In Which I Get Kicked Out Of A Coffee Shop For Looking Like A Prostitute

I don't get out to San Francisco nearly as often as I should, but because of my writing I've had more opportunities to spend time in the city. There's something about the city that I just love. I don't know if it's the people, that it goes from bright and shiny to gritty and dirty in the span of a block or the people that make it so interesting to me. 

Whatever it is, whenever I head out that way I try to spend as much time as I can wandering and exploring. I do miss the city since I left Chicago and I try to find excuses to head out as often as I can. 

A few weekends ago I found myself sitting in a coffee shop, sipping a Diet Coke and killing time before one of my performances. I was dressed in what I usually wear for performances: a pair of dark jeans, black boots, and a black wrap shirt. Because the city is ungodly cold, I was also wearing a hoodie from the 2012 Ex Boyfriend Collection. 

I was halfway through my Diet Coke when the homeless guy wandered in. 

He approached the register and started babbling incoherently to the little Vietnamese lady behind the counter. 

Because I don't live under a rock, none of this really caught my attention and I continued watching some guy in a wheelchair across the street spoon a fire hydrant. (And for what it's worth, I'm not sure what his secret was but I don't sleep that well in my bed. He might be on to something.)

I didn't notice that the homeless man inside the coffee shop had come up behind me until he started babbling at me. 

There is one life lesson that every busty girl on the planet has learned: if someone is harassing you, if you ignore them they eventually wander away. If that doesn't work, that's why God invented Mace. But usually the ignoring works. 

As he continued rambling about my hair, my chest and my ass, I kept ignoring him. 

He eventually started bugging some cute blonde guy for change. The blonde guy, being far more tolerant than I, gave him some change. The homeless man then turned his attention to me again. 

Fantastic. 

About two more minutes of random screaming about various parts of my anatomy that I refuse to write about on the internet followed. After that he progressed into screaming about all the inappropriate things he wanted to do to me, some of which may not actually be legal in this state.

I continued sipping my Diet Coke.

It was at that point that the little Vietnamese lady got sick of his crap and insisted that the man leave. 

(And before any of you tell me how racist this sounds, I swear to God these are exact quotes)

"You! You go! You get out! I don't let people beg for money! You get out!"

She then proceeded to chase him out of the door with a broom. 

I looked up from my Diet Coke and smiled at her. Just a silent "thank you for getting rid of that man who was claiming he wanted to do inappropriate things to me with a beer bottle" if you will. 

Which is when she looked at me and glared.

"You! You go too! You dress like hooker and make trouble! You get out!"

I decided to go before she brought out the broom. I was about halfway to my performance that it occurred to me that I was just ushered out of a coffee shop in San Francisco for dressing like a hooker. 

I can't decide whether or not the prostitutes around here are really well dressed, or if I should take a good hard look at my life and my choices. 

Part of the problem with getting old is the realization that you can't actually do all of the things you were told you could as a kid.

My generation (most of us anyhow), grew up being told there was absolutely nothing on the planet that we couldn't do. So you have fear of enclosed spaces and heights, it's OK Billy, you can still be an astronaut. It's no big deal that Sally looks like she got hit in the face with a shovel, she can still model! As long as she puts her mind to it.

That's the phrase it ends with. "Put your mind to it.".

The more I think about it, the more that phrase is a phenomenal load of bullshit that people have been feeding into for years.

And lately, it's really been chapping my ass. I have been looking for a new career lately, and I'm always met with the same response when I tell people why.

"You can be good at sales, you just have to put your mind to it".

By that logic, I could also be a brilliant neurosurgeon, Lindsay Lohan's next girlfriend, or a nuclear physicist.

Not gonna happen.

It occurred to me that I started this job to get out of sales, and they forced me back into it because of the market, despite my telling them honestly and openly that I sucked balls at it. So I'm getting tired of feeling guilty for sucking exactly as much as I told them I would.

Instead of putting my mind to it, I've decided to put my mind to something else: moving on to a place where I'm happy. And that, my friends, is a gigantic pain in the ass.

Maybe I've been in recruiting too long, or maybe I'm just bitter, but I have the absolute hardest time giving a flying shit about the interviews I go on. It's not that I don't want the job, I absolutely do, but I have apparently reached this point in life where they are no longer any source of stress. I was more stressed out on the commute to get there than I was during the actual interview.

Maybe that's a good thing, maybe that's the universe's way of telling me that I'm doing the right thing by moving on to something I actually want to do.

Either way, as long as I don't have to hear the phrase "put your mind to it", I'm in.

(Check out the links later on today, I'm in the process of updating them.)