The Case of the Stolen Bag

Man: "My bag was stolen. I left it on this chair when I went to pay for my drink and I came back and it was gone."
Barista: "Oh no, I'll call security."

3 security officers show up within minutes. The man begins questioning patrons and baristas to see if they saw anyone suspicious. He also tells the customers in line that his bag was stolen. Security apparently also called the police, who jumped on an excuse to come to a coffee shop because at least 2 cars showed up. Security tapes are pulled and checked. No one can figure out who took the bag. Police report filed.

Barista: "I'm so sorry your bag was stolen. Would a hot chocolate make you feel better?"
Man: "No thanks."

5 minutes later

Man: "So I started to get this nagging feeling, well a suspicion, that I didn't bring my bag up here. I went down to my car and sure enough there was my bag sitting on the backseat."

Wife: "We've been to so many Starbuckses (yes she said 'Starbuckses') It's hard to keep track of what we bring with us to each one."

You have got to be kidding me!

Sampling Queen

The holidays are upon us and tis the season to spread some cheer with free samples. That is if anyone will actually take the free samples.

Our store does a big push to sample out our holiday drinks in order to increase sales. The problem is that many people avoid a sampling barista like the plague. I really don't get it. Being a recent college grad, I still relish my campus days where I would seek out free things. The downtown business culture is a different breed that looks at samples as the enemy to their diet. Many times I would return to the counter with a full tray of samples, even if the store was hopping.

The sampler, or the "temptress," as one customer put it, is thought to be there to lure you away from your "healthy" sugar free non fat latte. I see it as an opportunity for you to satisfy your craving for holidays treats with a little bite sized treat. But alas, the holiday sampler must get ready to face a crowd of evil glances and people who will avoid eye contact with you as if you asking for a handout or trying to sell tham something.

NEWS FLASH!

I'm being forced to give you free stuff people! I'm not offended if you don't want one. I mean it's not like I baked the goods myself. But be gracious about it, don't make me feel like a jerk for trying to give you morsels of holiday goodness.

Last week I was forced into sampling out a pepperminty holiday drink. My delicious mini lattes were turned down by 20 people in a row and I was to the breaking point. I scanned the cafe for another sampling victim when I heard a voice from above.

"What you got there?"

I looked up to see none other than Scottie Pippen, former Chicago Bull, towering over me.

"It's a peppermint white mocha." Scottie Pippen! No way!

"Ahh let me have one of those!" I lift the tray up so he can grab one. "Thank you!"

It was nice to see someone be so appreciative of a free drink, let alone a former NBA great. Now I had some ammunition for my not-so-enthusiastic customers.

"Oh you don't want one of my samples? Yeah well what if I told you that Scottie Pippen just begged me for one of these babies a mere 5 minutes ago?"

Yes, that will get my samples flying off the tray like hot cakes.

Hats Off

Me: "I like your hat."
Customer: "Thanks."
Me: "I love hats."
Customer: "You like a man who wears his hat wit authority?"
Me: "Umm..."
Customer: "Cuz I always wear my hat wit authority. And, I speak my words with clarity."
Me: "I meant that I like to wear hats."

Thanksgiving Ass Kick!

Thanksgiving, a time to reflect on the things in your life that you are grateful for. Also, a time for thousands to flock to my coffee shop to quench their thirst with a cup o' joe.

You heard it...thousands of people...in a little under 3 hours. Our sales before noon rivaled that of a regular 6am-11pm business day.

How is this possible in a major city that becomes a ghost town come Sundays and major holidays? On the coldest day of the year thus far? When the hotel next door is only hosting 12 people?

Two words: Turkey Trot

A Turkey Trot is a 5k race that is held in cities all over the country. Runners are encouraged to come and burn of their Thanksgiving meal (before they even have a chance to smell it). The race happened to start and end across the street from my work and brought utter chaos to my little coffe shop.

Unbenounced to us, the race planners forgot to put bathrooms into their race configuration, making our single person bathroom the only public restroom in the area. At times the line to use the bathroom was longer than the line to buy a latte. Dozens crowded into our tiny little cafe to escape the bitter cold. Many didn't even order anything.

