I stopped at a Starbucks to get a latte on my walk between the BART station and the National Football League media headquarters at Moscone Center in San Francisco. About a block from the NFL festivities on 4th street I saw a couple lining up for a photograph in front of a Super Bowl sign.
The lady, who I assumed was the man’s wife, was positioning her husband under a Super Bowl sign and raised her phone to snap the shot. “Would you both like to be in the picture,” I offered and she thanked me and I requested she hold my drink, so I didn’t drop her phone while snapping the photo. I made sure the Super Bowl sign was in the shot with them and took the picture twice. Isn’t that what we always do just to make sure we got a good picture.
As the lady handed me back my drink while I surrendered her phone her husband said, “Thanks Dennis.”
It caught me by surprise. How did he know who I was? I asked him, and he laughed and said, “Your name is on your Starbucks cup.”
Okay, the name on the Starbucks cup I was carrying was a pretty good indicator of what my name was. But it didn’t have to be. The Starbucks employee could have misunderstood what I said and put the wrong name on the cup and I let it go. I could have been with a friend who ordered two lattes and used his name on both of them. I could have picked up the wrong cup on the way out of the coffee shop.
But none of those longshots happened. It was my name on the cup I had handed over and the appreciative gentleman thanked me by name.