Sign Removal

So, I was sitting at Starbucks yesterday drinking a coffee and having a scone (I was given a gift certificate by my sister who was given the gift certificate by my cousin). To my right, a meeting gone wrong. Some overconfident Starbucks regional manager or something was absolutely torching a store shift manager to the point of tears. They both had an unacceptable amount of moose in their hair leaving it overly fragrant, shiny and curly, kind of like a poodle soaked in stripper perfume.

Anyway, to my left were a couple of Latino guys (I was in fact the only white guy in this Starbucks which made for an oddly unconventional experience). These guys were talking about some album they were producing. They were dressed like the type of guys you'd see in commercials that come to your house to estimate the costs of carpet replacement. They were talking about how to appropriately pose, when the light is good for intimidating photography, what they think about this reggaeton song versus that reggaeton song.

As these guys were leaving, they surround me. I stuff my head into my note cards hoping they'll just leave me alone, but no, they stay, and one of them asks, "hey are you that....are you that sign removal man....the man that removes signs?" He did this while holding an imaginary scraper tool and scraping some invisible object that was apparently between us. I said, "no, but keep me in mind for your future sign removal work." I thought the whole thing went well enough, but then it was brought to my attention that this may be some sort of code for some other much less savory.

Is this where we are now in society? Have we gotten to the point where a random reggaeton artist can't ask some random dude about a general service without raising suspicion of his true intentions? Either way, I'm not going back to that Starbucks.