Mercury Retrograde Fuckery in Action at Starbuck's and the Olympics

OK, so I saw some more Mercury retrograde fuckery in action at my local Starbuck's this morning. 

Let me state for the record that these folks are usually right on the money. They deal well with crowds and orders are usually flying out the door. 

So this morning I walk in and there's the counter, but what's different is that there's no line of people waiting to be helped. They're all down at the far end waiting for coffee. I thought that was odd from the beginning. So I walk up to place my order and there are five employees behind the counter. Not one of them even turns in my direction for over two minutes.

Behind the counter they're like zombies. They're not sure what's going on, what's been done, and what they're supposed to be doing next. Most of the time when you see this kind of behavior, it's crazy busy and they're just trying to push out orders, which as I said, normally they do well at. But something was clearly off this morning; because they were moving so slowly, I wondered if they had all shared a joint a few minutes prior.

This is Mercury retrograde in Pisces. It's like everything is in a dream. Reality is questioned and people struggle with communicating the practical. 

So I place my order, and the cashier is struggling to press the right buttons, and he's been there a while. Then he turns to tell one of his colleagues to warm up my sandwich, and he rattles off the food order. She doesn't repeat it back right away. The second employee is also a veteran, and she struggles with it, but she repeats it back correctly. The cashier had my drink cups with the orders written on them, and he told the manager who was finishing up the drink orders, "I have two cups for you and they're over here!", pointing to the countertop near him but further than usual from the other orders. The manager didn't respond at all. 

To be sure they didn't lose track of my food, I stuck around so the lady could see me and hand them off to me before doing something else. I pull up a spot on the wall to wait. And that's when it got more bizarre. 

There had been five employees behind the counter, but after a few minutes of looking at my phone, I noticed that there was only one back there working on drinks. One was out talking to customers, one was stocking lids, and the other two, including manager, were nowhere to be found. At this point I'm wondering what the fuck is going on. You're going to stock lids and supplies during breakfast rush? There were sleeves of lids just sitting on the countertops. I'm not sure how long they had been sitting there, but logically that just didn't make sense. 

So ten minutes later and this lady comes up next to me. I tell her to be prepared to wait a while and she commented that it was like the employees were moving in slow motion. I agreed. The manager had returned to his station and one of my drinks came out. I went over to pick it up, and asked if the other one was someplace in the pipeline. It's more like a coffee conveyor belt, but whatever. The guy doesn't even answer me, which surprised me because I've dealt with him before and he's definitely efficient and effective. Generally he holds everything together when it's busy. 

After ten seconds of waiting I figure I'm not getting an answer and go back to the wall. Less than a minute later my other drink comes up. You couldn't have just said, "Yes, it's coming," or something? What the fuck...?

Not wanting to tempt Mercury further, I beat feet to my car and head out the door. 

I hope this retrograde isn't as bad as I think it could be, folks. And someone scheduled the Winter Olympics during a Mercury retrograde! LOVE IT! That's about as smart as having a presidential election during one. Oh wait...

If you were watching the opening ceremonies of the Olympics last night, there was one major failure when the one ring didn't work as expected. And if you listened closely to the message from the Olympic Committee Chairman, the subtext of his message, which was about as subtle as a hammer to the head, was basically, "If you have a problem with Russia's stance on homosexuals or anything else, put it aside because the Olympics aren't about that."

The Mercury retro part of that message wasn't just the lack of subtlety in the message, but that they kept using "diversity"! All I could think of was "I guess they mean 'national' diversity, because they certainly don't mean homosexuality!" And of course they also said "tolerance", which was a complete joke, since Russia seems like a pretty intolerant place, and their leader seems to be an intolerant fuck. But that's just me. 

Intolerant fuck or not, Putin was at least smart to keep his remarks short and to the point; Mercury could've had a field day with him. 

Let me know how you're faring, good people! Good luck at Starbuck's and anyplace else you travel.