“You’re good” often means “Yeah, but you’re not”

It shouldn’t have been difficult. We were all there for the exact same reason. We often like to think of ourselves as unique individualists, but really we aren’t that different. Standing in line at a coffee shop isn’t a new activity. The line speaks for itself, and there’s nothing more ubiquitously American than the adult sippy cup known as the to-go coffee container. The rules are pretty simple: stand in line, order when you’re next, pay and then wait for your name to be called.

But even simple things can be difficult if the intention is there — or if intention is absent. Our line snaked out the door in between two tables. Clearly this little coffee shop had never envisioned a line this long. Good for them, I thought. In this era where restaurants are closing left and right, seeing someone being successful is pretty heartwarming. The line itself was clear enough for everyone, well, except for one woman who stood off to the side on her phone.

Sometimes you can tell someone is going to be annoying just by the way they hold something. That guy holding his wineglass by the flat base with his thumb and forefinger, for example. Or the classic “pinky in the air” cliche. In the service business, you can’t really do anything about things like that. All you can do is notice it.

“Are you in line?” one person asked her and then another, before each of them stood in the place most obvious for someone standing in a line. In geometry, a line is defined as a straight one-dimensional shape without thickness that extends indefinitely in each direction. A line segment is the measurable part of said line between two fixed points.

The points in our little coffee shop were obviously fixed. But some people these days don’t believe in anything, not even math.

But the line was just the beginning because the space that woman chose to occupy was directly in front of the little sugar-creamer-napkin station, which meant that not only did everyone have to ask her if she was in line, but after going through said line, they then had to also ask her to move so that they could get to the condiments.

“Excuse me” was said over and over.

And every time someone said it, the woman on her phone gave them side-eye.

“You’re good,” she said once or twice in response, which is what people say when they’re the one who isn’t good.

I know I’m good, but I’m not the one blocking the entire grocery store aisle with my cart. I know I’m good, but I’m not the person with three dogs taking up the entire sidewalk. I know that I’m good, but I’m not on the wrong side of the road going in the wrong direction.

“You’re good” is classic transference. I’m not the problem, you are, when it’s actually the other way around.

It’s been said that we are all in this together, and in many cases we are. But there are some people who just don’t see things that way. It’s their world, and the rest of us are just an annoyance.

We in the service business see it every day.

“What are all of these people doing here?” someone will ask.

What all those people are doing there is exactly the same thing that you are.

But there are some people who just won’t see things that way.

The woman on her phone eventually sidled over after many side-eyes. And eventually it was her turn to order, and for the first time she was in the right spot.

“Do you guys have espresso?” she asked, oblivious to the hanging wall menu that had been literally hanging over her head the entire time.

And that wasn’t the only question she asked.

“How much is that?” she asked, pointing at a pastry in the case — a pastry that had the price clearly displayed on a little picked sign.

“And that one?”

“And that one?”

“And that one?”

It was as passive-aggressive a display as I’ve ever seen. My biggest takeaway was that thankfully, this one time, I was on this side of the counter.

The woman had to eventually abandon her spot blocking the condiment counter to retrieve her coffee. And when she did so, a man on his phone took that spot, essentially blocking her from doing what everyone else had been doing.

“Excuse me,” she said, and not kindly. “I need to get some sugar.”

“You’re good,” said the man, not even looking up from his phone.

Leaving me with these thoughts:

• Aren’t sippy cups supposed to soothe babies? Asking for a friend.

• “How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours,” once wrote motivational speaker and bestselling self-help author Wayne Dyer.

• “The whole is greater than the part,” once said Euclid, the father of modern geometry.

• By definition, if there’s a line, you’re not being unique.

• What happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object? Ask any barista, they’ll tell you.