table. There were two crumpled-up pieces of paper. Of course I flattened them out and looked. One said: "Execs??" The other piece had a rough sketch of what looked like a floor plan, and the words "Flow Plan" at the top. I missed my calling! I should have been a sleuth.