Two homeless men in their early 20s stood at the counter of a Starbucks. I stood behind them. No one was else was in the joint. In a few minutes I would meet a writing client to discuss his manuscript.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The men attempted to order some fancy drinks. I say \u201cattempted\u201d because their speech was nearly unintelligible. One gibbered, the other jabbered. One was using a gift card, one was on his knees digging through his backpack hunting for change. The kneeling man shook back and forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He began removing the contents of his backpack: electric power drill, charger, duct tape and other assorted items. I noticed a can of hairspray. (Homeless men use hairspray? Both of these men had shaved heads! A new drug fad?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The hunt for change was proving fruitless. He had 50 pennies spread across the counter, a few nickels and dimes. He kept shaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was taking forever but the female barista was kind, patient and counted up the total as it accumulated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The man stood up from the floor and faced the barista. I pulled a buck from my wallet and placed it on the counter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHey brother,\u201d I said, \u201cLet me help you out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He took the bill and pushed it in with the change. He did not turn around or say anything. He was still shaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His drink was some kind of oatmeal coffee concoction with whipping cream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As he waited, shaking, he put everything back in his backpack. His buddy took his drink and moved away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The concoction arrived. The man grasped it, walked up to his friend, and said they had three minutes to catch the bus across a busy road. They had to get moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They moved. I saw a homeless man running with an oatmeal coffee drink topped with whipping cream with a power tool and hairspray in has backpack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I watched them jog cross the street. Oatmeal drink man didn’t spill a drop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bus showed up and they disappeared into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A half an hour later, as I was leaving, I told the barista how well she handled the two men and showed extraordinary kindness and patience. She looked genuinely shocked to hear my compliment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThank you so much,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI notice these things,\u201d I said. \u201cMore people should.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI agree. Thanks again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was driving home when it hit me: why in the hell didn’t you tip her?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two homeless men in their early 20s stood at the counter of a Starbucks. I stood behind them. No one was else was in the joint. In a few minutes I would meet a writing client to discuss his manuscript. The men attempted to order some fancy drinks. I say \u201cattempted\u201d because their speech was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9320,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9321,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9319\/revisions\/9321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}