Cappuccino.

I hate cappuccinos.  With out a doubt: my least favorite drink to make.  Especially those effing 'bone dry' ones.

In case you're ignorant of the subtle nuances involved in caffeinated beverage options (as I was before I started working here), allow me to outline the basic coffee shop menu for ya:

1. Hot Drinks:
1. Espresso-based:
1. Espressos (shots of espresso alone, with foam, or with whip cream)
2. Americanos (espresso shots + hot water)
3. Lattes (espresso shots+steamed milk+flavor syrups of your choosing)
4. ***Cappuccinos (espresso shots + milk + a lot of foam)
1. 'Bone Dry' Cappuccinos (espresso shots + onlyyyy super thick foam - NO milk)
2. Coffee-based:
1. Drip-coffee with or without room for cream/sugar
3. Teas
2. Cold Drinks:
1. Espresso-based:
1. Espressos over ice (shots+ice)
2. Americanos (shots+cold water+ice)
3. Lattes (shots+cold milk+syrups+ice)
4. Cappuccinos (shots+cold milk+ice+foam)
2. Coffee-based:
1. Iced Coffee (with or without milk+sweetener)
3. Blended:
1. Frappuccinos (milk+coffee/or not+syrups+emulsifiers+ice+whip)
4. Teas
1. Tea (with or without lemonade+sweetener)

***If you'll refer back to the definition of 'cappuccino' in the above outline, you'll notice that this beverage contains espresso shots, mostly foam, and a little steamed milk.

In order to steam milk, you have to hold you metal pitcher of milk up to the steaming-wand; then, bring the pitcher down for a few seconds where just the surface of the milk and the wand meet so that the milk makes that distinct tearing sound, which is liquid 'aerating;' and then, bring the pitcher to rest on the ledge, with the wand just chillin' in the middle as it brings the milk up to temperature.

When you make a cappuccino, however, instead of bringing the pitcher to rest all nicely on the ledge while the wand finishes heating the milk, you have to hold the pitcher so that the wand just meets the surface of the milk for the entire time so that it creates a bunch of foam.

Those stinkin 'bone dry' cappuccino-orderers are always GIANT foam snobs, so the foam has to be super perfect and thick and NOT bubbly.  When the register passes over a cup with 'BONE DRY' written on it, I almost invariably get performance-anxiety and it takes like two pitchers of milk for me to get enough of that stupid dry foam.

Anywho.  This old Italian woman came into the shop today and ordered a small cappuccino. Blah. So I make it.  She comes back like 2 seconds later, shoves her drink in my face, and asks:

'Do you know how to make a cappuccino? This is half foam!!!'

'Ummm.........yes?' I respond cautiously...

'Cappuccinos don't have foam!'

'Wait...did you mean to order a latte, maybe?

'No. I want a cappuccino...NO FOAM!' 

Then she goes into this little rant on the Italian etymological roots of the word 'cappuccino.'  I tuned out for most of it, trying to figure out what this lady actually wanted, but I did gather that there was some sort of black cow imagery going on...who knows? After I got home, I did my own digging and found this website that explains the different Italian espresso beverages (as well as the etymology of the word 'cappuccino' - but found nothing suggesting that in Italy, cappuccinos have no foam...oh well.  If you order a cappuccino here at our shop, or at any other coffee shop in the States for that matter, you're askin for foam!)

In any case, I finally make her a small latte, which she proceeds to inform me had too much milk. 

In the end, I think that she wanted something in the vicinity of a wet espresso macchiato (the 'wet' part refers to the polar opposite of a 'dry' macchiato or cappuccino: shots + no foam - all steamed milk). 

Oh, Cappuccinos. Guh.

Fun & Games

I was a Young Life leader when I was a student at Hope College!  Anddd two of the best summers of my life were those after my sophomore and junior years, which I spent interning at a Young Life camp in MN. Holla! For those who are not familiar with Young Life, it's an international para-church organization engaging mainly college-age peeps and other awesome adults in relational ministry to high school and jr. high students: kind of like youth group, but way louder and crazier, and full of gross games, stupid skits, and singing lots of Taylor Swift songs.

Once, I ate a worm at club.  We leaders made this brilliant deal with our kids, where if they got like 50 new students to come all on one night, we'd get up there and swallow worms...

I'm a vegetarian(-ish), and basically the pickiest eater in the world.  So, the fact that I ate a worm for my Young Life kids shows you how much I love them!  Leading Young Life is one of the things I've missed most since graduating college.  While high school students can often be self-absorbed, angsty, little punks, I love all of the potential, insightfulness, and heck - even (...especially?) the angst - that kids are full of at that age.

