Car Wash

(December 2024)

Good morning to all inhabitants of the world.

I sit here and look out of the window and drink my morning coffee. It was hard to get around this morning, as it is most winter mornings for me. I’m not exactly springing up out of bed full of energy and joy. It is much more like waking up from a hibernation, repeatedly, every morning. Slow and unwilling. I usually actually do want to get up and go do things in the world, but it feels so difficult to do that, when it’s grey and dark, and you’re cold. The gap between where my energy level needs to be and where it is is massive. But not so hard to bridge that gap, I have learned, with various techniques such as drinking copious amounts of coffee immediately upon waking and taking cold showers and using Luminette light visor to blast 10,000 lux of light into my eyeballs. I always love saying, “ten-thousand lux of light” because it sounds like such an incredible number. 10,000 lux baby. That’s what these Luminettes are pumping out into my retinas. A mini-sun.

I am writing because I really have nothing else to do. This is easy enough for me to do because I don’t have to go anywhere, and it doesn’t cost me any money, and is generally a good way for me to spend my time, and it makes me feel connected to people. Even though I’m kind of just talking to myself. It’s fun. And there is some good stuff I want to write about, that all happened just yesterday, particularly one episode, that was serendipitious, and will probably make you feel warm and fuzzy in your heart, so here it is.

I’m at Starbucks doing my duty to capitalism and the world, and it is something like 5:30 pm, where I have now served hundreds of guests and made hundreds of drinks, and am getting pretty worn out, because it takes a toll on you. Three pretty girls walk in, at this time there aren’t many people in the store and we’re kind of chillin’, the main hordes behind us. They come up to the register, and the first girl smiles and I say hi, and she says, “Do you have the sugar plum cheese danish?” No, sorry, unfortunately we don’t have any more of those. She says, “How about the cheese danish?” I think we have those, let me check. We do. She gets two of those, pays. Actually knows how to work the payment card reader machine, which is always nice, because it seems that 80% of people actually run into some kind of trouble with the machine, that requires me to intervene, which when you think about how we’re serving hundreds of customers a day, gets pretty tiring, to constantly have to make the same comments over and over and over about the same defects of the machine, and the main problems are that the text on the machine is too small, and people can’t read it without their glasses, and sometimes they don’t have glasses, or they don’t realize that there is a tip prompt occuring, which they wouldn’t because the machine doesn’t make any noise, and I’m learning that most machines ask for the tip after you pay, which makes sense to me, but our machine asks for the tip first, and does not beep or anything to tell you that it is first prompting you, so I pretty much have to tell everyone, as they put their card down on the machine and wait patiently or say, “Am I doing it right?” or “It seems like nothing’s happening.” I have to tell them that there is a tip prompt on the screen, and then be ready for whatever their reaction is to that. There is a third issue which has nothing to do with me or our machine in particular as much as that it seems that most people, even young people struggle to understand how to use the machine properly, and how to use their cards, regarding the prompt answering and the tapping and the swiping. I don’t really understand that because they act like they’re never used one of these machines before, and the way that people try to tap their cards or tap and then insert after they’ve failed the tap, or whatever they’re trying to do, it’s not that hard, in my opinion. I know they’re all different but they all tell you what to do, if you just follow the steps that are being given to you by the machine. But that does require you to slow down and read, and every machine is kind of different, so you can’t just do the same thing with every machine. I agree that that is annoying. Our machine is one of the most inferior ones, I noticed and commented to codename Stacy Hamilton (our fearless leader and General Manager) within the few three days of me working on POS (point of sale) at the Starbucks. I saw how every customer struggled through it and how awkward it was to use and immediately thought, this machine sucks, and we need a better one. Then I took a trip to Waffle House, and saw that that was absolutely the truth, because the Waffle House payment device blew our pathetic Cummins Station payment device completely out of the water, by having a large, bright screen that you could easily rotate to the customer, that was a touch screen, that beeped whenever a new screen that required an input popped up, and that had large, clear font. That’s the payment device we need, and that’s not the one we have. The other issue with our device then is that it isn’t a touch screen, and I have to say that so many times a day, after giving the customer a chance to try and figure it out for themselves, when they go to tap on the screen several times and realize nothing’s happening, and then the quick people see that there are tiny buttons below for selecting an option, and other people don’t, and they start hitting buttons randomly, or just don’t do anything, and I have to say, “Just push one of those buttons there.” Or, “Sorry, it’s not a touch screen.” And then have to make jokes about how it’s an inferior machine or how it really should be a touch screen or something like that, and they say, “Oh, they’re all different!” Or they apologize for not realizing that or something. None of this is the customer’s fault, I think it’s all the machine and the process, and it’s annoying, and I think about how much easier it would be if we could just pay in cash, and I would just get their money and we didn’t have to go through this whole rigamarole with the cards and the machines. Handling cash is much more fun for me too, because I get to do the math, and I get to touch money, and who doesn’t like to touch money? The customer also has to do more work of getting their cash out, and I have to do less work of telling them everything about how to use our inferior machine and why their card isn’t working, etc. I love it when people pay with cash.

