Limit Exceeded
<BANDWIDTH LIMIT EXCEEDED/>
Somewhere deep inside The Subway’s kitchen, Sameen Shaw sat with phone in-hand and a frown on her face. She had been trying to check her email for ten minutes, but to no avail. Instead of an insane amount of blue dots, Sameen was greeted by a continuous and endless cycling pinwheel. The pinwheel of death, her co-worker Zoe had called it. What made Shaw so upset was that the reason behind this furious wheel was an oblivious, pretty young woman hidden in the corner of their quaint cafe. She had been visiting for weeks, not ordering a drop, but always taking up one of their booths. ... And not just any booth either, but Shaw’s favorite. It was tucked within the furthest corner of their dimly let haven, away from people and right on the hotspot of their WiFi.
Day after day this woman would come in; hips swaying while a fancy laptop glistened under her arm. There, in Shaw’s spot, she would sit for hours on end- her only offered sounds being the furious clacks and taps of keyboard keys under perfectly manicured black nails. It was all so aggravating for Shaw, really. Sameen had spent the first handful of her adult years in the Army, being taught the do’s and don’ts of the world… High on the list of do’s were manners, which this woman had clearly lacked. Who in their right mind would just burst into an establishment without so much as a “hello”, and not offer a “thank you” to the people from which she was stealing all of the Bandwidth from? No one respectable, surely.
Fed up with this woman’s antics of three weeks, Shaw finally deemed it fit to approach her. She needed to put her in her place, and dammit, she wanted to check her email.
“Excuse me,” she started, faking a kind voice but not bothering with the smile, “do you need something?”
The woman looked up, her leather jacket crunching against the leather booth as her back adjusted to a more comfortable way of sitting. Taking a beat to look Shaw over, the woman smiled. It wasn’t a kind smile… It was one of those annoying, cocky ones that step-dads gave their children when they were right about something. “Maybe some company?”
Shaw offered an unamused glare in response.
Turning back to her laptop, the woman’s smile faded. “No? Then no, thank you.”
‘One, two, three…’ Control was something Shaw had always lacked, and she really found her existence especially aggravating in times like these. It took all of her strength not to slam this woman’s laptop shut with an amount of force that would probably shatter it’s components, bells, and expensive little whistles. “Well, then I’m afraid I might have to ask you to leave.” Her lips were pursed, and her demeanor was rather… Snotty, per se. “Like most respectable and official businesses, we try to limit our services to those who order from us.” Sameen breathed in and let it out, “and those services include WiFi.”
The auburn-haired woman’s smile flickered back to life as she gently closed her laptop, placing her hands atop it in a defensive manner. “In that case, I’ll take a hot Mocha.”
“In that case, I’ll have to ask you to talk to the other Barista, Zoe.” Shaw’s tone came out more mocking and rude than intended. Oh, well, she huffed, she deserved it.
Slowly, the woman pushed her lips together and began to rap out a mindless tune on her computer's aluminum surface. Then, wordlessly, she stood and strut over to the counter. Zoe and her had a small exchange of words, distribution of money, and distribution of goods before she returned.
Lucky for Shaw, she was still as silent as the moment she had left.