Free Coffee

Based on a true story, the names were left unmentioned because it's way cooler like that.

L** was quietly drinking coffee in a supermarket, in one of those coffee "free sample" carts. He had to go to a doctor outside town because the little run-down decadent piece of space he lived in had no decent dermatologists, and in the way to the doctor he stopped at a supermarket, to buy cookies, and do what every person does, since the primitive days of the twentieth century, when in a supermarket, to drink free coffee samples. But I believe that was already mentioned.

When he was about to drink his third tiny plastic, disposable cup, a salesman woman came surreptitiously behind him with clearly deceptive ideas in her head, and an almost invisible grin on her slightly unsymmetrical face, "Hello, good coffee, isn't it?" she said, with cold calculating eyes, as her grin became more visible.

"Yeah," L** answered in a seemingly naive tone, but with his senses becoming more aware at every passing second, "But what matters is that it's free."

There was a quick pause as the salesman woman thought on what to say next. Her long-distance salesman course that her employer forced her to pay with her own money didn't prepare her for a potential client that said such a thing, "But it's the quality that matters," she said, and tried her next line, nonetheless, "You know the P** brand of coffee?" going to a nearby shelf.

"No. But I bet it's not free," L** said.

The woman smiled, momentarily forgetting her place in the big clockwork of society, "No, it's much more expensive," but then she remembered, and mentally reprimanding herself for it, the salesman woman asked, "Do you usually buy this kind of coffee?"

"No, only decaffeinated," L** answered, smiling now, as the salesman woman faltered, "But they don't usually give out free decaffeinated samples."

"Well, we have coffee of the brand P**, decaffeinated," she said taking a can from a shelf.

L** was puzzled, as he had no idea where did the salesman woman get the idea that he would buy coffee, "Nah, I'll just drink two more cups of this and leave, since it's free."

And that's what L** did, and the salesman woman left, momentarily defeated by a potential customer, and preparing to ambush the next one.