It was entertaining to see how thankful some were to see that we were open. Remember how I told you some people need their coffee to be productive? Well that dependency doesn't take a holiday, so neither can we baristas. Deep sighs of relief could be heard coming from the regular coffee drinkers at the back of the line as the sweet, comforting aroma of coffee slowly seeped into their nostrils.

Now I know many of you are DYING to know what I am thankful for this Thanksgiving. The truth is that I was thankful to be alive. Last Thanksgiving on my way home to eat dinner at my huge 30 person family gathering I was rear ended on the freeway. Next thing I knew, I was in the right lane facing backwards with a truck barreling down on me at 70 miles an hour. Still a year later, it is unclear to me how my car did not get hit by that truck. My car was hit a total of 3 times by 3 different cars, and only one car stopped to see if I was alright. I know that somebody was watching over me that day and a year later, I got goosebumps thinking about how the accident could have been much worse.

The memory of the accident was hard to escape that day. As I was restocking some essentials, my mind wandered back to the vision of that truck, and the feeling of fear and helplessness that came with it. My memory was interrupted by a customer at the register. "You know what I'm thankful for this year? I'm thankful that you guys are open and I don't have to go a day without my latte!"

I began to chuckle silently to myself because I realized I was also thankful that I wasn't that guy.

Behind Those Hazel Eyes

I first laid eyes on him during a normal afternoon rush. He ordered a tall decaf and followed his words with a soft awkward chuckle. He had an odd grin that was accompanied by eyes that constantly shifted from side to side, as if they were nervous to stay in one place for more than a fleeting moment. I would come to loathe those eyes.

Socially inept is the best way to describe him. He was the type of guy that was always trying too hard to fit in. Conversing with him was always an uncomfortable experience because of how his eyes grasped you and made you feel as though you were on display. His lack of social skills was apparent in his poorly timed and excessive laughter. He laughed as though his social acceptance depended on it. He even had a way of waving in a creepy manner. Every time he left the store he would make sure we saw him wave goodbye. He would place his right hand over his left shoulder and slowly roll his fingers as he walked away, leaving you with a lingering impression of his piercing eyes. Something was definitely off-putting and eerie about him, but we were never completely able to put our fingers on it, so we just brushed him off as another weird, yet harmless, coffee shop groupie.

We didn't know much about his life, but judging by the amount of time he spent in our little coffee shop, there wasn't much to it. We knew he was 23, and that he worked in a grocery store and as a wheel-chair pusher at the airport. Other than that, we only knew his life that existed inside the walls of our café.

He came in almost every night and busied himself for hours upon end by writing stories in his notebook. He always sat at the same table, in the same chair, watching, waiting for a moment to join in on a conversation. His eyes would dart between his notebook and any barista that approached the espresso machine. You could feel his eyes locked onto you, but he was always careful to look away when you handed off a drink. His sense of hearing was impeccable and he could overhear baristas' conversations from across the cafe and would chime in, especially if sports or movies were the topic of discussion. You could see his body shift any time a new customer approached the register, or baristas started talking. I always wondered just how much he overheard.

His notebook was an object of grandeur and mystery to many baristas in the downtown area. We would pass the time by imagining the types of stories he was writing. Some baristas thought he was simply jotting down what we talked about during our shifts. Knowing how perceptive his hearing was, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he did keep track of our conversations, as you always got the feeling that he was listening intently.

If you asked him what he was writing about, he would usually tell you he was writing a story about a losing football team that wound up winning the Superbowl. His depictions were usually fictitious accounts of current sporting events. But I wasn’t satisfied with his story summaries. I felt that there was more in that notebook than he was letting on. Getting my hands on that notebook would be the only way to know for sure.

