I prefer to sit where nobody notices me. I have a rare condition called hyperacusis, which causes my ears to perceive normal everyday sounds at much higher volumes than other people experience, making loud noises physically painful for me. Because of this, I spend my free time in the quietest corner of a small local bookstore that has a coffee shop in the back. I sit in the rear corner behind a high bookshelf where I can read without being disturbed. From my seat, I have a clear view of the entire room, and I usually just watch people while enjoying the calm environment.
The quiet morning shattered when a young man around twenty-two years old walked into the shop. He wore shiny expensive sneakers, a designer tracksuit, and bright sunglasses indoors. He was pushing a large black stroller containing a small baby. He moved through the front door with total confidence, acting as though the store belonged to him. He did not look at the books or the menu. Instead, he scanned the room for a place to sit. He picked a table near the center of the room where a woman in her forty was sitting alone. She had a laptop, a tablet, and a heavy portable power bank resting on her table while she worked on her computer.
The young man pushed his stroller right up to her table. He did not wait for her to look up or ask if the seat was taken. He tapped his long fingernails on the wooden surface to get her attention. He pointed at her portable power bank and told her that his phone was dying and his baby needed to watch cartoon videos immediately. He said she needed to hand over the power bank and her tablet right away so his child would stay quiet.
The woman looked up from her screen in surprise. She politely explained that those items were her personal belongings that she brought from home to finish her work. She suggested that he ask the clerk at the front counter if the store had an outlet he could use. The young man scowled and leaned closer to her face. He said that a baby’s needs were much more important than whatever silly work she was doing. He insisted that as an older person, she had a duty to help a young father, and he claimed that she was being extremely rude for saying no to a child.
My ears began to throb from the harsh tone in his voice. I pulled myself deeper into my chair and watched the interaction from behind my book. The young man showed a complete lack of basic logic. He truly believed that anything in the room was his for the taking simply because he wanted it. The woman tried to ignore him and went back to typing on her keyboard. This made the young man even angrier. He placed his hands on his hips and started speaking much louder, repeating his demand over and over.
A young woman working behind the coffee counter saw the argument escalating. She picked up the store landline phone and pressed a button to page the shift manager from the back office. After hanging up the receiver, she went back to wiping down the espresso machine while waiting for the manager to come out and handle the situation.
Before anyone could intervene, a sudden distraction created total chaos in the middle of the shop. A customer entering the front doors had a small terrier on a retractable leash. The dog suddenly spotted a rubber ball rolling across the floor, slipped out of its collar, and sprinted wildly through the aisles. The dog knocked directly into a tall metal display rack filled with dozens of stainless steel travel mugs. The heavy rack tipped over and crashed onto the polished concrete floor with a sound that felt like a sharp pain in my ears. Metal mugs bounced everywhere, ringing like broken bells across the room. The dog barked excitedly while its owner scrambled to catch it.
The young man barely paid attention to the loud crash near the front. He kept his eyes locked on the woman’s tablet. He took a step toward her chair and reached his hand out toward her power bank, fully expecting that no one in the building would dare stop him.
At that moment, a man sitting at a nearby table stood up. He was dressed in a simple sweater and had been quietly reading a newspaper. He walked over to the young man with a warm smile on his face. He did not raise his voice or tell the young man that he was doing something wrong.
Instead, the man looked at the young man’s expensive shoes and then looked at the stroller. He told the young man that a stylish, clearly successful father like him would obviously never want his child using someone else’s old, cheap electronics. He said that a guy with such great taste surely knew that used items were covered in germs from strangers. He added that a man of his high status would definitely prefer to go to the high-end tech store down the block to buy a brand-new, top-quality tablet and battery pack that matched his outfit, rather than settle for old items sitting on a regular table.
The young man paused. He looked down at his clothes, then looked at his reflection in the coffee shop window. His eyes widened slightly as if he had just hit upon a brilliant idea all on his own. He nodded his head slowly and puffed out his chest. He said that he was far too important to let his kid touch second-hand items. He announced to the room that he was going to buy the most expensive new tablet on the market instead, because only the best was good enough for his family.
Ten minutes had passed since the worker paged the shift manager, but the manager still had not come out of the office. The young man grabbed the handle of his stroller, turned around proudly, and strutted out the front door without saying another word. He faced no punishment for his aggressive behavior and left thinking he was the smartest person in the building. I put my foam earplugs into my ears to block out the remaining noise of the fallen travel mugs, took a slow breath, and opened my book back to the page I had lost.
