A Battle of Wills with No Winner in Sight!

I am conflicted about my coffee. You see, every Saturday for longer than I care to admit, I have gone to a certain coffee shop and ordered a special drink. No, it’s not my “daily” coffee, it’s a special treat (because I think it has about 600 calories and I weighed 10 pounds more when I was drinking it every day). I had a nice life with this ritual, until the unthinkable happened… They ran out of my favorite Torani – Chocolate Mint!

Now, the girls at the coffee shop are very nice, but they have no appreciation for the OCD that fuels my charm. “Oh, we have another mint. It is the same!” Sorry, ladies. Peppermint is not the same as Chocolate Mint. To my mouth, they are night and day.

“We’ll order another bottle” said the matriarch of the café. But that was months ago. “It’s very difficult to find,” she tells me. But I’ve found it at another place. And here is the dilemma….

You see, the ritual, itself, is part of the experience that makes the Saturday so nice for me. It’s the farmer’s market across the street, my bagel and cream cheese, the special outdoor bench AND the coffee drink. With the Torani substitution, I can only get about 85% of the overall experience. Sometimes I will go somewhere that DOES have what I need, but then I give up the farmer’s market and the rest of the ritual. Any way you cut it, I’m screwed.

“Why not bring your own syrup,” says my fiancée. “Because then I’d look like a freakin’ dork with a bottle of syrup,” I say. Not exactly conducive to a relaxing Saturday, either.

Next week, the girls at the coffee shop have PROMISED me (again) that they will have the syrup. I’ll give them another shot, but if they fail me again, they may have lost my business for at least a little while as punishment. And as for my Saturday ritual, I may ultimately have to look inward to restore the calm, and make a new ritual. Sorry, coffee girls – it’s hard to get a new customer, but easy enough to lose an old one!