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.

Eau de coffee

Students have homework, teachers grade papers, lawyers read statements and documents, but baristas take their work home in another form...smell...and it follows them everywhere they go.

After working a shift at the coffee shop, the smell lingers on your clothes, encompasses the strands of your hair, and even seeps into your pores. Sometimes I literally feel like I sweat beads of coffee. I am pretty self-conscious about this smell, especially if I know I will be going out after work. Changing out of my work clothes doesn't get rid of the smell, I have to shower or brave the world covered in a cloud of coffee. I usually apologize to my friends if I meet up with them straight after work. I find some solstice in acknowledging the fact that I smell like coffee. They would usually tell me that they couldn't really smell it unless they got close and sniffed my hair. This made me feel better.

My last semester of college, I began working the morning shift before class. This was a true test to my will power because it required me to sit in a room of a hundred people while coated in a film of coffee. I had finally accepted the fact that I probably noticed the smell more than the people around me.

I was wrong.

I was chatting with my friends before class as people were filtering in around us. A guy who usually sat by us came in and started to unpack his things. He then paused, to a big sniff, turned to us and disgustingly said, "GEEZ WHO HAD COFFEE FOR BREAKFAST TODAY?!" I should have been mortified by the fact that currently, I was a human glade plug in, emitting the smell of coffee unto the entire lecture hall. Instead, I looked at him, apologized, and started laughing as I explained to him that I had just come from work.

And then I've had the complete opposite reaction happen.

I had to leave work one day and go straight to the dentist's office because of an awful tooth infection. When I got in the chair, the dentist and the hygienist crinkled their noses.
"You smell like coffee."
"Ya I just came from work," I muttered. I was ready for them to ask me to leave for smelling of coffee.
"Do you work in a coffee shop?" they asked.
"Yeah..."
When I confirmed their suspicious, they started fawning over me like two cats who just discovered a bag of catnip.
"We LOVE coffee."
"I drink a latte every day.
"You smell so good."
Needless to say having two strange women smelling me was a pretty awkward experience. I felt that they were getting a caffeine buzz from the mere smell of coffee that was soaked into my clothes. I remained stuck in that dental chair for forty minutes with my mouth clamped open as the two of them discussed how necessary coffee is to their existence. I desperately hoped their caffeine buzz would wear off so I could relax, but I think my eau de coffee kept them kicking.

So I guess it's a lose-lose situation. Either someone will complain that I reek of coffee, or I will get attacked by coffee enthusiasts. Maybe I'll ask my manager to invest in a shower for our employee bathroom, or suffer the consequences by paying for me to seek counseling for the emotional distress I have faced over this matter.

I think I will start bottling the smell of coffee and sell it as a perfume. Then non-baristas could bask in the scent of their favorite latte. I can see it now:
"Good morning."
"Hi, can I get a chai tea latte?"
"Certainly, for only 29 cents more, would you also like me to mist you with a chai infused perfume?"
Hey I might be on to something here.

Until next time...thanks a latte!

Much Ado About Foam

Foam. It's the one little word that has plagued me during my existence as a barista.

In order to make a latte, you must steam milk. You can make the milk pretty foamy by barely pulling the steam wand out of the steaming milk. This is called aerating and it must be done at least once when heating the milk. In order to make a cappuccino, you would aerate the milk for a longer period of time. The only difference between a latte and a cappuccino is the amount of foam. On the foam spectrum, cappuccinos are more foamy,while lattes are mostly milk, topped with an inch of foam. Some people are very particular about the amount of foam on their drink and it can be quite frustrating at times.

Almost every latte will have some foam. It's inevitable, because you have to put some air into the milk when steaming it. People will come in and order a latte with no foam and will literally watch and make sure I get every single last bubble off the top of their drink. When someone scrutinizes your actions for a bubble of foam, you wonder what that person must be like in social situations. Are they a person who micromanages everything everyone does? Or do they just feel a sense of power when they smell coffee? Foam is pretty much an area of personal preference. Unlike syrups or whipped cream, foam doesn't add any calories to your drink. It's just airy milk, yet some people really don't like the inch of foam we put on top.

The WORST combo you can ask for, in my opinion, is an extra hot no foam drink. When the milk gets steamed we have to aerate it at least once, but when we make it extra hot we have to aerate it a little more. Even if you don't aerate the drink, the milk will naturally become foamy once it hits the extra hot temperature of 180 degrees. I don't think people who order this combo understand what a pain it is to make. Half the time I have to let the milk sit for a minute and tap the pitcher with my spoon so that the foam can all rise to the top. It is so wasteful because I have to use more milk than needed.

Also, we use foam as a barrier because it prevents the drink from spilling out of the little hole in the lid. So technically, customers should thank me for preventing them from burning their hand as they carry their coffee back to the office. I consider the extra hot no foam combo to be lethal. Think about it...you ask me to heat your drink to a temperature so hot that the milk goes bad, and you ask me to take off the protective layer. I guess some people are risk takers, I just hope they takes risks outside the realm of their espresso drink.

