This Week...

It was a cranky week.

Sometimes I'm content with my life right now.  Other times, as was the case this week, I am very much not.

About a week ago, my manager told me(*note: didn't ask) that I would be interviewing with our district manager this Thursday for a supervisor position at our shop.

I'd be interviewing for the promotion along with another co-worker: this 20-year-old punk who's been begging our manager for the position for weeks.  My manager got sick of his groveling, and so he relinquished the decision-making power to our DM.  If you ask me, it seems like a lot of fuss over something I didn't even necessarily want.

Once he discovered that he would be interviewing 'against' me, I started to notice a change in the way this co-worker treated me.  He'd loudly call me out on really random things in front of my manager; it's no secret that I prefer making drinks to working on the register.  I'm really good at bar, and the register's for newbs!  But suddenly this was spun into:

'Yeahhh, Alicia's really good at bar, but that's all she can do.  Put her on register and she freaks out.'

Huh? This went on all morning.

And then later that day, he was bragging to all of us about how he took a picture of another supervisor sitting on a stool and texting while she was on the register.  He showed it to our manager and told him that she's constantly on her phone on the floor, or in the back room on Facebook.  What are we, in high school?

If this is how he's acting before we even interview, imagine how he'd treat me if I get the job...or all the gloating I'd have to endure should he get it!

Yep.  This is my life now.

My interview was whatevs.  My heart wasn't in it.  Honestly, I mainly went along with it because I really don't want Tattle-Tail-McVee for a supervisor.

The last question that the district manager asked me was: 'How bad do you want this job, and what are you willing to do to get it?'  That really threw me off.  And I'm not a good liar.  I think I mumbled something incomprehensible, and I don't think he bought it.  In any case, we'll find out Monday.

I went with my roommate to Bible study on Tuesday - I know a lot of the people in the group, but  I usually work nights so I can rarely go.  At the end of the night, everyone goes around and shares their high and their low of the week - cheesy, but whatevs.  I bet you can guess what my low was.

You know you're pathetic, though, when your 'high' for the week is Ben & Jerry's Late Night Snack ice cream for dinner.

Have you ever just needed a 'win'?  Not in the Charlie Sheen sort of way.  Just anything semi-positive in you life?

I was talking with a different co-worker about my interview - how I really don't even care.  And how I don't want the position anyway, because if I get another job in the near-future I'd feel bad about quitting.

He called me out on my crap of course, saying that I do want it  -  like I want to get a good grade on a test or like I want to win a game - but I'm afraid of being let down again if I don't get it.

Ugh.

The other day, someone lent me this sweet book, Kisses From Katie, about this amazing 20-something woman who decided to spend a year between high school and college working with orphans in Uganda, and ended up staying there and adopting 14 little girls.  It's perspective-shifting, convicting, and all that good stuff!  And it's given me back some of that joy I've been burying under my lame-crankiness all week.

But it also made me ache to figure out my calling.

Caffeine Has A 6-Hour Half Life...

I don't like to drink things with caffeine.  No; the irony of the fact that I work at a coffee shop is not lost on me.

Did you know that caffeine has a 6-hour half life?  I don't remember where exactly I gleaned this little tidbit from, but I promise I'm not making it up!

Refer back in your memories, if you will, to your 5th grade science class.  Now, shuffle on over to the fossils unit.  Remember anything about carbon-14 dating?  Scientists are somehow able to analyze the amount of carbon remaining in ancient organic matter.  They also know that it takes a prescribed number of years for half of the carbon to leave prehistoric bones or whatnot.  Using this scale, they can figure out how old something is.  

Like I mentioned earlier, I typically don't caffeinate.  I don't like what caffeine does to my body.  It makes me feel all jittery and I can't sleep. 

For some reason that eludes me at present (3:24 a.m.), I decided that it would be a good idea to down a 26oz black iced tea at the end of my closing shift earlier tonight.  There's just something about a nice, big (free) glass of iced tea that makes all of your past knowledge of the effects of caffeine: experiential, academic, or otherwise, just disappear right along with that first satisfying gulp. 

