Thread by @Delafina777

My local Starbucks never ceases to be a source of fascinating people encounters. Most recently, I got a new chapter in some weirdness that started a couple weeks back.

I was supposed to go visit family earlier this month, leaving on the Wednesday before the Seattle Snowpocalypse. I wake up to a text that my flight is canceled. After FOREVER on the phone, I get it rescheduled for Thursday.

Since I had mentally prepared for travel hell all day, I was now at loose ends. I decided to do something I haven't done in a while: take a book, go to a coffee shop, get tea and a pastry, and read WITHOUT trying to be productive.

As is my habit, I bring both a fiction and a nonfiction book because I'm not sure which I'll be in the mood for. I get my tea and pastry, and am just sitting down, with my two books waiting for me on the table.

In walks an older couple, late 60s or early 70s, I'd say. He's casually dressed. She's polished-looking--suit-dress ensemble, subtle but noticeable makeup, matchy jewelry, etc.

She notices my books and says, "Whoa, two books at once? You don't see that very often these days." She has an Austrian accent. We talk for a while about physical books vs. Kindles and our preference for paper except when we're traveling.

She asks if I travel a lot. I say not really, just a few professional things and home to see my parents. He asks where my family lives. I tell him. We discover we've lived in some of the same places in the Midwest.

Now, when they're not men hitting on me, inquiring as to whether I am a Russian mail-order bride, or trying to get me to come to their church, I actually enjoy talking to random coffee shop people, so we proceed to chat for about an hour.

They're very warm, avuncular. We talk mostly about the Midwest and books, but then she asks what I do. I give her the elevator pitch of my career and she tells me she's a member of a network of businesswomen and they do mentoring.

She asks if I want to get coffee when I'm back in town. This seems to me like a bit of a leap from "We talked about Der Olde Country for an hour" to "I'd like to mentor you," but I've had people offer me jobs for less, so I said sure.

I set it up for a time when I'd be working on some freelance writing at Starbucks anyway. She and her husband warmly wished me safe travels and went on their way.

So we get together for coffee, and, like, look, at this point in my life I have a fairly ingrained weirdness detector, but for the first half hour or so, the conversation is not actually particularly weird.

Mostly she just asks about my writing, and me as a person. What do I want out of life, what are my values, etc. It seems a little strangely weighted to the latter rather than the former, but not to an alarming degree.

I keep my answers vague. She starts making more references to money, how it gives you options. A few weird things happen, but again, they're minute. I forget how--I think it was in response to some idiom or something that made me slightly uncomfortable--spanking children came up.

She insisted that you don't spank kids in anger, but sometimes they need a good swat. I changed the subject. She mentioned her father had been a doctor in Austria. I told her about my great-grandmother coming over from Germany and taking over the local doctor's practice.

She lit up a bit, all oh, she was German? German Jewish, I clarified. She twitched a bit, but sometimes Germans/Austrians have this sort of guilty reaction so I thought it might be that.

The conversation starts turning more to money, and what would I do with it if I had more. ("I would volunteer more" was an answer that she brushed past. You could travel, you could own property, etc.)

In all of this, she never mentioned what she does for a living, and redirected any attempts to get more information about her business. At one point, she said she appreciated that I wasn't just asking for a URL, because it showed I was patient and had an open mind.

But I want to reiterate that this was very smooth. Like, I'm a former baby lawyer, and I spent my formative young adult years with people who pounced on ambiguity or evasion, and my instincts still run in that direction. But she wasn't squirrelly or anything.

I had told her I had a meeting I had to leave for at 4:30, and she was very respectful of that. So we've been talking for about an hour and it's getting close to 4:00. She says she'd like to meet again, and I'm clearly a fast reader--would I be willing to read a book? A short one

I'm like, sure, figuring she's going to TELL me what book it is. Instead she pulls out a copy and hands it to me. amazon.com/Go-Giver-Littl…

I was REALLY thinking it was going to be Scientology, so this threw me a bit. But I was like, eh, well, this looks like something I can burn through in a couple of hours, and this is where I do my freelance so it's not like I will have to go out of my way to return it.

Sort of offhandedly, she asks me who the most influential people in my life are. I'm like, "role models? people who inspire me? or...?" and she's like, no, people you're close to. Obviously your family...

because you are a nice Midwestern girl.

And I'm sitting there like, I love my parents dearly, but I only see them twice a year and talk to them once a week so they're not exactly major daily influences in my life. But I didn't say that. I just was like, well, my friends.

She delicately probed for whether I was single. I was a bit amused at the delicacy and was like nope, no *partner* in my life (since she was all "boyfriend/husband").

She was like, good, you know, sometimes when people take charge of their lives, parents, boyfriends, they can be resistant to that.

I felt my eyebrows go up, and murmured something about people wanting the best for you. She said she'd like to meet again and I was like, well, I am usually here at this Stabucks at these times. She mentioned a cocktail/networking event.

I was like, sure, tell me when it is and I'll check my schedule. And that was when she finally, I think, slipped up and actually let loose some information.

She was like, "yes, and Rick and Bonnie Marshall are going to be in town."

I filed that away for future googling, since other than her first name and her husband's, she'd avoided ANY sort of specific information.

She said she'd see me at the Starbucks on Monday, and I was like, cool, I can return your book to you.

She was like, "I don't want to make you late to your meeting." We bid each other goodbye. She hugged me. I sat back down and googled.

Sure enough.

Amway.

Apparently haunting Starbucks is one of their new strategies.

My creepy fundamentalist Christian aunt was SUPER into Amway, but my experience with it was always clumsy people being very openly culty about it.

So, giving her her book back on Monday should be interesting.

The one redeeming bit of all of this was the meeting I had to go to was a temple thing, and I think the rabbi like recently discovered that pyramid schemes are a thing and is hilariously outraged at the very idea that they exist.

So her reaction to each beat of this story was--

have you ever had to bathe a cat, and you're trying to lower them into the tub and they are, Roadrunner-like, climbing the very air itself to get away?

--it was like that.

She kept saying, "they steal HOPE, they prey on HOPE" and I was like yes, they are running a con, this is not new, but the incredulity was sweet and adorable and oh, precious pure cinnamon roll, I love her so much.

Anyway, so, Starbucks are apparently a hotspot for Amway now. lallouslab.net/2015/03/25/7-t…

Also in my googling, I learned that the average Amway sales rep makes...

$88 a month.

Still deciding how to frame the conversation when I give her her book back.

Anyway, this has been today's edition of Things I Should Probably Not Have Spent The Time On But Did Because I Am Terminally Curious And Know It Will Make A Good Story Later.

Fin.