An Incident at a Coffee Shop

As I sat writing at the Starbucks nearest campus during my two-hour break between classes (as a lecturer, I don’t have access to my office on Fridays… but that’s another story), I was startled at the sound of a woman shrieking, of coffee spilling, of tables being knocked over, and of a commotion of men running out the side door.

“He stole my purse!” she yelled.

The woman had left her purse unattended on a table while she went to pick up her coffee from the counter. In the meantime, a young man grabbed her purse and made a run for it. Fortunately, several guests saw him run and took action immediately.

As happens in the heat of a commotion, we who were still inside the café huddled near the windows to see how things would unfold.

The man sitting next to me happened to be a Marine (as I learned from his bag, which he left unattended, along with his laptop and phone, to chase the man down). Along with a few other men, he outran the purse-thief in time to retrieve the woman’s belongings and detain the culprit until the police arrived.

When the Marine returned the stolen bag to the woman, we all let out a cheer, overjoyed that the injustice had been set right. As usually happens after a breach to our social contract, the room united in a way I have never seen before. We all started sharing our thoughts with one another (the “what were you doing at the time of the incident” reports). We wanted to share our personal experiences.

Most of these people, like me, are Friday-morning regulars, yet this was the first time I have seen any of us speak to one another. And even still as I write this, many of them are still engaged in conversation, apprising newcomers of the recent events (and the woman bought the Marine a gift card as a gesture of gratitude). We talked about how trusting we’ve been of leaving our laptops unattended to use the facilities. We talked about Leo DiCaprio’s documentary “Before the Flood” (available for free on Youtube until November 7^th). And an older man, whom I’ve seen sitting alone every Friday and whom I’ve secretly wanted to make conversation with for weeks now, asked me what happened.

My point is this—injustice has the power to unite. In a matter of minutes, we transformed from strangers occupying the same space (separate and alone) to a community of friendly Friday coffee drinkers, vowing to protect one another’s belongings for all the Fridays to come. The moral of the story isn’t to relentlessly guard your purse for fear of one misguided youth. Rather, the moral is to hold confidence in the goodness of those around you. We depend on each other, and we must work together to build trust, community, and faith in humanity.