He sat right next to one of our garbage cans, so whoever took out the trash was inevitably forced to have an awkward encounter with him. To be completely honest, even though he gave off a weird vibe, I still couldn’t help but pity him and his seemingly lonely existence. So, whenever I had to change the trash I would chat with him about the latest movie he saw and his job at the airport (for which he was given employee of the month honors). Also, talking to him gave me the opportunity to scan whatever page of his notebook he had opened. I never really saw anything on the pages to confirm my suspicions, but I just knew there had to be something else in that notebook. I know how invasive I must sound, but honestly I felt the need to find something in that notebook that would prove once and for all that he was a creep.

We did know for certain that he wrote one thing other than sports stories, he wrote rap songs. On Valentine’s Day he wrote a rap song and gave it to each of the female baristas. Once, I took a summer off from being a barista to pursue an internship, and when I returned I received my own customized rap song welcoming me back to the store. I hung it on my fridge for awhile because it provided me with a great conversation starter. [The letter is currently packed away somewhere so I have to recall it from memory, but when I find it I will be sure to post the song up word for word.] My all time favorite quote from the whole song was the last line, “like they said to that Kotter guy, welcome back.”

We had a restroom in our store that we kept locked. In order to use the bathroom, you had to ask us for a key. Sometimes when he went to the bathroom we would dare people to go look in his notebook. I think once I got about halfway to his table before guilt and fear made me turn back. He would use our bathroom for long periods of time, sometimes returning with beads of sweat dripping down his face. One of our male baristas would always joke about what he did in the bathroom, (I won’t say because I don’t want to be too vulgar), but anytime he mentioned it the rest of us squirmed because of the disgusting metal pictures we had to block from our minds. In a million years, I wouldn’t have thought it to be true, until one of our managers found porn in the bathroom. We never doubted for a second that it was him.

When I transferred to the store that I currently work at, I found that he was a frequent patron there as well. I swapped stories about him with my new coworkers and found that they were also baffled by his odd behavior. Slowly, over the course of this past summer, his behavior started to become weirder, as if that were possible.

One day he came up to the counter and ordered tea. My artsy female coworker asked him what he was writing about. He told her he was writing a story about baristas…naked baristas. I knew it! He then asked her if she slept in the nude. Now, up until this moment, he had never made a sexual comment to any barista, so it was quite shocking to hear this, but also rewarding because we finally had an incident to pinpoint why he was a creep.

I remember the last time I saw those eyes. It was a Sunday night and everyone had come in to do inventory. He was there, in his usual spot, and you could tell that he was thrilled by the commotion of having all of the baristas in the store at one time. He was showing all of us his new cell phone, the first one he’s ever owned. I was teamed up with a male barista and we were in charge of counting items in the area of the store that he was sitting in. I would count the items and my coworker would write them. I called out a number to my partner, no response. I looked and saw that he was behind the counter whispering to one of our supervisors. She came over and pulled me into the back room. The seriousness in her face scared me, as she is probably one of the most free spirited and easy going people I have ever worked with. I knew something was wrong.

“He took a picture of you with his camera phone. He took it while you were bending over counting the teas. He...he just hid it under his arm and snapped the photo. Your counting buddy saw him do it. Do you want me to talk to him?”

"Yes."

She discretely went and told him that it was against the store’s policy to take pictures in the store and that he needed to put his phone away, and that he should delete any pictures he may have taken with it.

Violated. Embarrassed. Angry. These words best describe how I felt in that moment. I know that I didn’t bring the incident on myself, but I felt degraded and humiliated thinking about it, especially because all of my coworkers were there and were all bound to find out.

After inventory, we decided to go grab a bite to eat, so three of us waited outside for others to finish. He came out of the store and walked right by us, but none of us dared to give him the time of day. He walked into the doorway that led to other businesses in our building. My supervisor ran out of our store and followed him through that doorway. She came back a minute later and explained herself.

"I didn’t feel like I had stood up for you enough earlier. So I went and told him that if myself or anyone else sees him with his phone out in our store again that we will ask him to leave and never come back. I’m so sorry I didn’t do it sooner.” She walked back inside and as we were discussing the incident he appeared through the doors.

Silence. My coworker tried to cover up the fact that we were talking about him by going on some hilarious rant about espresso. He walked over to us and paused for an uncomfortable 10 seconds before speaking. I refused to look at him.