That cursed first gulp took place at 11:00 p.m.  By my estimates, I have about 1 1/2 hours yet, before half of that stinkin caffeine leaves my system.

It doesn't help matters that in addition to the caffeine, tonight my head is full of other things (of an entirely non-chemical nature).

It has been almost 6 months since I started working at the coffee shop.  I began just as my AmeriCorps term of service was ending, full of the naive assumption that my stint as a barista would be short-lived. How long could it take to find my dream job that would simultaneously fulfill all of my idealistic desires for meaningful vocation?  A couple months and scores of fruitless applications later, discouragement started creeping in.  In an effort to stave off the apathy, I became vigilant in my efforts to make the best of where I was and what I was doing. 

I started being more intentional about getting to know the people I was serving on a daily basis.  It turns out that our regulars are pretty awesome, and I began to truly enjoy being part of their daily routines.

I need to have at least a couple people near me who I feel close to and with whom a mutual giving and taking of stories, secrets, joys, and pains can take place.  I deeply value some of the unexpected friendships that have grown out of this job.

6 months later, I can finally say that I am content with where I am.  

Which has its positives (as outlined above)...

and its negatives:  becoming too content/comfortable here, when my passions lie elsewhere. 

Yesterday, completely out of the blue, I was presented with a very tempting offer from some dear friends to leave everything behind here, pick up, and start over in another state.  So, in addition to the caffeine, this opportunity is rolling around in my head and keeping me up into the wee hours of the night (time check: 4:16 a.m. [45 minutes until half of the caffeine has left my body]). 

One of my favorite books is Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry.  Berry has a fascinating worldview; a true wordsmith, his novels read like poetry, and his poems touch your very soul.  In Jayber Crow, the protagonist/the book's namesake says:

'Now I have had the most of the life I am going to have, and I can see what it has been.  I can remember those early years when it seemed to me I was cut completely adrift, and times when, looking back at earlier time, it seemed I had been wandering through the dark wood of error.  But now it looks to me as though I was following a path that was laid out for me, unbroken, and maybe even as straight as possible, from one end to the other, and I have this feeling, which never leaves me anymore, that I have been led' (Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow, 66). 

I've always loved this image of the character in the novel being led throughout his life.  I feel it too.  I've also felt all that 'adrift,' 'wandering,' 'dark wood of error' stuff plenty over the past several months.  But looking back, beyond all of my 'wandering' of late, I can clearly see the path that has led me to here: it's that selfsame path that leads out and beyond here (wherever that may be). 

Soooooo....Apparently, I Serve Coffee to a Saudi Prince?

One of my co-workers is Syrian.

He's basically obsessed with his roots, and he loves nothing more than a good conversation in Arabic with whomever from our multitudinous Arabic-patronage happens to be buying coffee at the moment.

So, there's this big, middle-aged Saudi man who always comes into the shop with a varying assortment of college-aged Arabic guys.  Like every day.   Oh yeah, and they always pull up in a different Ferrari, Lamborghini, or otherwise ridiculously expensive car (*note: I know nothing of the value/awesomeness of cars  -  this I've simply ascertained from the freak-outs on the part of my male co-workers each time the crew rolls up).  The gang just chills there for a couple hours drinking white mochas (after they like totally load our tip jar).

Naturally, we've always been curious about what the story is with this unlikely crew - is the older guy a friend? cool uncle? some sort of mentor, perhaps?  Why in the world do they tip us double the cost of their drinks?  What's with all the sweet rides?

Finally, my co-worker who loves him some Arabic-convo, does some preliminary digging and asks the older guy what he does, only to find out that he's some kind of a hot-shot in the Saudi military, currently acting as a bodyguard.  His charge: one of the young guys who's always part of the group, who, oh - by the way - just happens to be one of the sons of the king of Saudi Arabia!?   He's going to college here in DC or something.

So, I guess we have royalty in our midst?

It kind of reminded me of all those different movies like Roman Holiday or (on a cheesier note) The Prince and Me where royal personages try to slip into 'average' life undetected.

