I had an amazing little getaway this past weekend when I flew to Florida for a friend’s wedding. All my friends are attaching themselves to someone else; it’s a beautiful and wildly expensive thing to do in our young lives. I’m nowhere close to this kind of attachment, but I do see the benefit. I’ve always wanted a white cake as tall as me with plastic faceless people on the top, and someone to shove delicious cream cheese frosting in my face. I’ve wanted that all my life.

I flew out very early Thursday to arrive on time for the bachelorette party in Orlando. To get to the airport I take the 5:00 am shuttle from downtown Prescott. To get downtown it’s about a 25 minute walk down the hill in the crisp morning air. It’s refreshing to be out at 4:30 in the morning, not a living soul is around. The shuttle is late, so I sit and wait. You can’t miss this thing; it looks like a huge silver spaceship. A hotel worker sweeping the steps of St. Micheals murmurs a good morning while I sit on the curbside with my backpack operating as a backrest. I’m sure he’s wondering what the hell I’m doing there, just jamming out to my iPod on a curbside at 5:00 in the morning. Oddly we aren’t the only ones up this early, a women in a black dress and tired eyes crosses the street like she has somewhere to be at this insane hour. The shuttle finally arrives.

The two hour drive to the valley is peaceful; I play music but can hear their conversations about the late monsoon and the irony that the Prescott golf course is in Dewey. Retirement talk, maybe someday I’ll join in. The sky is bright blue by the time we pull up to the sky harbor airport, I’m feeling groggy but in good spirits at this point. For some reason things take a drastic turn after I enter the sliding glass doors, because my coffee withdrawal kicks in full swing. The back of my head feels like it got hit with Thor’s hammer and my hunger isn’t making my brain work any better, it’s a mushy wreck. I’m a ravenous vegan Monster who only had lettuce and garbanzo beans the night before. I walk up to the closest food vendor which happens to be called Paradise Bakery. Not an ideal place for a gluten-free vegan but the need for coffee cancels out everything else. I get in line and order an oatmeal and small coffee. The lady at the counter tells me they don’t have soy or almond milk or any dairy free anything. This shouldn’t exactly floor me but for some reason it does and I have to ask five times before it finally sinks in.

By now the baristas and entire Paradise Bakery staff think I’m a freak. I can see it on their faces and I swear one of them rolls her eyes when they think I’m not looking. I resign to the idea that I will have to eat my oatmeal dry and my coffee black and wait at a distance for them to prepare it. The line goes on and several people get their food while I continue to stand there thinking I’d normally have conquered a full French press solo by now. When the lady light-years behind me receive her hobbits sized paper cup of oatmeal and walnuts my bitch panic button goes off unexpectedly. I don’t even have it under control I just blurt out:  “Wait a second why does this woman get her food first!” I say it and it sounds so horribly stupid and impatient. No apology was uttered by this coffee deprived junkie, instead I walked off and found a quiet corner to sit in silence and ponder what I just managed to do.

I’d become my worst customer service nightmare. The grumpy, impatient, bitch. I worked in the food service for years, as a server, a barista and even as a wine bar attendant. I’ve seen it all. I completely know what not to be, I never complain or send food back and I tip well because I understand how hard it can be on the people doing their best to provide service. I am a perfect, happy customer, painfully so.

So why did this Thursday morning in the Phoenix airport result in a full blown bitch fest? I think it was due to multiple factors, like no sleep the night before, the need for a coffee stimulus, the panicky feeling only Phoenicians bring about, anxiety about seeing old college classmates, the annoyance at the way my diet complicates travel. But honestly I think I think I needed to react that way to put a few things in perspective. We cannot expect ourselves to be 100% all the time. I can’t grieve over that moment of not being the nice Midwesterner. We all have our moments of raw honesty that lets others know we aren’t exactly content at this exact moment in time. And that’s ok. Because the next time someone reacts that way towards me I’ll know it might be a temporary thing, and that hopefully they aren’t always like that. But just so that never happens again, I’ll try to remember never to go on an adventure without drinking coffee first.