At the coffee shop, I work with a lot of high school-age (or thereabouts) students.  They're often little punks, but it didn't take me long before they started reminding me of my awesome Young Life kids from back in MI, and for me to start treating them as such.

We talk about all kinds of things in between making beverages: friends, relationships, under-age beer pong tournaments (which I don't condone), school, and even faith.  There are a lot of stupid little Young Life leader-insider phrases that we in the 'biz' throw around (often with an ironic tinge) when referring to hanging out with our Young Life kids: 'doin life together,' 'stayin relevant,' 'gettin excited about what they're gettin excited about' (totes my excuse for loving the Twilight Saga),  etc.  Even though the coffee shop is our job, I think it's really cool that we don't let this opportunity for (pardon the expression) 'doin life together' to be wasted!

Disclaimer: anyone with a Young Life background must love icebreaker-type games.  It's kind of a prerequisite.  As are guitar-playing-skills (still workin on that one). So, sometimes (all the time) I make us play games while we work.  Some of my favs are:

- Two truths and a lie - you think of two random facts about yourself that are true, as well as one that's a lie, and everyone has to guess which isn't true (e.g., I was on Bozo Buckets as a child, I once swallowed a gold fish, and I had a pet duck - #2 is false... it was a worm!!!)
- Horse, Muffin, Bird - Looking only at a person's face, describe him/her using any combination of three of the following:  horse, muffin, bird (e.g., there's a double-horse-bird, she's a triple muffin, or that guy's a double-bird-horse).  Sounds means...but all in good fun!
- Guess the bevvy  (pretty self-intuitive: soccer mom's gonna get a skinny vanilla latte)
- Your Team - If you see someone wearing something particularly horrible and 80's-ish; or, perhaps, some dude accessorizing with superfluous amounts of spikey chains; someone dressed really tool-y in all sear-sucker plus a straw fedora, maybe?  Then ya put 'em on the other person's 'team'!  If you're not careful, by the end of the night you could have a team full of real fashion-forward winners! (Also sounds kinda mean-spirited, but once again - all in good fun).

So much fun & games and doin' that good ol' life together at the coffee shop!

Clopening

Clopening: verb. The act of working a closing shift, followed directly by an opening shift.  (Alicia couldn't keep her eyes open today because her manager is trying to kill her by scheduling her to work clopening shifts all week). 


This is what my week looked like:

Sunday- closing
Monday-opening
Tuesday-closing
Wednesday-opening; making the 2 hour commute to Lorton to teach
Thursday-closing
Friday-opening
Saturday-Sunday- OFF! Hallelujah!

I have sleep issues anyways - I think it's something I inherited from my worry-wart mom - if residual unease is left over from her day; if there's something important happening in the morning; or, back when her children were high school-age and out galavanting/stirring up who knows what kind of mischief on Saturday nights - she can't sleep.

Alarm clock anxiety is the one that really gets me.  I trace it back to the first summer interned at Castaway Club Young Life Camp back in college.  I was the morning cook! It was awesome!  I had to unlock the kitchen super early and get my amazing crews of high school- and college-age volunteers PUMPED about cooking brekky and prepping lunch for 600+ campers every morning.  In the middle of the night once, my stupid cell phone just up and died, so come 5am my trusty alarm failed me!  It wasn't a big deal (interns sleep upstairs, right above the kitchen, so someone just ran up and woke me), but every night for the remainder of the summer, I would wake up every hour on the hour thinking it was morning.  On two occasions, my body even convinced itself that it was indeed wake-up time, and I got dressed, went downstairs, started warming up the ovens - only to snap out of it an come to the horrific realization that it was only like 3am or something.

And still now, whenever I have an early-morning obligation, the traumatic after-effects of my failed alarm persist in haunting me.

All this to say: my circadian rhythm is effed after this week.

I was all set to go into my little rant with the supervisor I closed with last night, about how our manager gave me the schedule from hellz this week (because complaining's fun):

"Guh.  Want to know what my schedule looked like this week?!"

Sideways glance + smirk.  'Yes, pleaseeee tell me.'

Woops.  Oh yeah - my supervisor also works full time at a bank, drives an hour both ways to get to our shop where he puts in about 32 hours/week, and has three kids under five back at home.  Complaining just got a lot less fun.

For the most part, I'm upbeat, positive, and all that good stuff at work (not quite so much this week).  But this supervisor of mine is one of the most glass-half-full, genuinely nice, 'zen' guys I know.

One day I asked him why he's always so chill and positive all the time, and he started talking about this tattoo he has.  It's of this cross-legged guy juggling three balls of fire with a giant smile on his face.  And that's exactly how I picture this supervisor of mine.  He never really lets on that much, but I know he has a ton on his plate.  But he knows what he has to do.  And he just takes whatever is sent his way in stride. You guys should meet him - he's truly an inspiration in his calm, uncontrived, easy-going, but get 'er done kind of way!