I have had to remake many drinks because of foam. Usually it's because some one's cappuccino isn't light enough.When it comes to foam, there is so much variation. So, if a customer is really particular about how they want their drink to be, you could make it several times before you please them. I think about all of the drinks I've had to remake because of foam and it makes me angry, especially when I imagine the amount of drinks dumped out on a national scale.I hate being wasteful. There are starving people in the world and I have to waste milk to please people who have enough disposable income to spend $5 a day on coffee.

I've seen some people get really angry at baristas because they have too much or too little foam. I just have to laugh at the people that get so worked up over coffee. With all of the bad things that go on in the world, should you really let a little bit of foamy milk ruin your day? And if you do, I think you might have some deeper, unresolved issues that you should tend to.

Don't bite the hand that caffeinates you...

Coffee shops can get pretty busy in the morning. Sometimes this requires a barista to become sassy and suave in order to effectively get people in and out in a quick, and efficient fashion. Working at the espresso bar during a morning rush can be dangerous territory, but I have learned a few tricks to help keep things running. Also, there are a few things that you can do to help Lady Latte and the other baristas out when waiting for your drink.

I used to work in a coffee shop that serviced an entire skyscraper full of business executives, or "suits" as I like to call them. A "suit" is a person who works the classic 8-5 shift and who will do anything to get a break away from the desk that they spend most of their day chained to. A suit is a type of person who will wait in line for 20 minutes just for a cup of coffee, because it is probably more fun than the monotonous routine of their job. A suit usually comes down at the same time every weekday. A suit will sometimes conduct a majority of their business in our coffee shop. A suit can also be one of the most impatient breeds I've ever encountered, and boy are they hard to tame...

Our line would be out the door every weekday from 7-10 am. When you have this many suits in a concentrated time period, the coffee shop can manifest itself into a chaotic stampede of impatient and half asleep animals, ready to attack. When a suit has waited in line for 20 minutes, they are extra ornery. [Note: I don't blame some one for being upset at waiting so long for a cup of joe, but seriously, it's not my fault that Tammie Target decided to round up the whole floor before venturing down for some coffee.] Therefore, working at the espresso bar can be hazardous, especially when handing off drinks. Placing a drink on the hand off station is the equivalent to holding a piece of meat up to a pack of wild dogs. The suits begin to salivate and jump in anticipation at the mere sight of a cup.

Calling out the drink order over the sounds of weekend plans, business meeting agendas and office gossip, is a daunting task, and sometimes only the strongest and most adept baristas can survive. Upon calling out the drink, several suits will usually step forward to claim the prey. The suits don't listen to what the barista calls out, they move because instinct has told them that it is their turn to drink, even if the cup size I hand out isn't the same as what they ordered.
For instance, I would call out "medium white chocolate mocha."
A suit would grab the drink and block all others from approaching. "Tall latte?" it asks.
I respond a little louder, "Medium white chocolate mocha."
Again, "tall latte?"
"Medium white chocolate mocha."
The suits now cocks its head looks confused, "tall latte?"
"No...MEDIUM. WHITE. CHOCOLATE. MOCHA!"
Another suit finally turns away from its coworker and emerges from the pack to claim its white chocolate mocha. Success! (Kind of...)

In other instances a suit may not be trained enough to remember what they ordered in the amount of time it takes to pay and then pick up their drink and they might just grab any cup that sits on the bar for a minimal amount of time. When this happens, a suit who has been waiting awhile and has noticed that people who ordered after it are long gone, will say that they never got their drink. Many times you will ask them what they ordered, and you will remember making and handing off that drink. The funny thing is, that when some one takes a wrong drink, you only know because it is missed by the person who ordered it. Rarely, does someone come back and admit to taking the wrong drink. Or, even better, someone will come back and demand that their drink was made wrong, when the marking on the cup isn't even the drink they ordered. When this happens, it is best to apologize and offer to remake the drink, rather than question the suit's integrity, especially in front of other suits.

So, here's how you can survive the morning frenzy:
1) Try to remember what you ordered.
2) If you need to order a drink for a friend or coworker, write it down if it helps you remember.
3) If there is a cup sitting unclaimed on the hand of station, just ask the barista what it is. They should be happy to recall it rather than have to make another because someone took the wrong thing.
4) Pay attention to the barista when they call out drinks. Many times I have had to scream the drink name in order to get someone to snap out of a conversation.
5) If you have been waiting awhile for your drink, and others behind you have left, tell your barista. Chances are someone took your drink, or we could have forgotten to mark the cup. A good barista will make your drink a priority when the mistake is realized.
6) Try to be patient and polite with the barista if a mistake does occur. We are human, and we deserve to be treated as such, even when we make a mistake.

In turn, I promise to speak loudly and clearly and make sure everyone gets their coffee in a timely fashion.

I'm glad we had this talk.