Coffee and road rage

Everyone is so nice in Texas. With two exceptions:

  1. Starbucks Baristas
  2. Anyone driving a vehicle.

Seriously, It’s observable and repeatable! I’ve met ONE nice barista, the rest have all been surly. I think early 2000’s snobby coffee culture maybe just arrived here or something? Either that or Starbucks is piloting the mandatory lunchbreak electro-shock therapy here.

On the issue of cars, I think they’re second only to California on my list of places where people are actively trying to kill you while driving, it’s actually pretty insane. Doing 15mph over the limit keeping pace with absolutely solid traffic ahead of you? People will tailgate you until you merge out of their chosen lane or they decide to go around you. I was held up in traffic yesterday for 3 full changes of a single stoplight because people just park in the middle of the intersection, preventing anyone from going anywhere when the light changes.

After this picture was taken the guy in the lane to my right pulled forward into the intersection because he wanted to make sure he got through the green light, but the traffic in the next intersection didn’t go anywhere for a full light cycle, so he was blocking the traffic moving from left to right.
THEN a semi-truck pulled into the intersection from the left and blocked all that traffic…

In california it made sense, they were all terrible people either in their cars or not. But everyone here (barring baristas) is super friendly. Until we go all destruction-derby on each other apparently. Very weird.