The Art of Ending

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote:

"Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending."

I think I kinda suck at both.  It takes me a little while to become comfortable in a new environment: to form the close types of bonds with people and places that make life meaningful.  But then once that happens, I become incredibly attached and can't imagine a life before or after.

I think that Longfellow is talking about transitions.  So far in my life I've had several major transitions and handfuls of lesser ones: my family moved during the summer between eighth grade and high school, I moved away to Michigan for college, after college I came out to DC for AmeriCorps.  Since the conclusion of my AmeriCorps term of service, I've kind of felt like I've been swirling around in the transition from hell.

I'm here.
But the reason I came here has ended.
I'm working at a coffee shop while I'm waiting for my life to pick up it's natural trajectory again.

But like I said: I get attached.
Just this past week, there were two independent occasions in which I had to say 'goodbye' to awesome regulars who were leaving the area due to work changes.

Last night I said goodbye to one of the construction guys you may remember from this post.  As we said our goodbyes and gave each other our best wishes for the future, he embarrassingly drew attention to the fact that I was getting a little choked up.  But I can't help it when it comes to goodbyes!

During the summer after college and before I moved to DC, I worked as a live-in tutor in Athens for the richest family I'd ever met (they owned a bunch of crazy-nice hotels and some sort of steel-shipping conglomerate).  It basically sucked.  The 3, 5, and 7 year old girls I essentially worked for were mean, prada-wearing, screaming, spitting, hitting, brats who made me cry like every night.  The family had a household staff (of course...) consisting of a groundskeeper, 3 cooks/housekeepers, and a nanny, who'd all come from China to work there about 5 years back.  They were the only reason I survived the summer.

Lately, I've been thinking that perhaps God places certain people in our lives for prescribed periods of time because we simply need each other.  There were particularly difficult times during that summer where I felt like Haiyan, the girls' nanny, was in fact my nanny.  Haiyan spoke Chinese and Greek + a couple English phrases here and there.  I speak English.  But things like loneliness, hurt, culture-shock, and exhaustion are universal.  So is kindness.  Haiyan might've noticed one too many brats spit at me for trying to get her to do her homework, and so she'd bring me an ice cream cone.  I've never eaten so much ice cream in my life.

I hated Greece.  But that was one of the hardest goodbyes I've ever had to say.

Likewise, I can't wait say goodbye to this transition period that I'm in right now.  But, I've also grown attached to my coffee shop peeps, and saying goodbye (whenever that finally happens) will suck.  I have some of the girls that work at the shop over to my house to share a meal and chit-chat + a little harmless bitching about our 'favorite' customers about once a month.  I get choked up when my actual favorite customers move away.

I guess I don't really have anything profound to say about 'the art of ending' because I'm really bad at it myself.  The idea that people who were so important to certain periods of your life simply cannot be involved in the same way when those periods are over, doesn't sit well with me and probably never will.

But that's how transitions work.  And that's why they suck

But good thing it's an art-form, since I'll probably have a lifetime of big and small transitions with which to master!
   

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.

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.