***Without looking up he nudged his coffee cup toward the tender's edge of the bar and Fran, a sometimes friend and fellow member of the local bartending fraternity topped him off to the likely protests of the throngs of kids that always came to the bar at the same time and expected light speed service when there were 9 of them and just one Fran. The ebb and flow of the kids coming and going buffeted him like rough tides. It was fine when they all jammed up because they were stationary, and it was great when they were gone because he had space to breath. The hard part was dealing with the influx and out flow in between high and low tides as they banged shoulders and hissed at each other like drunk penguins all trying to use one fax machine to send the exact same document to the same exact recipient, none of them realizing they had no business being in an office to begin with.***
