(Practically) 127 hours (of serving coffee)

I’m writing this during my measly break from my second 14 hour shift in a row. And my god, do I need to vent (more). So, I’m me; you’re the worst customer in the world. Right. Here we go.

When I ask if you would like your coffee in the shop or to take away, please god stop replying that, well, you’d like to have it here but in a take away cup, har har, like that’s some kind of radical life choice. You are not thinking outside the box.

Also, you are not special just because I remembered your order. I remember all the orders, so stop it with the insincerely self-deprecating oh-I-must-be-one-of-the-most-regular-customers laugh. You’re not.

Another thing you’ve got to stop doing is telling stupid stories about how much you need to use the bathroom/have lots of change and your purse is so heavy/are so tired and just can’t function without an extra shot in your coffee today giggle giggle shut up.

Next thing. Don’t order something and then immediately ask how much it is, before I could conceivably have told you. I PROMISE I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN THAT PART OF THE PROCESS.

And while I’m yelling, WHY ARE YOU ASKING IF THIS SKINNY LATTE IS YOURS? You ordered a skinny latte and then I said “skinny latte” in a loud voice while holding this very one and there is no one else around?!?!

The bathroom. Christ alive, the bathroom. If you’ve just walked in off the street and you need to go, that’s fine; just ask. Do not: walk straight past me and ignore me when I say hello, for I am the keeper of the entry code, and I will not give it to you. Also do not: swear blind that you come in here all the time, you promise. What, do you think I’ve never been here, my workplace, before? I know all the customers who come here all the time. Liars don’t get the code.

Finally, these are the customers who are my friends:

• Fiona and Peter,
• Rich,
• cappuccino man from the weekends,
• that cute blond Australian guy,
• the lady with the two golden retrievers who gave me a hug one time when I was stressed.

If you are not one of these people (and especially if you are that Spanish lady with all the kids, or the weird soy milk woman), remember that I give special treatment at my convenience. Stop being so damn friendly.

Aaaand I feel so much better now. Thanks.

True story!

They say you should write what you know. Accordingly, when I was a student, I wrote about literary theory and academic grandiloquence, because this was what I encountered every day.

But alas, I am no longer a student, and have ceased seeing everything in terms of a dialectic which must be blogged about in a moderately amusing way. And alack, none of my education seems to have qualified me for an occupation which would otherwise inspire my writing. No, these days, I am (still) a barista, heaven help me. And not only have I stopped learning anything new, every cappuccino seems to drain me of the knowledge I spent so much money to obtain.

But don’t despair! I have at length hit upon a subject which I know inside out: the horrible things customers do in coffee shops. I’m aware I’ve broached this topic before, but I’m confident I can squeeze a few hundred more words from it, which is the main thing. So, imagine you are the type of (snobby, Tory, Kensington-based) coffee-drinker I serve on a daily basis. If you want your barista to be unfailingly nice to you, here is a list of things you should never do.

Number 1: Don’t tell her that it doesn’t take a genius to do her job. Just be content that you are more successful than she is. No need to rub it in. It doesn’t take a genius to work it out.

Number 2: If you bring children with you, keep them quiet. At least apologise if one of them vomits. Definitely don’t expect your barista to keep an eye on them while you pop to the shops. The above points also apply to the old and senile.

Number 3: Please don’t assume that because your barista is the only British member of staff, she will agree with your racist rants about her Polish and Slovakian colleagues. She is not a pushover, and she will ask you to leave. And then throw away the Daily Mail you leave behind.

Number 4: Regular customers: sometimes, your barista just wants to make your coffee and send you on your way, without having the usual conversation about your book/holiday/baby. Don’t take it personally, and next time you come in, please don’t passive-aggressively change your usual order after she’s already made it just to punish her.

Number 5: Please notice that there is a bin in the bathroom. So don’t put used toilet paper on the floor, or Burger King wrappers down the toilet. Correspondingly, there is also a toilet in the bathroom, so don’t shit in the bin.

A musing about life…

Why isn’t my life more like a movie? I’d be cast as the cool, quirky one because I have short hair and a tattoo. It would be the story of three friends living together in London and trying to get their lives together after graduation. They’d have to take a variety of underpaid jobs, and hilarity would ensue. Followed, of course, by fairy tale endings for all.

For example, if I have to work in a coffee shop, why haven’t I been asked out yet by a cute regular customer? You know who you are, cappuccino man and guy-from-the-estate-agent-over-the-road. And why has the editor of a national newspaper not taken a liking to me based on my superior milk-frothing technique and deduced that I would make an excellent tennis correspondent?

Come on, life, get it together.

A cappuccino? Would you like a large one?

“I return from barista training with the absolute conviction that I do not want to spend my life making coffee.  Unfortunately, making a good soy latte macchiato with half a shot may be the only concrete skill I have, so it looks like I might be doomed to dealing with these problems for a few years yet:

1/ A lot of coffee shop customers (particularly in Notting Hill, which is where I work), seem to consider the people who provide them with their daily coffee to be a subspecies.  Obviously, if I work in a coffee place, I must have made a few wrong turns in my life, right? So obviously, it follows that they have the right to treat me as a servant.  Please, smile at your barista, and thank them when they hand you your change.  Reciprocate when they ask you how you are.  They’ll probably appreciate it so much they’ll give you an extra stamp on your loyalty card.

2/ People genuinely complain if they don’t have a leaf shape in the foam of their latte.

3/ “A cappuccino?   To drink in or take away?  Would you like a large one?  Anything to eat with that?  Maybe a croissant or a mini mince pie?  Do you have a loyalty card?  Would you like to take one?”.  Try repeating that 200 times a day.

4/ The people who take 40 minutes to order are always the ones who complain at having to queue.  In the words of the great Dr Perry Cox, “if someone is standing in front of me in line at the coffee shop and can’t decide what they want in the half hour it took to get to the register then I should be allowed to kill them”.  Again, imagine getting that feeling 200 times a day.”

Or thus I was planning to begin this entry, before I spent an hour slogging halfway across a malfunctioning London transport system to said barista training only to discover that I was the only person who hadn’t been told it was cancelled.   But I’m not one to let such structural concerns stop me banging on about something, or making the tenuous link to the recent tuition fees debate (again!).

I do not, in fact, work in a coffee place because of all the wrong turns I have made in my life, but because I’m a student and it is no longer possible to study without also working part time.  However, and I never thought I would say this, I am lucky to have only had to pay top-up fees.   My sister, who also works in a coffee place, may not be so lucky.  Will she spend her university days serving coffee to people who took full advantage of their free university education to get comfortable jobs and not pay tax?  People who have decided it’s her job to get us out of the economic mess they initiated when she was only 14?  And if she decides she can’t afford £27,000 to study musical theatre, we will have lost an extremely talented singer and actress, and gained another coffee place employee.  Worth it?