She hardly ever works on the floor, which to be honest is probably a good thing because when she does I want to shoot myself, twice, in the face. She doesn’t know how to bar, she’s incredibly slow, and what’s worse is that she thinks she knows more than every other barista on the floor when she hasn’t the slightest clue how to work in food with other people in a fast-paced setting.
Her back-of-house management is atrocious. Her schedules take forever and still suck. We are required by law to have at least eight hours in between shifts. This may seem like an odd requirement for most jobs, but when you get scheduled to close the store with a shift from 5:00 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. on Friday night and then scheduled to open the store at 4:30 a.m. the next morning, you can see why the law is necessary. Sarah breaks this law at least twice a week. Most of the time we’re able to switch things around, but almost everyone has had the misfortune of having to close then open. We call them clopens and we hate them. There is only one person at our store who has never had to clopen. Surprise, surprise, it’s Sarah.
When I got to work today, all these wonderful traits of hers were floating through my mind as I struggled to keep civil during our “conversation”.
“Tall latte for Susan! Short decaf misto for Bob!”
“Greetings, how may I service you?”
“Bruce! Buddy! What are you doing in town? Hey Liz, I’ll pay for his drink okay.”
“You don’t have to—”
Bro, I insist.”
“Seriously? You’re out of blueberry muffins again?”
“I’m sorry sir, you see, the PTA just mobbed through here thirty minutes ago and cleaned us out. They’re all the rage.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“Yes it is, because that is what happened last time and every other Tuesday for the last six months.”
“Then why don’t you order more then?!”
The Cow sits across from me holding a notepad and a filled-out form in-triplicate, a “Corrective Action”. This is the first time in my six years of working here that I have ever received one.
“Jason. Do you know why we’re having this conversation?”
“Yes Sarah, I do.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“Yes Sarah, I could.”
“Jason. You’re trying to make this harder than it needs to be.”
“Sarah. Why do I need to tell you what you already know?”
She sighs and replies, “Because it is important that you understand what happened and what it means. If all I do is tell you what you’re doing wrong and never check for understanding, how are you going to grow and learn from your mistakes?”
I’m more than a little shocked that she was able to throw all those words together into any semblance of meaning. There is no way that she came up with that on her own. Someone had to have force-fed her that. I doubt she has a high enough reading level to have read it and retained it.
“Jason?”
Fighting an urge to really unload on her with a barrage of scathing critique for her own performance, I sigh, roll my eyes and reply, “We’re having this ‘conversation’ because I was disrespectful to you yesterday before I started my shift and was subsequently sent home.”
Looking at me with disappointment she says, “Yeah, well that’s one way to put it. Another way would have been to humbly acknowledge your actions and show a little remorse. Instead, you’ve demonstrated that your attitude is still in need of changing. If you’d have shown me that you were sorry, I would have torn this up and just given you a verbal warning. But I can see that you need a more substantial consequence. Hopefully this will bring about a change in attitude. If we have to have this conversation again, it’ll be a final written corrective action.”
Handing me the form she continues, “There is a section there for you to write whatever comments you feel like. One copy is yours, one goes into your file and another is sent to Seattle, so think clearly before you put something down. I also need you to sign and date the bottom.”
My blood would be boiling if I weren’t so stunned by how—and I cannot believe I’m using this word—smart Sarah sounds. I have never heard her sound like anything other than an idiot. Her ignorance is usually astounding, as if she never went to school. I once heard her tell Jeb that Hawaii wasn’t part of the United States, and she didn’t mean not part of the continental United States, she said it was a territory like Guam. And she wasn’t swayed from this moronic stance until Jeb pulled up proof on his smart phone.
“Here’s a pen,” she says as she hands me one.
Shaking off my confusion, I fill out the Employee Comments section and scribble my signature at the bottom. “Anything else?”
“Do you need to take a break before you start?”
And being considerate? Seriously, am I in Bizzaro World? “Will it count as one of my tens?” This is an important question to ask as a smoker.
“No, you’ll get your regular breaks as usual. Jason, I want you to really try to make an effort here. We don’t have to get along like best buds, but we do have to work together and we need to treat each other with respect, okay?”
Getting up and walking away I reply, “Yeah, sure thing boss.”
I slide in next to Elena on the bar to quickly make myself a drink.
“How’d it go?” she asks.
Pumping six squirts of concentrated chai tea mix into my large cup I reply, “Oh, just swell. Got written up, but hey, I get to take an extra break right now and I just got here. So there’s a win.”
She calls out a couple of drinks while I’m pouring milk into my cup and says to me, “Hey, you wanna grab a drink tonight and vent a little?”
It’s been a long time since I’ve hung out with anyone from here outside of work and Elena always give me the best advice so I gladly respond, “Definitely. That would be awesome. Where do you want to go?”
“Tall caramel mocha with extra whip cream for Lance!”
“Hello. Can I get a doppio espresso please? And, and, and a vanilla scone?”
