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