canadian headhunter

Starbucks Characters

The Starbucks that I frequent has a separate room upstairs for lounging around in comfy chairs with your newspaper and a coffee. It can be reached by going through the front door or the back and the latter lets in some interesting characters.

One is the Sleeper. Actually, I call her Sleeper Two because there used to be a Sleeper One before her. Sleeper Two comes in at 7am. I think she hangs out in the Tim Horton's across the street until then. She always brings two plastic bags full of stuff with her. She never gets a coffee but marches in with a determined, business-like step, rearranges the furniture to suit her sense of order and then, without ever actually lying down, sprawls out on the couch and goes to sleep.

Today, The Clumper came in. He's becoming a 7am regular too and, like The Sleeper, he never gets any coffee (or anything else). He seems to be at least 70 and I know he's coming because he drags one foot as he slowly climbs the stairs. Once he's up he breathes very heavily. Then, he sits down and taps his toes. Soon, he takes scissors and scotch tape and a lot of paper from a plastic shopping bag and goes to work. I don't know what he's doing but he makes a lot of scraping and rattling sounds - which I don't like...