It's weird that we all finally know the great mystery behind the generous-tipping, Ferrari-driving, multi-generational Saudi crew- like we're privy to some great big secret (the princes and princesses in the movies never want to be found out).

Well, when I got home of course I wikipedia-ed it because I just had to know more.  Apparently, our prince in question is one of the 'at least thirty-five children' fathered by King Abdullah.

I wonder where he falls in the birth order!

Sometimes, We Don't Use Filters...

The first time he brewed coffee, one of the new baristas at our shop neglected to use a filter.  It was basically a mess.

Filters, in coffee and in life, are generally good things. 

Yesterday was slow. There were about four of us standing around doing nothing: zero customers, no syrups to refill, no cups to restock, no dishes to be done. 

This never happens, so we didn't know what to do with ourselves.

We hired a new girl last week who is about 5 months pregnant (give or take?) and pretty shy (relative to the generally uninhibited atmosphere around her).

Neglecting to insert his filter before he spoke, one of our co-workers, in attempts to fill the silence of the afternoon, goes up to the new girl and asks her:

'Sooooo, are ya getting pumped?'

'For what?'

'All the pain you're going to be in, in a few months when you have to give birth?'

Blank stares...mouths open in disbelief...did that realllly just happen?

Filters are good in coffee and in life. 

An Experiment

Today was one of those 'be kind (everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle)' type of days.

My immature, 19-year-old co-worker's ability to perform simple tasks (like pouring a cup of coffee) bears an inverse relationship to the amount of jabber he spews out of his mouth.  Since multi-tasking isn't his strong-suit, I find myself on his case to get stuff done more often than I'd like.  He's pretty ridiculous and thinks himself rather clever (don't get me wrong...he has his moments), but when I'm short with him it's really just because he needs someone to snap him back to the tasks at hand; plus,  he can take it (he knows we're besties)!

In church this morning, as part of an aside to the broader message, the pastor mentioned the opportunity we have for silently praying for the different people we encounter during our days, e.g., the checkout girl at the grocery store or the person in front of us at the post office.  What a unique opportunity I have for applying this practice, since I literally come in contact with hundreds of coffee-drinkers each day.

So, I started my shift with the intention of trying to pray a short blessing into the lives of my co-workers and all the different people I handed drinks to today.

Jesus tells us to love and pray for our enemies, and since it's hard to be frustrated or annoyed or angry with people you're praying for, I think that He was on to something there.

I found myself actually seeing the people I gave drinks to, instead of the blur of hands that customers sometimes become to me during the afternoon rush.  I noticed things about customers that typically don't even register on my radar, and I let those things kind of guide and inspire how I prayed: if I noticed a wedding ring I might have prayed that God bless the customer's marriage; if I noticed a school sweatshirt on a college-aged person, I prayed a blessing over this amazing and formative period in said customer's life.

Just the other day, I had an encounter with one of the rudest customers I'd ever had the misfortune of serving an Ameri-misto to, and where several months ago, the way he spoke to me would have really affected and hurt me, this latest experience simply left me incensed.  Back when I first started and mean customers used to really hurt my feelings, I explained my sensitive reaction to my supervisor as a positive thing since it meant that I cared.  Somewhere along the way I guess I lost that, and I hadn't even realized that I did until my encounter with Jerky McJerkerson meant nothing to me.  Since then, I'd actually been searching for a way to 'care' again, and I think that with this little experiment in praying for our patrons, I may have just found it!

But back to my multi-taskingly-challenged co-worker.  A couple hours into our shift together, he mentioned that today was the one-year anniversary of his father's death.

Maybe it was the affect my experiment had on the way I was interacting with him today that made him feel like sharing this with me.  It sounded like he needed to get some more stuff off his chest, so I asked him to tell me about his dad.  He went on to talk about his pop like he was the man.  They had an amazing relationship, he died unexpectedly from a heart attack, and his absence in their family has left a void in my co-worker's heart that hurt me to hear about.

Father, bless my friend. 

