For Here or To Go?

There’s this little tea and coffee shop I love that’s not very far but I don’t get over that way often either. I decided to go there to pick up some food for my mom, it was her birthday and she loves a particular dish from there, and get a coffee for myself. It’s the kind of place that is very small and intimate so there’s not a lot of room to stand around.

Normally when I go to get something from this cafe I’m ordering there in person and eating there. This time I ordered online so I could just pick it up and take it to go. When I walked in there were several people waiting at the counter to order and there were three workers behind the counter doing various things.

Now I don’t know about others, but I usually feel so rude getting an employees attention to tell them I’m there to pick up an order. If they don’t come to me and offer help, I feel rude pulling them away from what they’re doing. I ended up just kinda standing there looking like I was in line to order.

Not long after, I looked down and saw some containers on the counter and saw one had my first name on it. I have a relatively common name so I wasn’t going to assume this is my order. But at the same time I felt so silly standing there with my (possible) order just right there in front of me. I had even made eye contact with two of the employees behind the counter and I think they assumed I was just being overly friendly and staring at them.

Eventually I worked up the nerve when one of the women was standing right in front of me from behind the counter to say “hi I’m here to pick up an order.” Thankfully she didn’t comment on the fact that I had just been standing there and staring at the employees for several minutes.

Oh and that container was in fact my order.

The best part of this story is that almost the exact same thing happened to me at a different establishment earlier in the week. That’s two times in less than 4 days that I walked into a place, stared sheepishly at whoever was working there for longer than necessary and had to work up the nerve to ask for an order I already paid for. Anxiety really will make you do strange things.