'One morning
the fox came down the hill, all glittering and confident,
and didn't see me--and I thought:

so this is the world.
I'm not in it.
It is beautiful.'

(Mary Oliver, 'October,'  New and Selected Poems Vol. 1)

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

Customer-Interactions: The Funny And The Creepy

When you work at a coffee shop (so I'm learning) you cross paths with some really interesting characters.

One of my co-workers has been moving his way up the ladder from barista to supervisor over the course of the past 3 years.  He usually supervises the closing shift, so we work together a lot.  Our regulars, the cool ones and those interesting ones too, get used to having us there at night.  And so an on-going rapport develops:

The guy that supervises the closing shift is one of those 'can't-really-tell-if-you're-being-a-sassy-jackass-but-it's-somehow-endearing-so-I'll-just-let-it-slide' types.  Every night before close, we have these two macho construction workers come into the shop to caffeinate before heading out to start their over-night shifts tearing up some part or another of 495.  For as long as I've worked there, and for who knows how long before that, their 'thing' has been giving my co-worker crap. Because he's an ass and it's funny.

A couple weeks ago, one of the macho construction workers was being unusually nice to my co-worker and he even invited him to his farm to shoot skeet or something...is that even a thing, or did I just make that up?  My co-worker gave the guy his number, but then after they left he turned to me with second thoughts, wondering if that was weird.  Meh. Whatevs.

The next night, my co-worker was all: 'I need to talk to you. Something happened last night after I locked up.  Remember those construction guys who always come in?  Well, the one who invited me to his farm was waiting for me by my motorcycle after I locked up.  He was being all nice and creepy and showing me pictures of his farm on his phone.  Do you think he invited me to his farm to kill me?'  I could tell that he was joking, but still freaked out.  Apparently there was an 'elbow-grab' during some part of their conversation the previous night.  He was all - 'maybe you could walk me to my motorcycle after close tonight..haha?' But kind of serious.

When the construction guys came in later for their nightly coffees, my co-worker high-tailed it to the back-room, having previously given me instructions to feel the situation out.  The guys and I were chatting while I was making their drinks, and the one asked me where my partner in crime was?  'Oh, just doing some dishes in the back,' I replied.  He turns to his friend and goes, 'I was totally effing with him last night!  It was hilarious.  I waited for him by his bike after he locked up and he was completely freaked out.  He's probably hiding from me.  Punk.'

Okay.  Funny-ish.  Boy-humor, maybe?  I don't get it?  But still, maybe not a bad idea to institute some sort of 'make sure everyone makes it safely into their cars after we get out of there at midnight' rule. Just in case.

Especially since this happened last week:

It was a slow night, and I was minding my own business working at the bar, while this other girl was on register.  All of a sudden, I was disrupted from my drink-making-zen-rhythm by:

'You're a vegetarian, aren't you?'

....confused...open-mouthed...blank stare...oh SHOOOOT, those espresso shots are expiring while I'm trying to figure out how this weirdo I've never seen before knows that I prefer meals of the non-animal-variety.

'I can tell because of your body-type.'

....Anddd there's my answer.  My body-type.  Of course.  It's only covered by my baggy collared shirt and this super-cool apron.  But, why not?

I quickly prepare dude-who-thinks-it's-appropriate-to-comment-on-his-barista's-body-type's beverage and hand it off, hoping to sneak away to the back ASAP.  Except for he decides to spark up a twenty-minute conversation (...slow night) that leads us on a scintillating journey from the three most recent items he's crossed off his bucket-list all the way over to Roth IRA's...?

It was realllllly weird.  And officially, my creepiest customer-intereation to date.

Anyways dudes, in case there was ever any shadow of a doubt, waiting for a male barista that you've known for years by his bike after close to 'mess with him': funny(ish).  Citing your female barista's body as a conversation-opener: creepy.

Till next time,

Lise

The Nighttime Regulars

So, I typically work the closing shift which has its pros and its cons:

Pro: I don't have to work with the psycho shift-supervisor who almost invariably works opening shifts.  This is reason enough for me to favor closing shifts, yo!
Con: My store stays open till 11:00 pm on weekdays and 11:30 (!!!) on Saturdays (...10:30 on Sundays), so I can't ever watch Vampire Diaries at its normal time. Eff.
Pro: I start work at 3:00.
Con: I can't sleep-in past 8:00 am. Ever. Nuts.
Pro: Most of the nighttime customers are stinkin' awesome!

