In which I nearly punch a woman in the face.

We live less than 10 minutes away from the drive thru Starbucks in town. I'm not going to say that's why we picked our place, but it certainly didn't hurt. Today while I was out I needed to pick up some more coffee beans and swung by Starbucks on my way home.

I chose a pound of the Pike Place Roast and got in line. The woman in line in front of me glanced over her shoulder at me and gave a quick forced grin. Her eyes rested on my bag of coffee beans for a moment as the guy behind the counter reached for it and asked if I'd like it ground.

"Sure," I replied.

The woman looked back at me and asked, "Was that from over here? How much is that?"

Thinking that she was considering some for herself, I replied, quite helpfully, "Yes, just there. I think it's $9.95?"

"Ah," she said with a knowing smirk and a raised eyebrow. Next she looked at me and said, pointedly, more like a statement than a question, "Is your husband in the military?"

Now I'd lost my footing a little. Relevance?

"Ummm...Yes?"

"Well, then, you should know that you can get that in the commissary for $5.95. AND last week they had a coupon for a dollar off," she snapped, again with the little knowing smirk.

"........." I said.

".....well, that's good to know," I finished, as I listened to the guy grinding my beans. That would have been great to know before the guy took them to be ground, I thought.

And then she gives me a little laugh and another self-satisfied, condescending little gesture, and places her order for a grande Pike Place Roast, after clarifying to a different barista that NO, the ground bag of Pike Place was NOT part of her order, as if she could be that foolish.

Okay, just a few things here. One, I totally need to not let myself get worked up about this sort of thing, but I do.

Two, I was polite, but what I should have said was, "Gee, first of all, that's none of your business. Secondly, I live not far from here, so the time (40 minutes to get there and back with no traffic) and gas (16 miles round trip) it takes to go on post just doesn't seem to make the savings worth it to me. And even if I did want to save $4, I'd do just about anything to avoid going on post and having to talk to know-it-all busy bodies like YOU."

Point number three: If she was really interested in saving on her coffee, maybe she'd like to know that her little brewed cup of coffee cost her about 6 times (something like $.31 vs. $1.95) what it does to brew a cup at home. So if she buys a cup even three times a month, guess what? Her little commissary savings tip didn't make such a difference.