Elena’s putting whip cream on top of an iced white chocolate mocha when she presses down on the handle a little too quickly, causing a little explosion that spackles the front of her apron with whip cream. “Uhg! Wonderful. I don’t know Jason. I’ll think about it later.”
Putting ice into my lovely chai lattte, I’m about to reply when—
SMACK! Slap, slap, slap, slap.
I turn around and Doppio Dave is walking over to touch the door. Elena grabs his cup and immediately starts pulling his shots and says, “Really Jeb?! You couldn’t have warned us he was here? I just about dropped a drink.”
Jeb is bagging a pastry and replies sheepishly, “I’m sorry, he asked for a scone.”
“A scone, so what?” I reply.
“He never gets anything other than a doppio! It threw me off.”
“Doppio Espresso for Dave!”
“Decaf triple grande soy with whip white chocolate mocha for Jesse!”
Sarah walks out, sees Dave and says, “Oh, it’s just Dave. Jeb, you can take your ten. I’ll slide for you. Do a spin first please.”
Before Jeb can follow me and try to ruin my extra break, I make a bee-line for the door. My cell rings as I’m leaving the store.
“Hey Rachael, just in time, I’m taking a break.”
“Oh you’re here? I just parked. Can you meet me by the stairs next to the long escalator?”
“Yeah, I’m almost there now.”
“Okay, see you in a sec.”
Making my way up the stairs, I’m excited to see her. She’s been sick for the last week. I’m also feeling a little guilty. I can’t stop thinking about the Flower Girl even though I doubt I’ll ever see her again after reading her letter. But before I can get too consumed, I spot Rachael walking over.
“Hey there! How’ve you been? Haven’t seen you in a while,” I say as she walks up and gives me a hug.
She looks up at me, huge circles unde
r her eyes and says weakly, “Can we sit down? There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
We walk over to a bench by the stairwell. Rachael has a coughing fit as we sit down, holding a red-stained tissue to her mouth.
“Are you okay?”
Exhaustion softens her voice as she says, “That’s what I wanted to talk about. I’m glad you’re here today. I came down to get the last of my things from work.”
“What? Why?”
“I’m taking a leave of absence.”
My stomach starts to twist itself into knots as a bad premonition begins to form.
“You know how I haven’t been feeling well lately?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“I’ve also been feeling fatigued for a couple of months now. I started coughing up blood last week and…” she trails off, looking down. Her shoulders start to shake as she tries to hold back tears. I want to comfort her, to put my arm around her shoulder and hold her close, but I’m immobilized with fear for what I think she’s trying to tell me.
She takes a deep breath, steadying herself and says, “Jason, I went to the doctor and had some tests done.”
I’m holding my breath while she looks me in the eye. “And?”
“I have lung cancer.”
Her eyes are wide open, scared and vulnerable as she looks at me. I can’t move. The world around me disappears, replaced by a strong humming sound closing in around my head. “What stage?” I ask, the words escaping from my lips unthinkingly.
Lips quivering and tears welling up in her eyes, she whispers, “Stage 4.”
Frighteningly familiar images of hospital hallways, medical machines with coils of cords, shoot through my mind. A memory of the antiseptic smell of the hospital and the odor of cold sweat and medicine replacing a once robust scent of aftershave and a subtle cologne, surges out of a locked away past.
I stand up before these memories can overwhelm me and Rachael pleads, “Jason?”
I can’t look at her. I can’t be near her.
“Jason?” she cries.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t—I can’t, I have to go. I’m so sorry!”
Running away as fast as I can, her cries and sobs of disbelief follow me, “Where are you going?! Jason, come back!” Her pain echoes off the walls and down the stairs, chasing after me. Faster and faster I run, trying to outrun my memories and get away from the sadness and the pain.
Bitter Beans
I’m bitter, extremely so. Like old stale coffee beans that have been roasted too long, ground too fine, brewed with not enough water, and left out until cold. But I’m more than just a bitter bean. Hell, coffee beans aren’t even really beans. They come from the inside of cherries. The whole process of how your cup of coffee is born is pretty remarkable and strangely brutal. It’s truly astonishing that the process was discovered at all.
To start, a tree—that can only grow between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn—produces cherries that must ripen to the point where they fall off the branch. Once those cherries are harvested, they must be pulped away until only the seed (coffee bean) remains. That seed must be dried in the sun until it is a pale shade of green similar to that of lima beans. After the green beans are dried they are roasted until they pop, much like popcorn. But unlike popcorn, coffee beans can be roasted until they pop twice.
Beans from different parts of the world have different ideal roasting times. Latin American beans are generally roasted lightly while Indonesian beans taste better after longer roasts. But regardless of where the bean comes from, after it is roasted it finally achieves that rich brown color and size that we come to recognize as the source for our drug of choice.
The rest of the journey from bean to cup has a variety of different paths offering a huge catalog of customizable consumption. The bean’s journey is arduous and not all beans make it. A violent render from the protective womb of the cherry, left out to dry among the millions of other suffering beans, thrown into the vat and blasted with heat until cracking and popping not once but twice and finally ground down into bits, drowned in scalding hot water, drained of its last remaining substance and discarded into a heap of other spent grinds.
