Excuse me, Ma'am, but Your Scrubs are Showing!!

For some reason, I feel the need to put everyone in a social circle. I like having categories. It makes everything easier to understand as far as how the world works. Oddly enough, I get the opportunity to do this compartmentalization all day at Starbucks. This morning was no exception. However, I have to make a strong note that not everyone thinks like I do, and again, this morning was no exception.

I noticed, during the early shift, that we were getting a lot of hospital workers all wearing a very recognizable shade of blue scrubs (residents, nurses, surgeons, etc…). At one point, I was at the register when a lady in the now familiar blue shade of scrubs came up to order. I decided to put my social circle skill to work. I told her, “Hey, you would be shocked at how many of you all from the same hospital come in on Saturday morning…you should start a little morning group meeting…that’d be cool.”

She looked at me like I had just told her that I was her illegitimate child. You would have thought I had tried to mug her. I thought I was doing her a favor…you know, giving her a chance to make friends…maybe meet a man or something, I mean, she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring or anything (which doesn’t mean she wasn’t married because maybe she took it off for work or maybe she doesn’t want to be married…but it’s not like I said, “get a date, lady…” or something rude like that…I just made a suggestion).

Well, she proceeded to say, “I don’t work at a hospital…I mean, can a person not just wear scrubs?” and I’m thinking, No, not really. I mean, I guess she CAN wear scrubs, but the obvious person is going to think she does something medical. And I didn’t ask her to perform surgery on me or anything, I just made a very reasonable assumption that scrubs aren’t exactly an outfit that a person would pick out of their closet to wear by choice. If I was wearing a Starbucks green apron in public, I wouldn’t exactly be offended or even surprised if someone asked me if I worked at Starbucks. And if I ever wear my apron in public, it probably means that something is wrong with me. Haha.

So, at this point, I just have a sappy grin pasted on my face and I start jabbering about the community board on the wall behind her and how we have all kinds of things that can be posted on the board, including signs for any causes she may support as long as they aren’t blatantly prejudice against any ethnic or religious group (I was babbling at this point, trying to reign her back in from the “angry place” she had gone…). Whew…I think I just ended up making her think that I was a “special” person that had somehow landed a job at a coffeeshop. I am sure she felt sorry for me. She gave me her order real slow and I just nodded and kept smiling that sappy smile. Oh wow. No more compartmentalization except in my internal dialogue…which I will keep to myself from now on. Haha.

The day ended great as I clocked out at 12:30 and met my grandfather for a late lunch in celebration of Independence Day! It was a wonderful time of fellowship with one of my favorite men in the world- I love my papa!

I hope that the fireworks shows are able to take place tonight despite the drizzling rain! Seems like I have my own fireworks in some way or another every day at work! Happy 4th Everyone!