Support

It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. The smell was different. Around ten years after Jerri’s last visit, Big Brother passed extensive anti-smoking legislation, and the act and odor generally became considered socially abhorrent. Which she was fine with. She essentially quit tobacco, depending on the legal and social context she was provided. She would mostly only think about tobacco when drinking coffee, eating steak, or when saying, “screw Big Tobacco! Screw em!” But even without tobacco, coffee is still good.

Jerri stood at the front, respectfully waiting to be either seated or given permission to sit anywhere. She fretted that, since there was no ‘seat self’ sign displayed, there could possibly be a momentarily-absent host who would be humiliated by their own ignorance. And if there were multiple servers, seating herself could completely upset the table-rotation, easily causing financial uncertainty and panic. This would only matter if the diner was busy. It wasn’t. But she thought it was important to consider these things, since she was trying to be supportive. And she felt assured by arriving before the listed closing.

She never reached a confident theoretical conclusion. The only server, taking long strides and cradling a load of dirty glasses, insisted, “Sit anywhere you’d like.” He successfully overcame the annoyance insisting itself into his speech, queued by the thoughtless arrival of the last minute customer who won’t tip enough to make up for the time he could be spending at home.

As the server disappeared into the back of the house, Jerri called for a coffee, to save him the extra trip. The server complained about the straggler to the cook, “and then she’s screaming something at me about coffee!”

Jerri tries not to add sugar, as per doctor’s orders, but if there is sugar mistakenly added, she doesn’t mention it. That only happens at Big Cafe factories, with digital menus of foreign java cocktails glowing from thin screens above polished apparatuses spouting long puffs of whistling steam. Their synthesized coffee is mass-assembled and distributed as a matter of cold efficiency. The styrofoam is printed with the yellow shade proven to increase dopamine by .8 per cent in consumers. She tries to avoid supporting Big Cafe Industrial Complex due to an inferiority complex, deeply rooted in her youth, which aligns her to relate with small cafes. After Big Brother spends most of her money supporting Big War and replaced bullets she didn’t want shot in the first place, she prefers spending the remaining on small cafes that only fire agreeable bullets. As far as she was concerned, the only small cafes that exchanged gunfire were in Spain against Big Brother. 

This was a diner and she wasn’t hungry, but it was still small enough for her calculated support, despite its existence for twenty-four hard years unaware of any particular absence. As she waited for her coffee with a flipped and prepared mug, the owner was at home, chain smoking Big Tobacco, secretly grieving the title he was to forfeit at the end of the month. He smoldered a cigarette, “They don't order the food!”

When it can be helped, Jerri will support small cafes. However, plagued by zoning geo-politics involving debatable commas, legally navigating the region from residence to small cafe caused her to unavoidably be seduced by one of the dozen Big Cafe sirens on route. Handicapped, subservient to a commonly tight schedule, Jarri has nearly exclusively frequented convenient Big Cafe factories.

Rarely, but particularly while broadening her horizon and guessing at the java cocktail menu, either the factory employee or the polished apparatus will mistakenly add sugar, despite the doctors orders, and she didn’t mind. She accepted the treat as a small gift of encouragement from an anonymous stranger cheering her on. 

Nearly fourteen years ago, Big Brother and she quit Big Tobacco. That event coincided with her experiencing two consecutive days of experimental orders mistakenly including sugar, either through accident, neglect, or design. She experienced a wave of self assurance at the clear positive reinforcement and would never truly recover a fair amount of self doubt. 

Incidentally, whenever Jerri enjoys the anonymous positive reinforcement of any mistaken sugar, her pancreas struggles to mass produce glucose. It struggles against the cosmic betrayal, suffering while being targeted, discouraged, handicapped, and abandoned.

She caught the server taking long strides across through the diner for no obvious reason. Neglected, she questioned reinforcing this inconsiderate behavior. The server spotted her eye and the overturned mug, then pretended not to see the mug, as if he was in the coffee process the entire time. There was a much quieter part of himself wishing she knew he wasn’t thinking about the overturned mug or its disapproval.  

Insulted by the blatant inconsideration from the help, feeling particularly unsupported and unsupportive, Jerri focused onto the plastic menu in her hands and ignored the wave of cynicism. Overhead light reflected off the plastic list of steak and eggs in varying combinations, and she fully committed, then and there, to being vegan. This had nothing to do with animal rights, which she never admitted, but rather to stick it to Big Meat, which she often admitted. She was publicly proud that she no longer supported Big Tobacco. Privately she worried she only quit Big Tobacco due to the inconvenient taxes and location restrictions imposed by Big Brother, and the residential non-smoking ordinance of her Condo Association.

Unlike with Big Tobacco, she will quit Big Meat on her own, resisting the list of steak and eggs that would surely taste just as delicious as they did twenty-four years ago. She was proud of the inconvenient path taken. When she ate steak, she would think about Tobacco, anyways. The kitchen closed in any minute, and she didn’t want to keep anyone from home. And she thought all these points needed to be considered if she was to be supportive.

Jerri eyed the coffee pot lid suspiciously, struggling to remember if the yellow color generally designated caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee. She began cheering internally for the server, sharing in his success by correctly completing her order. 

In his fit, the server forgot her order. Given the time of night, decided the only appropriate order that could have been screamed at him was for decaffeinated coffee. The server was a big supporter of a regular sleep schedule, deeply rooted in his youth, and couldn’t bear the guilt of mistakenly drugging a stranger with caffeine that late at night any more than he could bear admitting his failure by asking a disgruntled customer again. Especially not after the overturned mug. 

Jerri wondered at the coffee, but was confident in the server. She wondered about tobacco, enjoyed the decaffeinated coffee, and that was all that mattered.