I didn't ask for this Mulatto coffee

I was just coming back from grabbing a quick afternoon coffee at the café downstairs and two thing REALLY irritated me. First, I told the little El Salvodorian teenager behind the counter (you knew I had to get in a racial description) to put in "a very little bit of cream." I'm a black coffee dude, but in the afternoon, I treat it like a dessert and drink it with a little cream (enough to merely coat the bottom of the cup and slightly lighten the complexion of the coffee) and sugar (one packet). I always make this clear to people making my coffee, if I'm at one of the cafes that don't allow you to fix your coffee the way you'd like (most do). It's one of the reasons I typically don't go to those type of cafes, specifically for an afternoon cup.

But for some reason, I didn't feel like walking the extra block to Starbucks or Jadora and chose to go to this cafeteria style café downstairs from my building and ordered the aforementioned coffee with "a very little bit of cream." In essence, if the "barista" (and I use that term very liberally here) does things right, my coffee will be Kobe's complexion and not its usual Dwyane Wade shade. But this broad chose to dump half the quart of cream in my cup and slid me a Derek Jeter cup of coffee!!!! I WAS INCENSED.

The reason I was so angry is not just because this woman totally ignored my request (she may be a Salvo, but she spoke bueno 'glish, so there were no communication issues); but the real irritation is the tango that inevitably ensues after these kind of gaffes. That tango includes me asking the barista to please pour out a certain amount of ounces of the light-skin coffee and add some more regular coffee for pigment-purposes. Now, I have an incredible knack for eying how much of the light-skin coffee needs to be replaced with regular coffee in order to get my cup of joe to the right complexion. But the problem is that the baristas rarely listen to me…I mean, the reason we're doing this dance to begin with is because they very clearly intimated through their initial dismissal of my request that they're not really trying to work with me too tough. For this particular cup, I was sure that a 4 oz swap would take my cup from "Purple Rain" Prince to "Humpin Around" Bobby Brown and then I could just get the heck outta that amateur operation and get to sippin.

Except, homegirl didn't listen and we had to swap three whole times!!!!!!! Eff being difficult. There's no way a Grace-Jones sippin nig like me can pay for a cup o' Lena Horne and not feel like my very soul has been compromised. I take this bean bizness serious. Go ask somebody.

And of course this trash-café didn't have the sleeves for the cup, so as I walked back to the office my hand was getting scolded.

Scolded hands = frustration, but I'm still a gentleman at heart, so when I see an older woman rolling a briefcase (not a suitcase, but a briefcase), I still muster the Samaritan in me and hold open the door for this old bitty and her companion, who was rocking a natty three-piece suit and looked like Bill Nighy, Ian McKellan, or any other British transplant (Brits all look the same, just different shades of caramel-teeth). Both of these non-mute humans walked through the door and said absolutely nothing. No thank you. In fact, they didn't even muster a smile…not even a smirk! I was so livid that I even spit out one of those smarmy "Your welcome" at them, maybe guilting or shocking them into a guilty thank you -- to be honest, I'd have been happy with an exasperated, begrudging thank you. Nothing!

What are people thinking during these kind of pseudo-encounters?!!! Do I look like a door-man to you? Do I resemble a bell-hop in this track jacket and these jeans and chuck tayors, holding a coffee? This is obviously my job, right? I hold doors for old British broads and their beaus. That's what I do. And, in fact, I do this and do not expect even the most common and fundamental courtesy of eye contact, or maybe a smile, possibly a thank you.

Getting greased twice in 5 minutes is so very hard to process.