This journey is similar to that of the barista. When you start, you have no idea what you are signing up for. You’re a green bean ready to take on the world and the next thing you know, you’re thrown into the fire. Regular customers look at you with a skeptical look; they’ve seen other new baristas and they know that green beans make shitty coffee, usually very slowly. They are not sympathetic to the fact that you know nothing about coffee or that everything you are doing is new and different from anything you’ve ever done. They see you as a hold-up to their morning routine, the reason they’ll be giving to their boss for being late.
The heat from their glares will start to make you sweat and will slowly roast your green bean self. Weeks will go by while you struggle to become competent and they continue to hope you give up and quit so their routine goes back to normal. If you’re an exceptional bean this first roasting will pop you quickly and you’ll be like all other loved delicious brown beans producing great coffee. And hopefully you’ll survive the daily roasting for a long, long time before you pop the second time.
But after your second pop, like all coffee left to roast too long, you’ll begin to become bitter. Nobody likes a bitter bean. And when it comes to bitter beans, I might just be the bitterest bean of all.
The roasting I received today came from more than just my store. Life itself is burning me and torching everything around me. I ran away from Rachael, stranding her alone in a sea of pain and uncertainty. It was the most completely selfish and horrific thing I have ever done. But I can’t be there for her because I know what it costs. I’ve paid that price before.
I ran all the way home and I’ve been sitting on the bed for the last two hours, watching my phone ring. Rachael called me twice. The store called me three times. Elena called me and texted me. So did my mother. Her text read, “Baby, call me back please. Rachael called me. I love you.” I can’t think about it anymore. Lying back, staring at the ceiling, my mind is numb and thoughtless for a long time before sleep finally takes me.
***
My phone rings, waking me. The windows tell me that night has fallen and my heart reminds me of why I sought sleep’s embrace. The ringing keeps on going, the screen showing me Elena’s smiling face as the reason. Without thinking, I answer it and put her on speaker-phone. “Hello.”
“Oh my god Jason, are you okay? What happened to you today?”
“Nothing, I just had to go.”
“Jason, come on. You left without saying anything. Sarah was pissed. Something had to have happened.”
“Look, I don’t want to talk about it. I just had to go okay?” The desperation in my voice echoes off the walls and threatens to overwhelm me.
“Okay, okay. Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” I lie.
A silence fills the air for a little while before she finally says, “Did you still want to grab a drink tonight?”
I don’t. I don’t want to do anything. I want to sit in silence and close my eyes and not think about anything.
“Jason?” she asks quietly.
“Sorry. That sounds great. Where do you want to go?”
***
I’m staring into my beer while Elena shares a laugh with Duncan and Jeb. Their eyes have been on me all night, making sure I’m not about to leave. They don’t have to worry though because there’s nowhere I want to be. Elena didn’t tell me she had invited Duncan and Jeb along, but I’m glad they’re here so I don’t have to actually talk.
“Seriously though, I almost impulsively quit all the time,” says Jeb. “Just the other day, I was driving down here looking for a parking spot—”
Duncan interrupts, “What? You park on the street? Why don’t you park in the mall parking garage? You get three hours free.”
&n
bsp; “Because I don’t want to spend my breaks moving my car in and out of the garage, I want to relax on my break.”
“Yeah, but you could just buy a parking pass for the day. It has to be cheaper than what you’re feeding the meter.”
Elena chimes in, “There’s streets with free parking down by Thirteenth and Market, over by City College.”
“Exactly. Anyway, like I was saying. I was looking for parking—on Thirteenth actually—and couldn’t find shit. And I was like, man fuck this, if I don’t find a spot I’m just going home. I’ll call Sarah and tell her I quit. I was ready too, getting excited about it almost. And then I found a spot. I’ve never been so disappointed to find a parking spot in my life.”
They’re laughing again, glancing at me with that same worried look in their eyes. I finish my beer and wave at the server with my empty glass, avoiding my fellow baristas questioning eyes. Duncan steps up to the plate to continue the work gripe.
“I know what you mean. Every day I have to work, I have to give myself a pep-talk or I won’t make it in,” he says.
Elena laughs. “What do you say to yourself?”
“It happens in the bathroom. I place my hands on the sink, look at my haggard self in the mirror and say, ‘Look. You can do this. It’s just eight and half hours. There will be shitty customers, but you can’t change that. There will also be some good ones. Hopefully Heidi comes in. Maybe she’ll finally give you her number. Today could be the day. But more importantly, you have to do this. You got rent to pay fool.’”
Normally I’d be laughing along with them, pulling out my own anecdotes and funny complaints, but they just feel trivial compared to what happened today. The worst is the downward spiral. I’ve no right to feel such self-pity; I’m not the one dying. Then the self-loathing kicks in, completely warranted and down and down I go.
The Dark Roast Page 15