I sat down at a coffee shop to do some work before heading into the office (we’ll save the discussion for why that’s necessary for another day). The work on my task list wasn’t mission-critical, but it was time-sensitive.  I pulled up my laptop and watched as the spinning wheel of death searched to connect to the grand outside world.  After a few minutes of futility, I started my troubleshooting: reboot the machine, move tables at the coffee shop and even mumbled an homage to lord Cisco and the overseers of connectivity, but I must have had the wrong IP address because my pleas were not heard.  

I found the lovely coffee-pourer/tech-support woman with the apron and inquired: “is everything alright?"  Clearly anticipating my question, she started her answer before I’d finished my practiced niceness.  “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” she mumbled as she left to pour more coffee. 

Proud of her answer, she turned her attention back to someone else’s venti-mocha-soy-a-latte with light whip.  I sat back down, drafted my email and packed up my bag to reconnect at a later time like some stone-age waiting-on-mom-to-get-off-the-phone-with-grandma-so-I-can-connect-at-28.8Kbps monster.  It was awful.  

Okay, maybe not awful, but it was annoying.  The coffee-pourer/tech-support woman wasn’t smug, she just wasn’t helpful.  She made her statement of fact as it should have been self-evident and a reality that didn’t need my acceptance to be true.  She offered no further support and needed no further resolution.  She was certain about the unpredictability of life.  And wi-fi.

My frustration shifted to anger. I expected, nay, demanded, that this coffee shop provide secure and always available internet.  And yet Trixie the barista had accepted the reality of uncertainty.  Eventually, I did too.