Give Thanks.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I am thankful that I did not have to make a single latte today!  Our shop's open 365 days a year, and since I'll be flying home for a few days at Christmas, I assumed I would've had to put in some holiday-time today.  But by some stroke of a miracle, I was off!

I'm also thankful that I do work tomorrow.  I don't always have the best attitude about my job.  It pains me to admit that more often than not, I'm a bit embarrassed and bummed about the fact that I work at a coffee shop when my friends have been doing everything from grad school and med school to youth pastoring and teaching since graduation.  I felt useful and productive as an AmeriCorps member last year, but since my term of service ended a few months ago, I can't help but feel like I've taken a few steps back.

I spent Thanksgiving with my 'DC family' (my cousin and her husband and my aunt and uncle). Every year, they join forces with their besties up in Baltimore for Thanksgiving festivities.  It was a mixed bag of guests - my aunt and uncle's friends, their grown children and some grandparents thrown in for good measure.  Basically, a lot of people I didn't know.

It's stupid, but all day I had been kind of dreading the question that ultimately crops up as you move through the gamut of make-your-acquantiance niceties: 'So, what do you do?'

I found myself almost making apologies for what I deemed an unsuitable use of my time: 'Welllllll....I'm kind of in-between things right now.  I moved out here to do AmeriCorps after college...that recently ended and I'm looking for a job in non-profits now....but I'm just working at a coffee shop in the meantime.'

I'm lame. I know.

But my 'DC family' and all their friends are so cool- my uncle's a chemist, my aunt's a librarian, my cousin's in public health.  And of the 'people I didn't know': one was a horse-vet, one was a doctor, another was an attorney...and one was super-cute and little and 90 years old!  They were mostly all in their mid- to late-twenties (except for the cute 90-year-old), and I was intimidated.

In light of Thanksgiving, I've been thinking about something G. K. Chesterton wrote: 'There are two ways to get enough: one is to continue to accumulate more and more.  The other is to desire less.'

This quote is significant on a lot of different levels:

Here's a easy one- all the crazies who have been lining up since this morning outside of Best Buy in order to partake in the Black Friday madness.  It's like, why?

Or - how I spent the day surrounded by DC professionals young and old and in-between. I don't know much about the crew I just met tonight, but the general mindset I've witnessed in their contemporaries out here over the past year, is one centered on amassing 'more and more' power, wealth and prestige.

And then -  I'm embarrassed by my job?  I should really be embarrassed by the amount of clothes I have in my closet or  the mass of things I have cluttering up my room.

That last part - 'the other is to desire less' - this applies to material things (duh), but when I was thinking about my life, the thing that I desire the most right now is meaningful employment.  I think it's okay that we want things (especially 'good' things like a job we can care about) so long as there's balance.  But sometimes, I think that I desire a different job to an unproductive degree.  I'm doing all the right things in the job-hunt realm, so it'll happen when it happens - letting it consume my thoughts and attitude won't speed up the timeline.  Being a barista just has to be enough for now, and I have to be okay and even thankful for that!

So, this Thanksgiving I am thankful (in addition to all the blessings of health, home, family, friends, etc) for my job.

Later,

Lise

Secrets: Redux.

One of my supervisors was fired this week.

This blog is fairly anonymous: I don't use names and I purposefully don't associate myself with the actual shop and company I work for.  I have no idea who, if anyone (...besides the small group of friends I happened to mention it to), stumbles through my random musings on life from behind the espresso machine.

But writing's kind of always been my outlet.

If you'll recall, I wrote a post a couple weeks ago about how people always tell me secrets and stuff.  Well, sharing's not exactly a two-way street for me.  I'm horrible at talking about my feelings, and I'm super non-confrontational.  So whenever I've had to express things of a warm and gooey or a hard and messy nature, I'd much rather write than voice them.

For instance, I had to complete a 'philosophy of life' project for my senior seminar course in college, where I was given the opportunity for in-depth exploration of the lens through which I view the world; I then had to thoughtfully analyze my principles and beliefs using a medium of my choosing.  I chose to write a series of thank you letters to family members, friends, mentors and the like for investing in my life up until that point, highlighting how those important souls played a part in the way I'd come to see the world.  I handed the project in to my professor, but chickened out and never actually sent the letters to their intended audiences.

