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…but I really wish we’d gone to Starbucks instead.

I honestly am having a hard time believing that in 2009 a nation-wide coffee chain can put such ridiculous restrictions on Internet access as Panera does. Ivona and I wanted to get out of the house and do some reading and I wanted to get some website work done, including setting up a site on my web host for Maury. After paying for overpriced coffee and 20-30 minutes of time online, which was spent frustratingly hitting the refresh button because the connection constantly dropped or timed out, I got another login screen.

“We are sorry: An error has occurred. You have consumed all on-line peak period time available. Please retry later.”

Are you shitting me? There was ONE other person there using a computer. It’s not like it costs them a ton of money to provide WiFi, or that one or two extra people on the network are going to make a significant difference, especially when you consider that it’s pretty crappy service to begin with. I asked one of the barristas, who asked a manager, and they told me that between 11:30 and 2 they restrict it for everyone to half an hour at a time. That is just absurd. I told them that next time I want to get any work done I’ll go to Starbucks (OOOOH SNAP, but seriously, they probably couldn’t give a shit where I get my coffee, which is the real problem here).

I don’t know how they can compete and do as well as they do; the coffee is ok, but not particularly great, and all the food has a certain inauthentic feeling to it, like they’re trying too hard to make it feel like the local bakery, but they’re just missing the mark. Every other cafe in town offers better, free, uninterrupted WiFi in a more convenient location with better food and less manufactured atmosphere. The sad thing is that these big chains are putting a lot of better local places out of business. I’ll admit, I should have gone to Rao’s like I usually do, but both of our cars are a bit under the weather, and with the snow storm this morning, it was easier to just go down the road to the mall on Route 9.

I never cared much for Panera before, but I don’t plan on coming back (although Ivona kinda likes it, and let’s be honest, my righteous indignation doesn’t stand much of a chance against any woman who lets me touch her occasionally). Still! I’d rather pay a little more for my coffee (actually, I think Rao’s and Starbucks might be cheaper) and enjoy my experience a little more. We’re beyond the Information Age; the Internet is a way of life and standard-issue just about anywhere you go; even the UMass buses have free WiFi. BUSES. A friggin’ coffee shop can’t provide a better atmosphere than a public bus? Some executive somewhere needs to be shot.

How’s that for passion? At least I’m trying.

What this really gets at is a bigger problem that has been bugging me more and more the older I get and the more I learn about how the world works. I recently had a discussion with Ivona about corporate influence and privatization. Just like how corporatations outsource jobs, government is increasingly outsourcing public services to corporate interests. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not implying that the government outsourced my natural rights as a coffee drinker in America to Panera Bread. But as we see time after time, a lot of corporations just don’t have their customer’s interests at heart, and it’s all about the bottom-line. As the quality of service goes down, so do the number of choices we have, and these days the same corporations have a global reach, so you can expect most of the same companies running the show wherever you go. Conservatives (and, let’s be fair, a lot of liberals, and not all conservatives) love to deregulate, and have less government oversight of corporations, which just means no one’s watching them pull our pants down before they fuck us.

I’m not advocating communism or socialism or anything like that. I am pretty liberal, but I enjoy capitalism, in a certain masochistic, can’t-stop-looking-at-the-highway-pile-up kind of way, but one of the fundamentals of what makes capitalism a viable economic model that actually serves the people is competition, and the more consolidated these corporations get, the less competition we have. It limits our choices, and when there aren’t any alternatives left, we’ll be completely at the mercy of those in control. And we can see all around us how well corporate interests have been looking out for Americans the past couple years. Good game, America.

I know I’m not necessarily saying anything new here, but I was thinking the other day, after I said I felt like I was stagnating, and I related it to a favorite Winston Churchill quote of my high school government teacher, who said “Anyone under 30 who isn’t a liberal doesn’t have a heart, and anyone over 30 who isn’t a conservative doesn’t have a brain.” While I definitely don’t agree, and I know the quote is light-hearted, I was thinking about it in relation to my feeling of stagnation. Maybe as we get older, we just stop caring as much. I don’t think it has anything to do with becoming more intelligent; maybe everyone just gives up and stops trying. We’re all just too lazy to try to come with our own alternatives.

I guess what I’m saying is that that depresses me, and I don’t want to end up like that just because I’ve given up, or think I’m losing my creativity. Settling into that mode of thinking scares me, invariably because I project that feeling onto humanity, and I don’t want to think we’re all so willing to give up.

So, next time you can find me at Rao’s, enjoying the free WiFi and the fact that I can still make a few choices as a consumer.