“I’m sorry. (Awkward chortle) I mean...I’m…I’m…ah…really sorry guys.”

I feared that I would have to be the one to address him, but my coworker saved me.

“Don’t ever let it happen again.”

“I…I won’t.” His look of relief disappeared when none of us responded. “I really am sorry.”

I knew he was directing his apologies at me and I could feel his eyes locked onto me, but I kept my eyes focused on my coworkers. I could see him out of the corner of my eyes, but I REFUSED to let those eyes lock onto mine. It was a matter of survival for me. I was Harry Potter and he was the basilisk snake who could kill me with one look. I wasn't going to accept his apology. He didn't deserve it. The four of us stood there in silence for a full minute until he walked away. It’s been 3 months and he hasn’t showed his face in our store since.

I feel like a coward for not standing up for myself, but I am grateful to my coworkers who took action when I was rendered helpless. I had many things I wished that I would have said to him, but I couldn’t face those eyes. I thought back to how many times those eyes had been cast at me and other female baristas, and I finally realized what it was about those eyes that had perturbed me; they were a window to all of the inappropriate and devious thoughts that churned in his mind.

Who does that?

A few days ago there were two big concerts going on right by my store. Concerts are always going in any of the numerous theaters within walking distance of my work and many of the artists stay at the hotel next door. My store was giving away free song downloads as part of a promotion. It just so happened that one of the two artists who were in town was being featured as our song of the day and the other was the featured artist from the previous day. This happened by pure coincidence and led to a couple of rather interesting events.

One of the artists is a very famous and very successful British pop star. You could say she walks on broken glass from time to time. Several of her crazy British band mates came in over the course of the day. Her drummer was probably the most entertaining of the bunch. I asked him what he would like to drink and he responded in a very cheery manner, "One soy caramel latte, please."

"Would you like some caramel drizzle on your latte?" I asked, while being extra cautious to not accidentally slip into my fake British accent.

"Oh heavens no! That would be too naughty for me!"

Silence. I paused and did the first thing that came to my head. I laughed. I couldn't help it, the British accent and the cheeky disposition extracted a loud, ab shaping laughter from deep within my soul.

"What's this? Why are you laughing?"

Oh no! I had offended him! Quick save...quick save! I searched for a brilliant cover up, but all I could come up with was, "Nothing...it's just...you're...you're funny!"

He smiled, "Me? Funny?" Shew! Good save.

The cashier asked him if he would like a free song download card for the artist he worked with and he laughed, "Alright then."

"Will you do me a favor?" I asked. "Will you just go and give her that for me. I mean we've been laughing about this all morning and...I just think it'd be funny if you gave it to her."

"Oh she would LOVE this. I am definitely giving this to her. This is going to be fantastic." He walked around to the bar and continued to chat with me. (I was really digging the accent.) "So you think I'm funny? I'm really not that funny. You must have caught me on one of my more humorous days."

"Naughty latte? Seriously... do you know how funny that is? You haven't even had caffeine yet. I think you might just actually be funny. " We continued to chat while I made his drink. I handed him his "un-naughty" latte. (I guess you could call it a well behaved latte?) He walked through the glass doors and turned to flash me a huge smile, and shook his head before congregating with his band mates outside.

2 hours later...

Our store was completely empty and I was running the register (or reg as I like to call it). A young man and woman walked in. As they were ordering their drinks, I noticed them looking at the song download cards, so I told them they could take one. I saw a smile form beneath the woman's hat. That's when it hit me...she was the other artist whose song we were featuring.

It was Brandi Carlile in the flesh.

AWKWARD TURTLE!

Now, I had been joking all morning about how funny it would be if either of the musicians came into the store. I envisioned a witty transaction in which I addressed the hilarity of the situation: "Ok," I would say, "Can we just talk about how awkward it is that I just offered you a free song download of yourself? Who does that?"

Instead all I could muster up was, "So are you doing anything fun downtown today?" It was the question I always used to start up a conversation with customers when it is slow. I ended up chatting with the guy about their hometown and how my cousin is in a band out there. (Turns out he may have gone to school with one of their guitarists.) But I still feel as though I made a total idiot out of myself.

