It is 6 pm, I am home for the night, still wearing my work attire. A perk of the job being that my work attire is comfortable enough that I don’t feel that I immediately have to change out of it when I get home. My feet are a little hot and moist, however. That’s from the Dr. Martins. And from standing all day. As you can see, I’m not going to hold anything back here.

The day started off interestingly enough, right out of the gate. I walked into the back to find a massive mountain of trash. I immediately proceeded to make the mountain even more massive, by going around and collecting all full trash bags and adding them to the pile. The single roller trash can that we keep for trash in the back was hardly visible anymore, the mountain was so large. It was completely engulfed.

I was immediately told by CJB (Jessica), that Stacy Hamilton desired that I would go to the Margaritaville Starbucks and see if I could procure two bags of cold brew coffee beans. “At the least, one bag.” I did not particularly want to do that, in this moment. I was feeling more thoughtful and not yet in a very active, ready to deal with Starbucks business kind of way. I had woken up early this morning and had gone to the store, cracking open my laptop and writing about CJB and reading about “State Capture.” So being immediately asked to go drive to another store, I was not thrilled about. However, it is fun to get out into the world, and I had just been on a run to the Margaritaville Starbucks, and it wasn’t far, and I was going to return some warming bags while I was there, that we had just borrowed. First, I wanted to handle the trash, and then I figured I would be ready to go.

My caffeine for the day, I decided, first of all just to have caffeine, because in the last two weeks I’ve been cold turkey and then using very sparingly, as it has been increasing my anxiety levels, which is not good during stressful times, but today I felt that I wouldn’t have much stress, and would benefit from the energy/mood boost. I had what I’ve been getting recently, a grande blonde Americano. I sipped that as I did my trash business, and then set off to find a dumpster.

We have to cross the entire building to go get a trash dumpster, then bring it back all the way across the building, load it with our Starbucks trash, and then bring it all the way back down, to the loading docks and dumpsters, and throw it all in the giant dumpsters. It’s a process, and recently we’ve been walking all the way down there to get the dumpsters, and not finding any, because the janitorial team has them all squirreled away somewhere. So I wasn’t sure if I was even going to get one today. They like to say that our building is as wide as the Empire State Building. Making a big deal out of how far the walk is. I never thought it was that bad. But it’s annoying to walk all the way down to get a dumpster, or the flat cart, which is the real struggle and source of frustration, because there is only one single flat cart for the entire building, and it’s almost always in use. I have to tell you a story now about this, even though it will be kind of long and a good chunk of writing. Stacy Hamilton once sent me to fetch the flat cart, which we had at that time learned that it was usually not to be found, and I had a feeling again that I would strike out, having walked all that way for nothing, and I said so to Stacy, and she said it would be there, and go get it. So, away I went, going all the way down, and spying no flat cart, and finding it nowhere laying around or in use on the way back. I reported this to Stacy Hamilton, who was immediately enraged. She forgot all about me, and said, as she started marching down the hall, “Motherf*****s. I told them to leave the f***ing flat cart…” She was out for blood. I’ve seen her angry before but never this angry. I didn’t really know what to do, but I felt that I was a part of this quest, and could get in trouble if I wasn’t there for her. Of course, the risk is also that if I’m around when she’s blowing up, I could get yelled at. I have gotten good at reading Stacy, so I opted to go with her and see if I could be of use. And I wanted to know what was going to happen. We walked down the central hall on the main floor to the halfway point, where the main entrance is, a security desk, and the freight elevator, that I learned today is exactly 73 years old. (I will tell about this soon.) Clark was manning the security desk, a laid back cool older black guy, who I thought for the first three months that we were open was named Hank, I was 100% sure of it, and I would always call him Hank and he never said anything about it, but one day he came in and Stacy was at the register, and he had paid and she said, “Thanks Clark!” And I said, after he walked away, “Isn’t his name Hank?” And she said no. And I said, “Are you sure?” She was 1000% sure. But I really thought his name was Hank, I could have sworn it, and so the next time I went down to the security desk, as I pass by it every time I go on a trash run, which is not as often these days, because I am a mighty shift supervisor, and that’s grunt work, but I said, “I have a question for you. Is your name Hank or Clark?” He said Clark. I said, “I thought your name was Hank.” He said, “Nope. Where’d you get Hank from?” And I told him I called him Hank this whole time and he said he never noticed. That’s how laid back this guy is.