I don't know why, but there's something about saying something honest out loud (or in writing), having people hear it, and then never being able to get it back, that makes me uncomfortable.  But I'm working on it.

Without going into all the minutiae of the situation, this supervisor of mine was fired on account of sexual harassment.  One of my co-workers came to me last week, and she said that he 'slapped her ass' one morning when they were opening together.  I was disgusted and offended, especially since this wasn't the first time that I'd noticed inappropriate encounters with female employees (and customers) on his part.  My co-worker and I talked about what might happen if she were to tell our manager, and she ultimately decided to report him a couple days later.

Hypothetically, if I were the type of person who talked about messy stuff, I might admit that over the course of the first few months of my freshman year in a brand new high school where I knew not a soul, something in a similar-ish vein routinely happened to me at the hands of an individual whose name and face I can't even remember now some ten-odd years later (TEN YEARS since freshman year of high school?!), but whose actions still cut - just every once in a while - but especially when I come in contact with grown men who have gotten this far in their lives without someone coming forward and initiating the proper mechanisms to stop their behavior.

I'm really proud of my co-worker for reporting the situation because I don't know if I would've had the courage, had I been the one in her position.

But I was really disappointed in the way the company that we work for handled things.  I believe that there should be an expeditious policy of zero-tolerance in regard to harassment.  There is a time and a place for the slapping of asses...? but it's not in the workplace.  After the report was made, a week+ long investigation into the situation on the part of district management was launched.  The supervisor in question had no idea that he was being investigated, and so all the while, he was allowed to continue working - often right alongside the young woman he violated.

I understand that there is a process that must be followed and a paper-trail that must be left in these situations, but that still kind of irks me.

. . .

Lise

Coffee & Kindness

People who have never worked at a coffee shop can't possibly understand all that goes on behind the scenes to get you your caffeinated bevy.  One of our regulars just started working at another coffee shop as a part-time gig while he's in grad school, and he confirmed these sentiments when after his first day, he entered our shop full of newfound awe and appreciation.

I'm a quick learner.  Slow people annoy me.  And I'm rarely not good at new things.  (And I'm really humble). That's why it was sooooo freaking hard for me to accept the learning curve I had to operate under when I first started working at the coffee shop. 

I messed up a lot of drinks.  I was moving at turtle-tempo.  And the endless lines of cranky customers made me want to crawl under the espresso machine and cry. 

Those first few weeks were a swirling blur of cups and faces, but there were two customers that made a great enough impression that I think about them from time to time, even now, months later.  

The first was a woman who ordered a cafe vanilla frappuccino, an item that somehow slipped through my beverage-training regime.  For the most part, the drinks are relatively intuitive once you get the system down, so I took a stab at it, actually made it correctly, but then called it out wrong: 'cafe vanilla-BEAN frappuccino!' And OH MY WORD - THE WORLD WAS GONNA END!  I'd screwed things up way worse than that (it was my first week, for goodness sake) and had gotten a lesser reaction.  So, I think that it was shock more than anything - but that was the closest I'd come to crying.  So, congratulations to customer-#1-that-I-will-remember-from-my-first-week. 

The second customer that I will always remember from week-1 is this guy, who in the midst of the longest line ever and a drink that I spilled all over him, made me stop. look him in the eyes. and hear that my worth as a human-being doesn't correlate with my ability to make coffee.  Have you ever felt like complete crap? Maybe when you were a little kid and you did something really bad and your parents were super-mad at you?  There were tears everywhere, but then the 'rents hugged you and said that they love you now and always.  That kind of grace is almost so good it hurts.  My day - my whole first week up through that point: just crappy.  And then that happened.  And I wanted to cry once again.  But in a good way!

I really love that quote by Plato: 'Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.'  Maybe both of those customers could tell that it was my first week (let's be honest...I was a mess).  Maybe both of those customers were going through their own crises, things that couldn't even compare to my relatively pathetic little foray into the world of beverage-preparation. 