Now, I will say that when people pay with the Starbucks app, it is amazing and the best thing they could do, because it’s so easy. All they have to do is scan their barcode, and it gives me their name, so I can say, “Thanks, _____!” And they almost always have enough money on their account to pay, and I just push a single button and the payment is handled. That is as easy as it gets, like magic. That’s better than cash. But then when they pay with the app, they don’t tip, because there is no way to tip with the app, as many kindhearted and generous Starbucks customers have mentioned, and when I talk to Stacy Hamilton about it, she says, “All I know is they’re working on it.” It must be very low on their priority list. “Their” being Starbucks. It’s not causing a critical failure of their app, so I’m sure it is. But the customers have been indignant about it, and moreso than I ever have been, which is cute. I have had multiple customers who have expressed outrage at not being able to tip us through the app, who are much.. I am looking for a specific word here, something like righteousness. Indignant is the right word I think, that they are indignant over them not being able to tip us, and they are upset at the unfairness of us not being able to receive their tips, and they’re so spirited about it that they even rile me up, and get me saying, “Hey, yeah, that isn’t right! You’re right! We should be getting more money!!” And then they leave, and I tell Stacy Hamilton to tell codename Michael (this is a running joke, because Michael is our incredibly passionate and enthusiastic Starbucks corporate man who comes around and makes sure we’re doing the things we’re supposed to be doing, and tells us how to fix the syrup pumps, that are devised through arcane pump technology, and that nobody else has the mechanical genius to figure out how to fix, and gives us suggestions on what to do better), I tell Stacy Hamilton to tell Michael that the customers want to tip us through the app, and he needs to fix that, and the joke is that because Michael is the Starbucks guy he can solve all of our problems and fix everything for us, so whenever we have a problem, tell Michael, but he actually has not been able to fix any of our problems, and notoriously does not fix any of our problems, and maybe it is not even his responsibility to fix any of our problems, but just pass them on to someone else, and so nothing gets fixed, but it’s fun to tell Stacy to tell Michael to solve our problems. Except this last time that I told Stacy Hamilton to tell Michael about letting customers tip us in the app, she was not happy to hear this again, and she angrily repeated that Michael has no way to fix these problems, and has nothing to do with solving these kinds of problems, and he already knows anyway, and stop asking her to ask Michael for help, and that “they’re working on it”.

That was a long tangent about the payment machine that the first of these three pretty girls had successfully navigated, but as you can see I have some thoughts about this machine and our payment process, being the POS (point of sale) king at our Cummins Station Starbucks. So the first girl got her cheese danish, after not being able to get the sugar plum cheese danish that she had really wanted, but she didn’t seem too disappointed, and the next girl stepped up, smiled at me, I said hi, and she said, “Hi. Do you have birthday cake pops?” No, unfortunately we don’t have birthday cake pops. The last time I had looked was earlier in the day, and all we had then were cookies and cream cake pops, and they don’t sell that fast, so I was confident then when I told her, “Sorry, we only have cookies and cream cake pops..” And she was so disappointed, and I tried to think of what to say to console her, and I said, “But you know, they’re all kind of the same..!” But as I said that, I knew it was a lie, because they’re not all kind of the same, they’re all very different, the Birthday Cake Pop, and the Snowman Cake Pop, and Chocolate Cake Pop, and the Cookies and Cream Cake Pop. They are all totally different, and she immediately called my bluff and said, “They’re not all the same!!!!” And I said, “No, you’re right. They’re not.” And she said, “I’ll get the cookies and cream cake pop.” So the last girl steps up and smiles, and I say, “And what would you like that we don’t have?” Because as you see, that I had disappointed the last two girls, of course this gal also would like something that we don’t have, but she asked for a cheese danish, and we did have that, except now that was three cheese danishes, and now I wasn’t sure we would have enough, but we would cross that bridge when we came to it. So they had all placed their orders, three cheese danishes and a cookies and cream cake pop, and I moved over to the food station to get it going, and found that we had exactly three cheese danishes, perfect, but to my horror, there were NO cake pops AT ALL. NONE.

