Busted

I had just had my coffee at Peet’s (marketing identity--"We’re Not Starbucks!"), and was wandering the premises to see if there were any interesting photos to be found. They had an upstairs, and a balcony view. Balconies are good. I like the skewed perspective they can offer. I fired off an initial shot to see if there was anything worthwhile, but I wasn’t seeing anything.

The manager down below heard the camera (why is the MarkII so loud? Why does it sound like a motor drive advancing film?). "Excuse me. You can’t take pictures in here. It’s corporate policy." I played dumb and nice ("Oops, busted!" I replied), said I was just shooting some stock shots of Fremont, assured her I wasn’t a corporate spy ("…especially any photos of our logos or our prices…" she warned) and apologized for her having to confront me. We both had smiles on, mostly to cover up the tension we both felt about the encounter.

I tend to ask for forgiveness rather than for permission. The cost is an occasional encounter like this one.

Comments

[nina]

That seems very unfriendly. I think coffee shops are a great place to take pictures. As if it isn't hard enough to just whip out a camera in public! Also, on your last post, production quality is a serious problem at the student newspaper where I'm working over the summer. Last week one of our layout people complained that indenting an article would completely ruin its spacing, basically asserting that it didn't matter to her whether the paragraphs were indented. Ridiculous!