For the last few years, coffee shop employees have had trouble with my order.

How do I order my coffee? "Small, black, no sugar," I say.

Sometimes the coffee arrives with sugar in it but the most common response is for the counter person to listen to my order and hen say, "So just cream, right?

I think I should be everyone's favorite customer because I never order anything complex. My favorite kind of pizza is cheese. I drink draft beer and straight whiskey. In Italian places, I eat spaghetti and meatballs. In Chinese places, I eat chop suey.

My problem seems to fit neatly into the pigeonhole provided for "angry old white man difficulties," except that I'm not really angry. Instead, I'm trying to figure out what's happening.

My order difficulty hit its height last Saturday. I'm a reporter and I was on my way to cover a story in a distant suburb. I brought along a cigar for the drive. Nothing goes better with a cigar than a cup of coffee, so I stopped.

I decided to get a medium so I wouldn't run out of coffee before I ran out of cigar and I decided to get it half decaf so I wouldn't get the jitters.

"Medium, half decaf, black, no sugar," I said to the guy behind the counter.

"Half decaf?" he said

"Yeah," I said.

"So, you just want me to fill it halfway up?' he said

We worked it out. I left change in the tip jar on the counter.

If I really were an angry old white man, I'd be screaming about this generation of workers and the schools and Jesus and video games.

Maybe we are raising a race of dullards.

But what if the people in the coffee shops are just having fun with me, lashing out because their jobs don't pay anything and they have to stand on their feet all day and a lot of people are senselessly mean to retail workers?

That, I'd support. I had a lot of low wage crap jobs before I finished getting a master's degree, and I conducted low-grade "worker resistance actions" on all those jobs.

I loafed. I hid from the boss. I showed up late and left early whenever I could. I didn't work any harder than they made me work. I do not believe I am required to show gratitude or loyalty to any person or organization paying me poverty wages.

I can't be sure, but I hope those coffee shop workers are screwing up my order deliberately, just to get back at the boss, at the company, at the world. That shows some spirit.

So, if you work in a coffee shop near me, next time you give me the wrong order, wink. I'll wink back.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, "Marc Dion: Volume I," is a collection of his best 2014 columns and is available for Nook and Kindle.