Now, I was about to have a crisis. This pretty girl who I had so disappointed with not being able to get her her birthday cake pop, and settling on the cookies and cream cake pop, at least it was something, it was still a cake pop, but to now have to go back and tell her, “Sorry, turns out we just don’t have ANY cake pops AT ALL.”, I couldn’t do that. It was going to break my heart. So, with this in my mind, praying for a way out, I go to the back, prepared to hunt and scavenge up any cake pop I can possibly find. Even if frozen, I could make it work by heating it, maybe, but ideally there would be some kind of cake pop already thawed, on our thawing rack, and it just hadn’t been taken up into the food station, and that’s exactly what I found. On the top rack of the thawing rack, I found the most glorious thing I had ever wanted to see on this day, and it was one carton of birthday cake pops. One carton, containing three pink birthday cake pops. And then I was overjoyed, because not only did I not have to go back and tell her that we didn’t have any cake pops, but she was going to get the cake pop that she really wanted, the cake pop of her dreams, and you know when someone really wants something, it sucks when they can’t get it. When those girls really want their Pink Drink and we don’t have any Strawberry Acai for them, (this was one terrible day), they are devasted when they can’t get it. There’s nothing else that will be as good, you will only have to settle for something less, when you really have a craving for something in particular. I get it. So the fact that I could get her what she really wanted, instead of totally disappointing her again, was enormous. And then as I went back to the warming station, heated up and bagged the three cheese danishes, I had the brilliant idea to make the surprise even better, and I threw an extra cake pop in the bag just for fun, because I was feeling so joyful (don’t tell Stacy Hamilton), and when I handed the food to them I said, “Three cheese danishes and a cookies and cream cake pop.” Not revealing that I had in fact just given this girl TWO birthday cake pops, and then I walked back over to the food station and pretended to be busy with the clean up, and not stare, but I wanted to catch her reaction, so I gave it a few seconds, and then glanced over and saw her in the middle of opening the bag, and seeing the birthday cake pops inside, and she had the biggest smile on her face, like it was Christmas morning and she had just got the best Calico Critters or My Little Pony or keys to a new BMW. You could have taken a picture of her face right then and used it on those facial emotional recognition games, and it would have been the 100% perfect picture to represent abounding joy, her smile was that perfect. And I think because of how her reaction was reminding me of someone opening the best Christmas present ever, I shouted out, “Merry Christmas!” And I was happy, and they were happy.

That’s what it’s all about, right there. That is the joy of being a barista and working at Cummins Station Starbucks. Those are the kinds of moments you live for. And that’s one reason why I like the job, and like working with people in general. I can handle a day of six hours of nonstop action and grinding, to get one moment of giving a pretty girl the cake pop that she really wanted and making her smile.

There was more action than just this serendipitous cake pop event however, as every day contains so many small dramas and thrills. In a single day at Cummins Station Starbucks, there are hundreds, if not thousands of noteworthy events, on most days. It’s why I haven’t even written about it yet, because there is more content coming in than I can possibly handle, no human, no mortal can write about everything that happens that deserves to be written. In the first three weeks or two months of me working there, I would write down these legendary events, quips, interactions, events in my notes on my flip phone, and I would have paragraphs, every day, so many lines, and eventually I just had to quit, because it was too much, and unending. I will give you an example, more, of what a day is like, because yesterday was yet another rousing and jam-packed day, as you have now already seen by the little cake pop story, which is the most charming, but there are many more stories I can tell you even within that single day.