I bet she went back to her band and had a good laugh about how a barista offered her a free song download of herself and never realized it was her. Well I did know! I love her music and was on standby to be on the guest list of her sold out show. But I guess it would make a pretty good story if she ever gets interviewed by Conan O'Brien...

No I will not make out with you!

This entry was inspired by an article featured on the front page of The Onion:

Sources: Barista Not Actually Flirting With You

SAN FRANCISCO—Though she greets you every morning with a smile, sometimes chats with you, and makes sure the chocolate syrup is evenly...

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/sources_barista_not

Certain people make me extremely thankful for the counter that divides us.

I can't speak about being a barista without mentioning the fact that there are certain people who misinterpret our friendliness. I smile, I joke, I laugh, I converse... I also survive off of tips.

Now, I'm not saying that I fake my demeanor just to make some extra cash. I am a talkative and energetic person by nature. It's just that when I'm working behind the counter I step up my game a little. Being behind the counter can feel a bit like being on stage. There are always eyes on you, waiting, watching to see what you'll do next. The customers can hear you conversing with your fellow baristas, and if you perfect your inflection and timing, you become a regular comedy routine.

Let's face it, work would be really boring if I didn't joke with my customers. It would also make things a little awkward. It's like, "Umm, hi. I 've been making you a latte everyday for the last several months, but I'm just going to act like I've never seen you before." Great customer service focuses on making your patrons feel invited and welcome when they come to your establishment. Recognizing your customers makes them want to come back again and again. Also it might make them feel inclined to throw a buck in the tip jar.

Sometimes working behind the counter can feel more like being on display...

My store is dominated by female baristas and we have to deal with unwanted advances. It takes skill to balance being friendly with being flirtatious. Sometimes, no matter how careful you are, somebody is going to misinterpret your actions. Baristas have to be good at drawing boundaries.

We have a few cabbies that come in every night. One cabbie likes to flirt with the girls and ask them out. One night he told a fellow barista that he loved her. The following night she overheard him whispering to a friend in his language and saw them point to me. She called him out on it and he turned bright red and told her that he loved me. On one unusually slow night he came in and I was balancing a broom for fun. I asked him what he would give me if I could walk across the store while balancing a broom on one finger. He responded, "something that you've never had before." (AWKWARD!) Another night he came in and started asking me what I did in my free time. He started hinting at what a hard worker he was and how he would be a good provider. He started to tell me how beautiful I looked with my glasses on. Then he asked what I knew he was hinting at, "So do you have a boyfriend?"

Enter the pseudo boyfriend. Any single girl should always have a made up boyfriend so that you can get out of awkward situations like the one mentioned above. I always use my best guy friend because it is easier to talk about a person that exists. That way when you get advances at work you can politely decline by telling them you have a boyfriend. Some may call me a liar and scoff at the way I handle these situations, but it is the best solution I have come up with. I only use it to decline men who constantly come in and hit on me at work. It gets them off my case and makes them realize that I am not interested.

The pseudo boyfriend came in really handy when I had to deal with Dean, the 70 year old mentally challenged man who came in to our store everyday and wrote me letters. He wrote letters to all of the girls at one point or another. The letters were fine. They merely asked me how I was doing and told me what a beautiful person I was. He would write about his family and then tell me to say hi to my mom and dad, whom he had never met. Sometimes Dean would ask if it would be ok to take me out sometime. Once I told him that I had a boyfriend, he told me to tell him that he was really lucky to have such a beautiful girlfriend. The letters continued, but he never asked me out again. He did buy me a glow in the dark keychain with my name on it.

So, time for the moral of the story. Your barista may remember your drink every day. He/She may remember that you like extra caramel sauce, or an extra shot of vanilla in your coffee. We might even remember your difficult drink to a tee. Heck, we might even remember some obscure random fact that you told us a month ago. That doesn't mean that we want to go out with you. It means that we are good at our job.

I would like to thank The Onion for shedding some absurd light onto this matter.