The people watching potential was one of the major perks of working in an airport landside coffee shop. Excited people, exhausted people, ecstatically happy, scared, drunk (OK, could generally have done without them), bored, and, of course, all kinds of stressed. People going on honeymoon, to funerals, on their first ever flight or even an inflight wedding. Or missing same. People meeting up with friends and family they’d not seen in years, meeting grandkids and inlaws for the very first time, or dropping their kid off for a year-plus trip.
It had the particular advantage that, although many people were stressed and even furiously angry, almost none of them were angry at me. I was the sympathetic angel of caffeine, not the person who just told them they couldn’t take their puppy on a flight without any kind of reservation or cage.
Plus the gossip from the crew and bus/taxi drivers based there was great, when there weren’t many passengers to watch.