Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Dunkin Donuts

I haven't been writing as much as I planned.  Also, I'm probably going to put up a lot of random thoughts on here, and events might not actually be in the order they happened.  You probably don't care, but yah. 

Last night, after I finished my last class, I was in the teachers lounge getting ready to go home.  A middle aged man stopped by my work, and asked to have a cover letter of his proofread by an english teacher.  I'm not excatly the best at english myself but one of the korean teachers asked me to do it, so I assumed that I was probably better than them, so I agreed to do it.  After I read the first paragraph, it was clear that the man who wrote this clearly had better writing skills than me (not that it takes much to be better than me) and I hardly needed to edit anything.  The man was a leading engineer with Samsung, and had a Ph. D in chemical engineering and led a number of major studies and tests on a wide range of things such as hydrogen fuel cell advancement and a ton of other things that were way over my head.   Afer looking at the cover letter for about 5 minutes, I brought it out to him and he thanked me for looking at it.  He tried to give my boss $5 for their efforts, but my boss refused it.  He gave it to me, and after trying to say no, I eventually accepted.  By accident, I kind of mumbled "This is the best money I've made since Ive been here."  Probably not a great thing to say right in front of my boss.  I said I would buy everyone bagels in the morning so it would look like I was putting the money towards everyone.  Turns out this was a bad idea.

The next morning, I go to Dunkin Donuts and buy four bagels. In Korea, all of the donuts, cookies, bagels, etc. are placed in the middle of the store in a display case and you grab a tray and get what you want and bring them to the cashier.  The display cases have glass doors, that open outwards and can slide back into the racks (similar to a door on a tv cabinet).  I hope that makes sense, but probably not. For some odd reason, it takes them nearly 10-15 minutes to toast the bagels and put cream cheese on them.  I have no idea how this is possible, unless they are toasting them with a lighter.   Anyways, as I'm waiting what seems like an eternity for my bagels, I think about how someone could walk into one of the glass doors if someone left them open/didn't push them back into the cabinet.  I think about how the donuts would all have glass on them, and my mind wanders for a good while.  Finally, my bagels are ready and the worker tells me that I get a free coffee with every bagel.  I only get one, because I didn't think I could carry four cups of coffee plus the bagels to work, due to my clumsiness.  She gives me coupons for the free coffees instead. As I walk towards the door, I notice that the lid on my coffee is not on properly, so I try to adjust it.  You probably have a good idea of what's about to happen now.  Sure enough, I'm not looking where I'm going and walk into one of the glass doors that somone left open.   I might have avoided it if there was something on the glass door like a sticker, at least something to catch my eye.  It twists back on the hinges, I try to grab it, I spill half of my coffee on myself, and the door falls to the ground and shatters.  I stand there looking like a complete moron.  Everyone in the store stares at me, but no one says a word.   At this point, the only brightside to the whole thing is that I didnt take all of the free coffees.  I say I'm sorry to the workers and offer to clean up the mess, they say no (I think thats what they said; they wouldn't give me the broom), possibly because they figured I would break something else.  I go to grab some tissues to clean up, and one of the workers offers me some free coffees, but I turn them down.  I just want to get the hell out of the store and go to work.  I told them I was sorry and I would come back tomorrow.  I don't know if they understood anything that I said.  I'm a little nervous about returning to the store, but I have a bunch of free coffee coupons now so I can't waste those. 

At the end of the day, and looking back over all of the events that led up to this situation, it clearly wasn't my fault.  The man who asked me to proofread his cover letter is partially at fault.  If he didn't give me the money, I wouldn't have got the damn bagels and I wouldn't have broke a glass door.  Or maybe, if the lid was placed on the cup properly, or someone would have closed the door.  At most, I'm 25% at fault.  Good news though, and a lovely ending to this story....everyone at work got to have a bagel.