Having been an employee of the company for almost three years I know what a dangerous place it can be: people standing in line for twenty minutes to order a coffee so precise, so especially made for them, so important to their daily lives, only to find out that when they get up to order the store is out of Splenda.

You can see the customers eyes glaze over with rage. The cashier taking the order is curling their toes awaiting the fate that has become all too common and usually means getting scolded at while attempting to hold on to the sanity that begins to gnaw at the back of their eyeballs. Or, perhaps they are laughing inside thinking to themselves that this is what makes this job bearable: watching people squirm and bite their tongue out of what seems to be a mixture of disappointment, anger, and fail attempt to fill some deep spiritual void. And sure, the saying goes, “it’s the little things in life that count,” but no one really goes far enough to specify how little these things are before it gets to the level of border lining insanity.

Sayings like that always assume common sense, but they don’t take into account the spoiled and self righteousness in a country that sees its demands as necessary to the world’s well being. No one is entitled happiness, they are entitled the opportunity to look and fight for it. That’s the way I see it. And yes, our country promises us freedom and one can deviate and go into the absurd manipulation that this word has endured in the past couple of years.

Or, we can talk about guns.

So it’s been reported that Starbucks Coffee Company has a policy that allows one to carry guns into their stores. I did not know this, did you know this? The report didn’t specify if it was nationwide, but I couldn’t help myself thinking about it.

NPR reported:

Dale Welch recently walked into a Starbucks in Virginia, handgun strapped to his waist, and ordered a banana Frappuccino with a cinnamon bun. He says the firearm drew a double-take from at least one customer, but not a peep from the baristas

And oh man, could that get ugly. I can think of various scenerios while working there, and occasionally going in as a customer where I thought, “man I wish I had a gun to shoot this fool.” But of course, you don’t mean it, you smile instead and take comfort in your slightly above minimum wage or take revenge by having one too many drinks at the bar later that night.

If you ever meet someone that is unhappy with their drink, allow them to contemplate for a second that the coffee they are about to indulge in is the price of a daily wage in Juarez and that should be enough to get people to stop taking these things too seriously and keep their guns away.

What could these gun toting activists possibly think to achieve by having guns allowed in a public place such as that, locations which are often within shopping malls and college campuses. The general clientele at Starbucks are teenagers, stressed out college students, and middle age people with a decent salary. Every once in a while, you’ll get the occasional bum wandering in from the streets, smelling of sweat and dirt, looking for a warm cup of coffee that, to Starbucks credit, we were usually allowed to give.

That brings me to another point, Starbucks has made it a goal to associate itself as a socially responsible corporation, donating money to charities, sponsoring charity events, donating pastries to the Women’s Shelter, and now allowing paranoia to stumble in with the American flag wrapped around its ankles and its combative freedom loving sway.

About a month or so back, in the debate between the three Republican candidates for governor there is a woman called Debra Medina. During the televised debates they asked her about her gun policy and she went on to say that she is a proud carrier of a gun. When the question as to whether she carried her gun in a supermarket arose, she proudly replied that she doesn’t carry it in a supermarket, but that she indeed wished you could, and that if the law were otherwise she would do it gladly. She spoke of the firearm as if it was a slightly more expensive brand of lipstick which she carries in her purse, along with her breath mints, reserved only for special occasions.

And no I don’t mean to be dramatic, or to bash the company which was my second home for many years while I slaved my way through college; I am more baffled at the paranoia that calls for carrying your gun in a coffee shop. Taking into consideration that next door to us, in Mexico, where people actually get shot in the streets every few minutes, in front of children, teenagers, mothers, babies, that in that country it is still illegal to carry a firearm. (granted of course, you realize that those using them are doing so illegally and usually thanks to the weapons brought down from up North).

I am more concerned by the kind of mentality that gets a 71 year old man in Virginia to feel the need to carry his gun into Starbucks (as reported by NPR) while he orders a latte, or a cappuccino, or whatever it is, with cutesy stuffed animals displayed in the merchandise section around him, Paul McCartney and Avril Lavigne albums, and a half empty tips jar at the counter.

-By Mari Gomez