They Don't Get it Right

The day began as it often does at Starbucks on "Jin Ji Hu Lu" at about 6.30 a.m. and it began as it invariably does with a medium size "coffee of the week" and as usual the cup was filled to overflowing although I still had to put my milk in it. They just don't get it right and they let you open your laptop without telling you that there is no connection and when you complain about there being no connection they tell you that it is broken and then you end up upseting them by storming into the back of the cafe and turning the modem on and all of that before 6.40 a.m.

When I was in Qingdao someone in the 'Monheimer Eck' told me a wee story of how, when someone is working on an assembly line and there is a problem with his part of the assembly line, he will just walk over and take a screw from somewhere else and then continue working with his part of the line moving smoothly again and everything around him collapsing. Now, I didn't really witness that but there was this time when there was this guy working on a roof and he kicked a bucket full of bricks over and it almost hit a passerby on the street and he only looked down and then continued working.

They don't really mean anything by their not quite getting it right; the wee lady who I mentioned in another post who wet mops the marble floor when there are people walking up and down the corridor, the nice little man who cleans the lift with a detergent stuff that just has to be highly toxic, the girl who brings you your meal after your two friends have finished theirs, the taxi driver who swerves around a corner on the wrong side of the road and almost gets you killed .... it's not really intentional, they don't want to upset you and, maybe, they are really trying, they just don't get it right a lot of the time that is all!

The picture above is of the row of little cafes in front of my flat in Jin Ji Hu Lu, Starbucks is at the far end of the picture.