“He always wants something for free,” they tell me, “food or drinks — it gets on my manager’s nerves.”
The kid has a reputation around here, and not a great one at that. He comes in so often — and for just one person — that he’s known as one of the barista’s “boyfriends”, though he’s just another boy with a puppy-love crush on a blonde girl. His reputation of wanting everything for free is a source of entertainment, if not at least annoying.
He skates by a couple of times on a regular looking board with lime green wheels before actually going inside. He’s usually wearing a company shirt from the sushi joint down the block — too young to work, so I figure he must be the son of another employee. I can tell he’s uneasy of his surroundings by the way his head moves, constantly in motion, constantly looking around. He’s young, he’s no taller than 5′ 7″, and he has a head full of curly brown hair. His jeans are skinnier than mine, which is saying something. He has a death grip on a cup full of ice and the remnants of whatever drink he had previously ordered.
By the time of my arrival tonight, he’s already ordered, consumed a drink in its entirety, and has made it back in line to get a refill. After asking for the refill, the barista gives him his total. His hand dives into and is seemingly enveloped by his pocket. What he pulls out is a handful of copper, maybe a few dimes, and a few straw wrappers. He stands there counting his change over and over again for so long that the scent — you know it, you’ve probably smelled it before — of dirty, sweaty coins starts to fill the air. It’s disgusting.
When he’s finished counting, he finds out he’s some odd 35 cents short of his total cost. I’d cover him, but I’m paying with card and the kid has cut me in line before, so I don’t feel particularly obliged to aide his expenses. He attempts to win the cashier over by flirting with her, saying things like “Your hair is so long, how do you get it to be so shiny? Can I get this one for free?”
She smiles, laughs a pitiful laugh, and politely declines. I chuckle behind him, though he doesn’t seem to notice. On a previous night, when he was standing behind me in line, he was leaning on his skateboard and it fell out from under him. I chuckled then as well.
He pleads for a free drink, but they consistently decline. Eventually his head hangs, and he wanders off and out the door to a table outside. Ten minutes go by — I count them — before he finally gets up and skates off back to wherever it is he came from.
The People Watcher 
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