Car Wash gave Queen two Jim Beam shooters. Car Wash is an older man, that we are not sure if he’s homeless, although he has that quality that makes him at least fall in with that crowd, of being lost/displaced, and a little strange, but he’s not dirty or smelly, so he must have somewhere that he’s going to get cleaned up, and he doesn’t seem like he’s suffering all that much. He has a pleasant disposition, even though he’s kooky, and wears a santa hat, and shuffles around the store, sitting right next to Stacy Hamilton’s battlestation and drinking his drinks and bumming cigarettes off of other quirky customers that he befriends. Two days ago, he had asked for two cups of ice, and had gotten two coffee refills, and also wanted cups filled with milk on the side, and had a can of something that he had brought, so that at one point I looked over and saw that he had six cups of various drinks on his small round table, all right to the table that Stacy Hamilton worked at, and he was sitting there drinking them, like he was at home in his living room, and I had to tell that to Stacy, because she doesn’t like this guy, or anybody who just hangs out in the store and tries to talk to her and the rest of the staff too much, and doesn’t spend enough money, and asks for cups of milk and ice and $0.50 refills of coffee. I learned yesterday that this man goes by the name of Car Wash, because Queen said, “Car Wash just gave me two shots of Jim Beam. He said he doesn’t drink.” And I was confused, because she said car wash, and I was like, how do you get shots of Jim Beam from a car wash, or what am I missing here, and she talks quietly anyways, so she had to explain that our new regular told her to call him Car Wash. So at the end of the day, we are supposed to close the store at 6:00 pm, but we had a troop of young basketball girls come in and order 10 crazy drinks, and the very first drink, I handed to the girl, and she said, “Umm, excuse me.” And I said, “Yes?” “This is supposed to be iced…..” And I took a moment to process that, because that meant I had to remake her whole crazy drink, and that was just the first one, and I laughed, and high-fived her and said, “That’s a good joke. You are joking, right?” She was not joking. And then I got to work remaking her drink. So we were not finished with them until 6:15, and while making all of their crazy drinks, and I did have to remake another because it was the wrong size, and while Queen and I were slammed trying to crank out all of these drinks and get them out of the store, they were all watching, and I heard one girl say, “I would hate to be a barista.” And I thought, In moments like these, yeah, it’s not the most fun job. We didn’t even get to start closing down the store until 15 minutes after we were supposed to be closed, and we had so much work to do, cleaning, prepping, throwing away, taking out trash bags, wiping, shutting down, counting the drawers and the money in the safe and the tips, etc. etc. etc., and I made a joke about needing a shot, and Queen said, “I’ve got the Jim Beam!” And so we shot back those Jim Beam shooters, and that did really take the edge off, and got us through the rest of that night. We were still hard at it when the building lights shut off at 7 pm, which I thought signaled the end of our closing, whether we had anything left to do or not, but Queen said, “We can’t leave it like this!” (We totally could have.) And so she turned her phone flashlight on, and kept scrubbing, and I worked in the near pitch dark, throwing away the food in the display and wiping it down. Car Wash’s Jim Beam shooters came in handy that night, and I thought, we may have just started a new tradition of night time closing shots.

Car Wash, three days ago, paid for his $0.50 (it’s actually $0.55, because, taxes) coffee refill with pennies. We were in the usual positioning when this happened, with Stacy over to my right, me at the register, so that she was there to witness Car Wash drop an enormous load of pennies down onto the counter. This is one major area where Stacy Hamilton and I diverge, because otherwise we actually agree on many things related to the job and the store. I personally am overjoyed and enthralled when customers do such things as pay for their refills with pennies, because it’s hilarious, and I am ready to have a great time whipping fruit flies to death with a wet rag, because it’s great fun, and Stacy does not have time for these kinds of annoyances and trifles, and does not find them as funny as I do. So, Car Wash paid for his refill with pennies, and that’s when I learned that Stacy hated him, and wished he would never come back to the store. He also gave Queen, I’m just remembering, a Puma Ferrari sweatshirt, yesterday, when he had given her the Jim Beams, because he said, “People just give me clothes sometimes.” This man is a real character, but he is a sweetheart. (Update from the future: The beast has been unleashed. Car Wash has shown his ugly side.) Stacy does not like characters like this, but I had to tell her, when learning that she was not a fan of him, after he paid for his refill with pennies, and he dropped that huge load of pennies down on the counter, and I did not bother to count them, when she had said that he drives her crazy, I had to argue that he was at least better than the hot water splenda man. The hot water Splenda man is another one of regular characters who comes in almost every day, and asks for a large hot water with four Splendas and cream, and then pulls up a chair and sits at the wheelchair accessible station (a table that is meant for someone in a wheelchair to use), and watches YouTube and does whatever else he does all day. The large hot water with four Splendas and cream is free, as he knows, and he probably brings tea bags and puts them in there, instead of paying $3 for tea from us, and so this guy who has now been in our store almost every day since we’ve opened, has yet to spend a single dollar at the store. It doesn’t really bother me, not as much as it bothers Stacy Hamilton, but a few days ago when we were really slammed, he came up to the register and said, “Two things, a large hot water with four Splendas and cream AND a large cup of ice.” And this time, I was a little irritated, because he had the audacity to also ask for a large cup of ice, and we were so busy that I really felt annoyed at having to also get him his free drinks and to make no money off of them. At least Car Wash is a paying customer. So yesterday, that is the day after Car Wash had horrified Stacy and paid for his coffee refill with pennies, when he had come in and made his first order of the day, I couldn’t help but ask him, “And are you going to pay with pennies this time?” Stacy was again over to my right, and I knew she would also be horrified at these words, and I was going to get in trouble for saying them, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to ask him about his pennies. He said, I’m sure to Stacy’s relief, “No, not today.” Or something like that, because he is hard for me to understand, and he then proceeded to tell me a lengthy story about getting small change from collecting recycleable trash from his neighbor’s trash can when he was a kid, and the entire time he was telling me this story, I could feel Stacy’s eyes burning into the side of my head, and after he had walked away, she said, “Why did you ask him that??” This is an example of why I may be helping to drive Stacy to an early retirement.