Deadly Distractions

As a freelancer working from home, for the most part, it is easy to get distracted. All of a sudden I find myself terribly interested in the architecture of my apartment: “Those are such elaborate crown moldings”, “Wait, what the heck is a crown molding?”, spends ten minutes researching crown moldings online, “And when did architects stop incorporating built-in shelves and cupboards in apartments?”… You get the picture.

So I often take my computer and/or pen and paper to my local coffee shop to work. There’s no risk of suddenly needing to do the dishes at Starbucks. But I find that if my internal resistance is at level five, then I will find distractions anywhere. Hell, I’d find a way to distract myself in a paper bag. “Hmm, how is a paper bag made…?

However, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? At least for a half hour. Here are the distractions I am faced with (besides those dastardly crossword puzzles that mock you if you don’t complete them!):

• OCD Guy. He sets his stuff down at a table, and then goes around the entire coffee shop straightening up the tables and chairs. Each table must have two chairs, or he gets very anxious to the point of argumentative. He asks one woman to remove her computer bag and purse from an extra chair at her table so he can return it to the chairless table in the corner where no one is sitting. When she won’t comply, he storms away complaining loudly how some people just don’t understand that each table needs TWO chairs.

• Pink Suit Guy. This short, squat guy wears a neon pink suit about three sizes too large for him. He accessorizes with plastic green glasses and a cowboy hat. He’s quite quiet and just sits at his table smiling benignly at everyone. I text a friend a description of Pink Suit who replies, “Oh, I know that guy! I used to see him on the bus all the time. He never had the money and always put newspaper on the seat before sitting down.”

• Homeless Guy. He doesn’t do much except project his exceedingly strong body odor about ten feet in diameter around him. I personally don’t have any issue with him, but because he doesn’t buy anything, the employees ask him to leave. He simply pretends he doesn’t hear them (I make a mental note to try that trick next time my temp job boss asks me to get coffee for him), and then they call the police. It takes four cops (one midget of a woman, one hulk of a woman, and two regular-sized men) to get him out of the café.

• Headband Guy. He wears a bandana, puts his headphones in, and watches funny movies on his iPad for hours. I assume they’re funny movies because he laughs occasionally. I never see his face because the iPad lays flat on the table and he hunches over it, face-down. I often wonder what the rest of his life is like: is he waiting for someone to come home and let him in? Does he hate his home so much he spends as much time away from it? Has he just been evicted and has no where to go? Does he work at a job he hates and this is his only form of (cheap) entertainment? Or maybe there’s nothing sad or pessimistic about him and my assumptions are more a reflection of my own state of mind….

• Fake Phone Call Guy. (Hmm, so far this list is comprised of all men…) This guy sits at a table with a battered-looking coffee cup that I would bet my overpriced Starbucks drink is empty with his cell phone in front of him. All of a sudden he grabs the phone and starts talking angrily into it, telling whoever’s on the other end (which I suspect is nobody, aside from maybe the voices in his head), “Take forty million dollars and buy up everything! Money is no object!” Then he disconnects, lays the phone down, takes a sip of pretend coffee, grabs the phone, and has some variation of that same conversation.

Okay, enough distractions. Back to work for me, before I become the person that someone writes about in her blog: Non-working Observing Girl. She brings her laptop to the coffee shop every day and then just sits there staring at everybody else and giggling….