Mr Treats

On the street level of the building I work in there is a coffee shop by the name of Treats. A man of Italian origin (although he has no accent, I know this through conversations with a fellow employee during World Cup soccer season) and indeterminable age (he's greying but doesn't seem old) works there and probably owns the franchise. I once bought something with debit and since he has always called me by name. This seems friendly yet slightly uncomfortable since I don't know his name. He always makes a point of waving to me and is always, ALWAYS, been in a 'happy' mood.

There used to be another employee, an older woman also of European origin sporting a beehive with the same hair clip attached every day, but I haven't seen her for a while and her absence has caused shorter shop hours and high employee turnover. I always assumed that she was the mother of the main guy there, their interactions seemed more than co-worker but not romantic. Both I find to be mysterious and hard to read in age, sexuality, relationship, etc.

The man drives a large burgundy van, similar to this, but more plush with curtains and some strange spoiler. It is parked outside the building all the time. At any hour. Occasionally it will not be there, and during those times I'm assuming he's at home, wherever that is. But I have walked by there at all hours of the night, and seen the van. Walking home from drinking on a weekend, it's there. One night I was working late on a project and had to print something off at 3am so I went to the office... it was there. On Tuesday around 12:30 I was walking home from having a beer with a friend, I saw him come out of the van and into the store.

Why does he need to be there at 12:30? 3:00? He has such a strange demeanor. And why the large van?
Recently I've started making up fantastical stories about him, like in some David Lynch movie where Treats is a cover for an underground network of people doing shady things that we will never understand. People who cause midgets to dance in the radiators and time to loop back on itself. The basement of the 13 story building in which I work in houses some sort of steamy workshop in which many workers are constructing something sinister that even they cannot comprehend.

Maybe each Treats store is a portal to another dimension. Maybe each store has a guy like the aforementioned who is really a guardian of the portal. This would explain why he is so difficult to figure out.

Maybe Treats is part of a giant social experiment, or government testing of a certain substance baked into their 'famous' carrot cake (which I have never eaten). 25 years into the future we will be astounded to find out that we have been unwillingly tested upon for many years without our consent without any ability to retaliate. It will explain the social decline of individuals into opinion-less drones, carrying out their daily tasks, meeting their daily consumer junk quotas, obeying commands to allow those in control to take full advantage of the community to meet their economic desires and suppress dissidents. There will be an inevitable war between those in control and those who resist (and didn't partake in the consumption of spiked baked goods).

Maybe him and Beehive are aliens.