i was recently at Starbucks for a study group when i decided to use my birthday gift card to order said latte. i approached the counter and asked if it was possible to make my pumpkin spice latte decaf. the barista replied "oh yeah, we can make anything decaf! but we don't have any pumpkin. and we won't have any until thursday." it was monday. what was everyone going to do!? the pumpkin wasn't going to arrive for THREE. MORE. DAYS. i suppose they could just get their pumpkin fix with some Starbucks Via pumpkin flavored coffee. or not. that rack was completely empty. no pumpkin anywhere. it didn't dawn on me until i read this article about the national pumpkin spice latte shortage that i realized what was really going on here. the entire nation is experiencing a phenomenon i call "fiending". until recently, fiending had only been happening on a much smaller scale.
coincidentally, i witnessed my first fiend at starbucks a while back. i was at the starbucks on campus (a college campus being a fiending mecca for various items) and the store was quite busy. i was patiently waiting for my drink at the counter because i had nowhere else to be. i was people watching (as one is prone to do in these situations) and i noticed a girl fixing up her coffee at the sugar and cream station. i watched her make up her drink, but when she went to reach for the cream, she found the container empty. i watched her as panic set in on her face. i watched her frantically look around, wondering what to do. i watched her spot the cream the baristas use behind the production counter. i watched her march up to the counter and reach over it. i watched as she grabbed the baristas' private cream stash and poured it in her own coffee like it was no big deal and then set it back behind the counter.
this was fiending in a nutshell. you see, it's basically when you are so frantic about something that you go to extreme lengths to get it and freak out when you don't have it, or are afraid that someone could take it from you at any moment.
my next encounter with fiending was late one night at HEB. i was on a grocery run and made a stop down the pasta aisle when i noticed a fellow college student eyeballing the Ramen (ummm....duh). i watched as he browsed around for the flavor he preferred. then, when he realized that they were out of individual packets and all that was left was an entire case still unopened and covered in saran wrap, i watched him load the entire case in to his cart and roll away. he was so fiendish for some Ramen that he didn't even bother to open the case and take out 2 or 3 packets. that's Ramen dedication right there.
recently a friend of mine told me about a really good sale that was going on at a liquor store. i'm a fan of wine, so off i went to browse their selection and see if i could snatch up any great deals. it turns out that i went 10 minutes before the store closed on the last day of their sale. it also turns out that all of northwest Austin heard about this sale too and were now at the same liquor store as me trying to take advantage of the sale's final moments. i watched in awe as people pushed other people out of the way with their shopping carts (yes, shopping carts........at a liquor store) and loaded them up with cases upon cases of beer, wine, Malibu, Smirnoff, whiskey as old as my dad, mixed nuts, bendy straws......literally whatever they could get their hands on. there was so much frenetic energy in there that i couldn't handle it and retreated to the refrigerated wine room for some peace and quiet. then the wine fiends (a particularly snobby bunch) followed me inside and i had to leave, empty handed. i'll stick with Arbor Mist, thanks.
lastly, i went to a PINK by Victoria's Secret tailgate giveaway at the Co-op with some of my friends today. i was thinking this was going to be something really special and maybe i'd get a free bra out of the deal, but it wasn't. and i didn't. we got there early and a small line had formed outside of the gate. the line eventually grew to hundreds of girls waiting to get in. the big moment finally came shortly after 11 and they let us in. the first stop was supposed to be a table full of bags stuffed with coupons. i don't know why the event organizers didn't realize that this had all the makings of a small scale riot. i mean...college girls, free bras, fighting for equal rights.....oh wait....
anyways, the organizers didn't put up any organizational barriers or ropes or anything, so everyone just kind of rushed the table to get to the bags. i ended up crushed between the table and about 100 other girls that i didn't know. i'm pretty sure at one point i was bent over the table at the waist, yelling at other people to get off of me. then security came and dispersed the crowd peacefully, which was good because i hear at other universities they use pepper spray. i could see the headlines now: "university students pepper sprayed after rioting over free panties" or "panty fiends get peppered" (there's a reason i'm not a journalism major).
so in short, i hope you have learned from my mistakes and are better equipped to recognized those who are fiending. i mostly wanted you to learn to stay away from fiends. far, far away. otherwise, you might just end up bent over a table. and nobody wants that.
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