It's the little things

Yesterday afternoon I was walking up the hill from work, headed to Starbucks to buy some coffee filters.

The area where I work is full of little boutiques that survive on a steady flow of tourists offloaded from package tour buses. One boutique that sells (as near as I can determine from glancing in the window) very expensive letter paper and body parts for Pinocchio dolls of various sizes had a sign in the window saying that it was open and "Back in 5 minutes". The door was ajar. The proprietor was nowhere to be seen. I was greatly amused that they had left the door open so customers could come in from the cold and look around.

Back to the coffee filters. At home we make American-style drip coffee, i.e. what they call "coffee" (with no modifiers) in the US. Coffee filters are something of a specialty item in New Zealand and surprisingly expensive in the supermarkets. At Starbucks the filters are about half the price of the supermarkets.

I picked two boxes of 100 filters and took them to the counter. The cashiers looked at the boxes as if they had never seen them before, turning them around hunting for the price sticker. They rang them up then asked if I wanted them to remove the stickers -- i.e. they thought these novelty items must be gifts. I just chuckled. I declined the special little carry bag too.

I guess we're not in Seattle any more.