Get what you ordered: Four ways to make sure you receive your bagel with cream cheese

ROCKET SCIENCE

1. Go to the café. Stand in line. When it is your turn, approach the counter. Order a toasted bagel with cream cheese from the cashier with the purple hair. Pay for it. Tip with change. Move to the receiving area. Once the cashier and her sidekick with the tattoos forget about your order and begin to serve people who ordered after you, put on a chauffeur’s outfit. Take out an 8-and-a-half-by-11 piece of paper that looks like you found it in your car’s trunk, under a body. Write in black marker the “name” of the “person” you are here to pick up: TOASTED BAGEL WITH CREAM CHEESE. Hold the sign at chest level. Make hopeful eye contact with everyone who looks at you, as if they might be the Toasted Bagel with Cream Cheese you’re looking for. Approach the cashier and her sidekick behind the counter. Say, “Excuse me, are you Toasted Bagel with Cream Cheese? I’m here to pick up Toasted Bagel with Cream Cheese?” Act completely innocent when the cashier calls you “asshole” under her breath. Receive your toasted bagel with cream cheese. Thank the cashier and her sidekick for helping you find “him.”

2. Find a jet engine. Take it with you to the café. Stand in line. When it is your turn, approach the counter. Order a toasted bagel with cream cheese. Pay for it. Tip with change. Move to the receiving area. Once the cashier and her sidekick forget about your order and begin to serve people who ordered after you, put on those headphones that airline people wear on the tarmac. Turn on the jet engine. When the cashier and her sidekick look at you like, “What are you doing, weirdo?” take out those hand-signal things that tarmac people use to direct jets into the terminal. Make the signal that says, “I am waiting for my toasted bagel with cream cheese! I ordered it several minutes ago! Please send it this way!” Keep making these signals until you guide the toasted bagel with cream cheese into the terminal that is your mouth. Turn off jet engine.