How do I know?

But I did take something away from those two very different customer-interactions that I've applied to life both inside and outside of the coffee shop.  That 'be kind' mentality.  I'll admit that I'm not always that great at it.  I've got a pretty expressive face and I'm usually really upbeat, so I've been told that I don't always hide my emotions that well when someone hurts me.  But when new people start working at our shop, I always try to remember back to my first weeks as a barista and extend a little extra grace to them whenever possible.  

And more importantly, when customers come in that are real biz-nitches, I try (with incrementally-increasing success) to give them the benefit of the doubt and excuse their poor behavior as manifestations of battle-wounds from whatever 'hard battle' it is that they're fighting. 

Best,

Lise

Telling Secrets

So, people tell me things.  It's always kind of been the case.  Sometimes they're big secrets, sometimes minuscule tidbits of gossip.

Sometimes I have a bunch of secrets in my possession all at once and I just feel like I need to spew them or I'll explode.  Back in college, I came up with a solution to this: my roomie became my blabber-mouth-buddy.   People told her a lot of stuff too, and so it just kind of happened that people could assume that if I knew something, so did Nicole (and vice versa).  Don't get me wrong; there were exceptions to this rule -  if it was a real whopper of a secret, my lips were sealed.

Have you ever noticed that there's something about coffee shops that just simply begs for the telling-of-secrets?

I get to share a few moments of conversation at the bar with handfuls of random customers I've never met before, who are just passing through on their ways to whatever's next in their days, and who I will probably never see again.  In these moments while I'm finishing up their beverages, in an attempt to fill the awkward space and time between us, or perhaps because there's a primal need within all of us to tell someone, anyone, our 'stuff,' I get told things.  Often, things more personal and intimate than I, in my role as annonymous-beverage-preparer deserve.

Frederick Buechner, in his memoir that shares the same title as this blog post, writes that:

'What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else.  It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are. . . because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing.  It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier. . . for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own. . .' (Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets)

And it's not just customers that come in and share their little and not-so-little secrets.  It's the co-workers too.  You work with the same group of people a lot.  It's not overly-taxing work or anything, so there's a lot of opportunity for 'doing life' with your fellow baristas while making beverages.

I made the observation to a co-worker the other day that our shop is becoming a 'boys club.'  We've had a lot of recent turn-over and it just so happens that our guy:girl ratio has gotten ridiculously skewed (we're talking like 10:4 here).  So, I work with boys all day long, but I have a brother....and this theory that growing up with sisters makes guys better guys.  All I can say is, you'd be surprised at how many guys truly enjoy girl-talk once you get 'em started. 

I have a veritable menagerie of coffee shop secrets - people's fears, pains, hopes, embarrassments.  Once I started thinking about this and the fact that I'm trusted, in some small way, to be the holder of these precious things that live at the core of our humanness, I came away with a new appreciation for the people I come in contact with every day.  The fact that we all have these secrets binds me to even that a-hole who comes into the shop and rudely has us re-make his 'messed-up beverage' for free on a daily basis, which I'm convinced he never even purchased in the first place. 

And that's kind of cool.

Lise

Playlist

If I could make a playlist for the coffee shop:


1. 'Poison and Wine,' The Civil Wars
2. 'Follaton Wood,' Ben Howard
3. 'Dueling Ninjas,' Trace Bundy
4. 'This Woman's Work,' Greg Laswell
5. 'We Will Become Silhouettes,' The Postal Service
6. 'Get it Wrong, Get it Right,' Feist
7. 'The World Spins Madly On,' The Weepies
8. 'Heart of the Matter,' India Arie
9. 'Casimir Pulaski Day,' Sufjan Stevens
10. 'Motorcycle Driveby,' Third Eye Blind
11. 'Evelyn,' Gregory Alan Isakov
12. 'Rambling Man,' Laura Marling
13. 'Just Not Each Other,' William Fitzsimmons
14. 'Rise,' Eddie Vedder
15. 'Sodom, South Georgia,' Iron and Wine
16. 'You're Not Listening,' The Rescues
17. 'The Story,' Brandi Carlile
18. 'The Crane Wife 3,' The Decemberists'
19. 'Reasons to Love You,' Meiko

Coffee House Playlists

I definitely judge people based on their tastes in music.  You know when it's done right: the poetry of beautiful lyrics melding to the rhythms and melodies of instruments I so wish my parents had forced me to take lessons in as a child.  I just don't understand people who can be indifferent to good music, or worse still, people who actually enjoy country music.

