You are in a dim-lit room scented by coffee beans and cream. Soft jazz tones float through the air from a speaker you can't see, but can feel. You are staring at a list of options, pondering your choice between vanilla and mocha, as you catch the eye of someone on the other side of the counter. You grin coyly to yourself.
What could possibly ruin this (slightly creepy) romantic scene? You and the Starbucks employee you're courting are clearly destined to spend the rest of your lives together, cultivating coffee beans in the sunny landscapes of Colombia and swaying in your future living room to Miles Davis vinyls.
And then he calls you "buddy".
Perhaps it's all due to my inappropriate and misguided interest in retail employees (nobody can quite convince me that they are paid to pretend to like me...), but this scene is way more heartbreaking than any scene of any movie based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. There is actual kissing in those. In the rain. All I do in the rain is lose my car.
The bigger problem is that this word follows me like it's my real name--this is not the only time this has happened. (You can see that I have a real problem with retail employees...) "Buddy" is probably the most unsexy word in the entire dictionary. It's what fathers call their sons right before slapping them on the shoulder and putting on baseball caps. It's what older brothers call their younger brothers right before... some manly thing that I've never done and know nothing about. It's what people name their dogs! I'm going to start carrying around a dog mask around and every time an attractive guy calls me "buddy" I'm going to put it on and yell, "IS THIS WHAT I LOOK LIKE TO YOU!?" Then I will probably have to get my coffee elsewhere and there will probably be a newspaper headline the next day about a crazy guy in a dog mask making a scene at a Starbucks, but that is the price of making my point.
Do you have a name you hate to be called, but it always seems to follow you? Let me know. But don't call me buddy when you do. Please.