I like my nighttime regulars a lot.  There's the guy who orders an average of 5 venti nonfat upside-down caramel macchiatos a night. Caffeine much?  There's the guy who orders a grande whole milk earl grey latte and talks to me for a few minutes as he adds the perfect combination of sweeteners and powders - a veritable chemistry lab.  There's the most adorable couple in the world who have found the secret to making their marriage work: nightly trips to their neighborhood coffee shop for a decaf solo macchiato, a tall latte, conversation, and adorableness.  There are the two 'platonic' besties who come in every night for coffee and work on their laptops, even though you can totally tell that this time spent next to each other 'working' and chatting it up is the highlight of their days.  There's that strange old couple who comes in with the most specific order of beverages and food items every.day. And as much as they're a tad frustrating, I love the predictable rhythm they bring to my night.  All of these people with their same orders night-in and night-out bring a steadiness that I find myself craving for my life on a grander scale these days.

I mentioned that I'm barista-ing while searching for other employment: my vocation, my 'calling' if you will.  Last year, I served as an AmeriCorps volunteer with an amazing non-profit organization.  I was given a ton of responsibility, I loved what I did, and it made me feel good and useful.  Since my term of service ended, I've rejoined the leagues of recent-college-grads in job hunt world.  Anyone who's searching for a job right now should be able to empathize with the feeling of a complete lack of control in this arena, just as I've experienced for the past several months now.  Every resume that I send out and get no response back from is another organization who, for some reason or another, I am not right (good enough) for.

I know that in this economy, it's incredibly difficult to find a job, and I am so thankful that I have the coffee shop because it pays the rent in the meantime, while giving me the flexibility to look for something that I truly want to do.  So many people don't have this luxury.

I'm also thankful for my lovely nighttime regulars who, through their steadiness and predictability, have leant me some of that stability that's currently missing from other areas of my life.

Anywho, till next time,

Lise

The Coffee Shop Theory

So...I'm a barista at a major coffee conglomerate (that shall remain nameless due to the repercussions felt by former-barista/creator of The Starbucks Rant Song, for giving the world an all-too-honest glimpse of everything that goes into getting you that 'doubletallnofoamfourpump140degreevanilla' mouthful of a beverage).

In any case, this blog isn't about ripping on my current employer or the patrons of my shop.  True, this stint as a barista that I currently find myself in the middle of wasn't exactly part of my life plan; but alas, I have rent to pay.

This blog is about life. Mine and the lives of all of those who walk through the doors of our shop: to caffeinate on their ways into work, during their lunch breaks, and again on their ways home; to awkwardly meet up with that guy from eharmony who was most definitely being generous when he wrote 5'7" on his profile; to just sit by themselves with a tall coffee at that same table every evening, contentedly taking in the social buzzing all around.

In the few short months that I've been serving you lattes, I've seen you, humanity, at your best and at your worst.  This has lead to the beginnings of something I'll just call 'The Coffee Shop Theory' (clever, I know...but pouring beverages all day isn't quite as intellectually stimulating as you might have guessed. Go figure).

The theory, which at present is in its simplest of forms but shall eventually grow to include sub-points, addendums, annotations, and the like, goes something like this:

1. There are always going to be three (plus or minus two) glorious, wonderful, kind, and good customers who will grace your shop with their presence during the course of your shift.   
1. These kind souls can be recognized initially by their eye-contact and smiles, but you know you've really found one of them because they see you as an actual person (who just happens to be pouring them their beverage).
1. It's just kind of nice, every once in a while, to feel that your worth as a human doesn't depend on your ability to make a cappuccino. 
2. They let you into their lives; you let them into yours. It's a beautiful thing.
2. For these several amazing customers you serve during your shift, you will undoubtedly have to endure the throngs of average patrons for whom we baristas hardly register at all (the lattes just come from the magical latte-fairies of Espresso Island. Duh.) 
1.  But it's like, whatevs. 
3. It's that final group that you have to worry about.  There's always one per shift (oh, and if you escape a shift without an encounter with your allotted due, then just wait till the next time you work - they're savin' em up for ya!) who will treat you like your the dumbest person alive, plus you just kicked his puppy.  
1. I've had a couple encounters with some real gems from this last category, but the tears have yet to officially spill over (knock on wood...)

I guess that this is how life is in general.  It just so happens that when you're serving hundreds of cups of coffee a day, the trends are a bit more noticeable.

Well dudes, this is the basic framework for my little Coffee Shop Theory.  Stay tuned for new insights, some shout-outs to those 'Category 1 Customers,' and some....the opposite of shout-outs (?) to those 'Category 3 Customers.'

Have a Grande. (vomit...did I just say that?)