Columnist Susan Snyder: It was a moment to break the ice

Saturday, Aug. 23, 2003 | 1:39 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Mondays, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4082.

The barista realized he'd lost control the moment the woman snubbed out her cigarette on the coffeehouse table.

"That's it. I am calling the police," he said, hiding behind a green apron of authority.

Hiding, because no one can honestly enjoy tossing an old woman out into the midday desert heat, no matter how annoying she is. The tension in his voice said this was the part of his job he hated.

But it was, after all, one of those national coffeehouse chains that keeps its charity at the corporate level. The guy in the green apron is paid to order up a grande, no-whip frappuccino, not wipe out the plight of homeless people.

The woman wore a dingy yellow T-shirt, dark trousers and had gray, shoulder-length hair that needed a comb. She's one of those people whose station is outwardly determined by the amount of baggage they carry.

Her load was heavy. She plopped down at the table next to ours, enjoying her smoke in a building clearly marked "No Smoking."

Maybe "no" means less the more often you hear it.

She carried on a conversation with herself -- at least we always assume people like her are talking to themselves. They certainly wouldn't be talking to us, would they?

It's not like we'd talk to them.

But she was relatively quiet and easy to ignore until the man in the green apron told her she'd have to leave, just as he'd told her the day before.

"But I want my iced tea!" she spat at him.

It was followed by a lot of name-calling in language we don't print but freely use on each other.

"All right, I'll call the police," and he spun on his heel and returned to his post behind the counter.

She followed, taking along one bag and her anger. She left her other bag, a lumpy black backpack, on the bench beside us.

We tried to keep talking, pretending to ignore the shouting match and profanity coming from the direction of the espresso machine and designer coffee cup display.

"All I wanted was some iced tea!" the woman said. "And you don't even have the decency ..."

Bleep.

We all knew the woman never wanted iced tea -- at least not enough to ask for it first.

Maybe she wanted a cool place to sit in a city where shade and cool air are reserved for those who can buy it.

Maybe she wanted to feel a part of a society that works hard to ignore her even when she's screaming at the top of her lungs.

Maybe any kind of attention is better than being invisible.

Las Vegas' "homeless problem" was a problem shared by many Monday:

The poor old woman who has nowhere to go.

The working stiff who had to toss her out the door.

The bystanders ashamed of her homelessness and their helplessness.

The woman was escorted from the shop followed by collective sighs of sadness and relief. We consoled ourselves that it's "just the way things are."

But I wonder.

Would anything have been different if one of us mustered the courage to say, "Excuse me, ma'am. Could I buy you an iced tea?"

archive