Holiday Cheer -- New York Style

Or "How to Make the World Your Personal Soup Kitchen..."

So.

I've been nursing this nasty cold and finally drag myself down to Europa Café for some medicinal chicken soup.

I pay at the register with a $20 and the gal behind the counter bags my soup and gives me change in the dumbass way everyone does these days -- putting the bills flat in my outstretched hand, and dumping the coins on top. I try to tip the coins into her jar, but they spill on the floor.

So I bend over to pick them up, and when I stand up to retrieve my bag o' soup -- IT'S GONE!

"Where's my soup??" I ask counter-girl.

She shrugs.

"That woman took it," a man pipes up from the other side of the counter.

"What?" I blurt, "What woman? Where?"

Some other customers bleat out agreement, "Yeah, her, she took it."

At first it looks like they're pointing a pair of suited execs at the table nearest me, so I'm figuring one of them grabbed my bag by mistake.

"Them??" I ask.

The man shakes his head "no" and guides my eyes with his finger, one table over....

"That homeless woman!"

Almost as though she were emerging from my blind spot, I suddenly see this enormous straw-haired raggedy blob slurping down my soup.

"You??!" I splutter, "You took my soup??"

She looks dead in my face and says, "You gave it to me!"

I turn back to counter-girl.

"You let her take my soup?!?"

She shrugs.

I repeat, "You let her take my soup?!?!"

She shrugs again, implying that it was my fault.

After all, I suppose, once money had changed hands -- even on that very counter -- she no longer had any responsibility where theft was concerned.

Now, maybe it would be another story if she had stealthfully grabbed the bag and run. But she was sitting right there, and had effected the crime in front of multiple witnesses!!

I barrel down on this inept creature: "You have to replace my soup."

"I can't do that."

"Yes you can. You can and will give me another soup."

This goes back and forth for much longer than it should have -- so now our homeless culprit gets both lunch and entertainment -- until counter-girl finally sends me to the soup station just to shut me up.

Really.

These jerks should take a lesson from Starbuck's where, every once in a while, some douchebag grabs a paying customer's drink.

And they replace it on the spot.

No questions asked.

So.

Soup in hand, I gather a bag and napkin (apparently guess-who got the last spoon), turn to the homeless woman and say, "Merry Christmas."