Sunday Afternoons

Ah, weekends.

Weekend afternoons are the perfect time to scope out a new cafe in the city, warm our bodies with a pastry and a pot of fragrant tea, and heat a seat as we dig our noses into novels or books. This is particularly helped by M's recent taking to Sophie Kinsella's bestselling series of Shopaholic books, and my recent infatuation with business cases and solutions.

The only thing that threw a little lugnut in our enjoyable afternoon was my experience in ordering a pastry at our selected bakery of the weekend, 15eme. Eyeing a layered pastry cake of sorts with vanilla within:

"Is this crispy?" I inquired of the server behind the counter.

And with a kind of expression and tone that I couldn't quite read, he looked at me and responded:

"Would you figure it's crispy or soft?"

There's one thing you should know about M, and it's that she will jump on any given opportunity to give a sub-par server a piece of her mind; she has high standards for customer service. (Most on this another day.)

Anyway, this was one of those opportunities. With a clarifying voice, M explained what shouldn't need to be clarified:

"We aren't sure. That's why we're asking."
"It's crispy," he answered while mentally snapping to attention.

Minutes after we were seated and served my apple pastry (I decided against the crispy layered pastry after all), we found him courteously approaching our table with a need to explain his previous conduct.

"About your question, I was just responding in an alternative fashion, because some customers have had soft pastries, and I was ... uh ... interested to see which of the two you thought it was."

Obviously, someone behind the mirrored window saw or heard our dialogue and suggested he come and make nice. Psshhht. Whatever. Out of my face, boy.

Leave me back to enjoy my tea.
And my crispy apple pastry.