I went to Hope College, a small liberal arts institution of the Reformed Church of America persuasion, nestled in the charming town of Holland, MI.  Remember Stars Hollow? That disgustingly cute, fictional town from Gilmore Girls?  Well, if you've never had the privilege of visiting Holland, MI: home of the Annual Tulip Time Festival, Captain Sundae, and 149 years of fine liberal arts education, then just think 'Stars Hollow' and you're on the right track.

Needless to say, the Holland, MI folk don't really take kindly to franchises where local can do it so much more endearingly, and let's face it, better.  No Starbucks or Caribou for us, sir!  If you want coffee in Holland, MI you have two options: JP's or Lemonjellos.  The two shops sell coffee, and that's about where the similarity ends.  Atmosphere, patronage, music, employees and artwork could not be more different.   As a student, I frequented both shops with regularity (some people were loyal JP-ists and others die-hard Lemonjellos fans, but I saw no problem with soaking up the unique coffeehouse-goodness each shop had to offer).

Where Lemonjellos had JP's beat, however, was definitely in the music scene.  If we were to draw some sort of line of demarcation, then Lemonjellos, I suppose, would be the more ostensible choice for the college students, while JP's would probably be the coffeehouse-of-choice for your typical Holland townie.  As such, Lemonjellos was way more into hopping on the fair trade-bubble tea-vegan pastry-pretentious music-train than it's counterpart, JP's.  Lemonjellos also doubled as a small concert-venue a few nights a week, bringing in some of the college's talent as well as other local and even a couple larger-name groups to perform.

Coffeehouses provide soundtracks for their patrons' meetings, study-sessions and first dates.  I work for one of the big, franchisey coffee conglomerates, not one of the local and full-of-character little guys like JP's or Lemonjellos.  We have this established set of music we play on repeat all day until the 'music specialists' down at corporate give us their next installment to slap on.  While it pains me to admit that some of the stuff they have us play is pretty darn acceptable, for a while there we were selling the Beatles Number 1 Hits compilation cd in our stores, and it was all-Beatles-all-the-time for like 3 straight weeks.  I don't care how great the Beatles are. Not okay.  (Oh, and I'm so looking forward to November 15th when the round-the-clock Christmas music begins..)

As someone who secretly strives to be one of those super-cool pretentious music snobs like Julie (friend from college, die-hard Lemonjello's fan, and associate editor at this super-cool blog [check out her stuff if you, like me, are interested in increasing your music-snobbery]) I really miss the non-contrived soundtracks of the local shops.  And how cool would it be if the big coffee shops started hosting open-mic night - just once a month or something?

Anyway, till next time,

Lise

(p.s. - maybe if you're lucky, I'll impart upon you my own 'coffee house playlist' next time).

My Mantra...For This Chapter

I don't do an amazing job at being present/content when I feel like I'm not where I want to be, doing what I want to be doing.  But that's silly.  

It's also definitely an entitled, pride thing.  I worked hard for four years in college (....on my parents' dime).  I 'gave a year of my life' to AmeriCorps (so we live below the poverty-line for a measly year and qualify for food stamps - big woop - some of my students from the organization I worked with during my term of service were supporting families of 5+ on the equivalent of my stipend). 

Nowadays, work with/serve coffee to/do life with a lot of beautiful, interesting people.  And while this may not be what I imagined my life would be like going on my second year post-college, this is where I am.  And until I am somewhere else: 

"Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness; touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis, all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” 

-Frederick Buechner