Anyways, Clark was manning the security desk, which was perfect for this little shennanigans, and Stacy came up to the desk and asked him if he had seen anyone with the flat cart pass by. He says no, but he says he can try to find it on the cameras. So Stacy and I moved to the side of the desk, and this was the first time I got to get a good look at what Clark was cooking with, with his security cameras. He had about 16 or 20 screens of action in the building, all the halls on all 5 floors, and whatever else, and we were all looking, and he said, “There it is.” And pointed. “They’re taking it to the loading dock.” Stacy is still very pissed, and immediately moved to go take an elevator down to the basement, where the loading dock is. Now, I decided here that I did not really want to stand in a confined space with a furious Stacy Hamilton, and I wouldn’t be of much use here anyway, because it only took one person to pull the flat cart, and she might have chastised me for hanging around being useless, so I decided to let her handle it from here. I also didn’t want to be there when she found the poor unlucky construction worker who had carried off the flat cart. It was a man, we could see from the cameras, one of the many construction workers in the building. Clark said, “Man, she’s mad.” I told him what was going on, and then we watched, saw her get off the elevator, and start walking down the hall towards this construction worker pulling the cart. The hall is long enough that there are multiple cameras that cover it, so first they were shown on separate screens, but we could see they were getting closer, and both Clark and I were watching intently, knowing that they were soon to meet. It was like watching two trains about to collide. I could only imagine what was about to happen to this poor construction worker, and they were on the same screen, and she was walking right up to him, and then something incredible happened. She walked right past this man, and the flat cart. She didn’t even so much as turn her head. I couldn’t believe it, and I said, “What???” Clark says, “She walked right past him!” I said, “Did she not see him??” I couldn’t understand that, but I knew that if Stacy Hamilton came back without a flat cart and I was anywhere near her, especially if I was discovered to have just been at the security desk watching her on the camera this entire time, I was going to be flayed alive, and so I said to Clark, “I have to get out of here now.” And ran back to the Starbucks. Stacy Hamilton returned some time later with the flat cart, having calmed down a bit, but still having residual anger, and she said, smiling her scary smile that means she’s pissed, “The construction guys had it.” I don’t know if she really did just walk past it that first time, that would be insane, if her rage somehow made her literally blind. But thank god she found it in the end.

These days, we’ve completely given up looking for it. And anyways, that was a very long tangent to tell you… What, exactly… That I was going down to take out the trash, fetching a dumpster, and there were, to my great satisfaction, all of the four Cummins Station dumpsters, lying there for my choosing. Having such an enormous mountain of trash and cardboard to dispose of, I picked the largest dumpster, which is like a small whale, that I knew could do the job in one go. As I brought it back, I had made it to the freight elevator, which is the second hurdle in our Starbucks trash runs. The freight elevator often has some issue that you must resolve in order to use it successfully. It is an old elevator, that requires you to manually open and close the large gate that you pass through, and is called by a buzzer. Sometimes on Sundays the elevator is not even turned on, so you can buzz and buzz and buzz and it will never come. Sometimes the buzzer button doesn’t buzz, and you just stand around trying again every 30 seconds until something happens. And sometimes it buzzes and doesn’t come, which means either someone is using it for a long time, or someone hasn’t properly shut the gate, which means the elevator won’t budge, and you have to physically track it down, and close the gate yourself, and then escort it to where you want it to be. Today, once again, I was buzzing and nothing was happening. However, I could hear some strange clunking sounds, and some buzzing that was being done by someone else that was on another floor, so something was clearly going on. I was still not very interested in handling Starbucks business at this moment, so I stood there buzzing even though I knew it wouldn’t be any good, just because I didn’t want to do what I knew I had to do. In the end I accepted my fate, and I went up a floor, stepped out to the security desk, manned again by Clark, and discovered that the elevator was undergoing maintenance, and so was definitely not going anywhere. I thought it would have been nice to have put a sign up on the other floors, but actually the people who needed it probably already knew… Idk. But I was then very interested to see this man tinkering with an extremely old freight elevator. He was standing on top of the elevator box, so you see the gears and cables and whatever, and he was shining his flashlight around and inspecting things. I told him I was sorry for all of my buzzing. He said it was alright. I asked him if he worked on many elevators like this one, and he said, “I don’t work on any elevators like this one.” Because it is so old. Clark got involved in the conversation, coming over and checking things out, and was asking about how old it was, and the mechanic guy said, “Let’s find out.” And shined his flashlight over to some labels with info about the elevator, and you could barely make it out but the imprint of the date seemed to end in 52. So the elevator is 73 years old. They kept chatting and laughing as good ol’ boys will do, and I left them to continue on my trash quest. I was so uninterested in doing Starbucks business and so annoyed at having been once again stymied by the freight elevator that I just left the dumpster by the elevator entrance in the basement. I didn’t even bother to put it back. I figured I would be back down there soon, and that was a correct assumption, because Jessica told me to take Elevator B, and that you could fit an entire dumpster on there, and I said, “Are you sure it will fit?” And she said, “Yeah, Andrew says he does that shit all the time.” So that’s what I did. I went back down, got the dumpster, brought it to Elevator B, took it to the 2nd floor, brought it to Starbucks, loaded it with an entire mountain of trash, Jessica commenting that I should’ve just brought the dumpster into the back of the store to save myself all of the trips between my mountain of trash and the dumpster sitting outside of the store (this is of course impossible), and then having loaded it all up, brought it back to Elevator B, took it down to the basement, and then to the loading docks, and out to the giant dumpsters in the back.

I actually like doing trash runs because you get some precious alone time, and you get to go for a walk, and most importantly, you get to stand on a ledge and hurl trash bags into a dumpster, which is definitely always a good time. And you get a breath of fresh air, while you’re out there. So I’ve never minded doing a trash run.

After returning from my quest, successfully, it was about time for me to go to Margaritaville. I had to do it, and I looked for ways to stall but met with none. So, I drank most of the rest of my americano, and off I went. I did ask Jessica if she would take my car and go there. I think I just said, “Wanna do something for me?” And she said, “Take your keys and drive your car to Margaritaville?” But then I said, “Can you do it?” Or something like, “Are you allowed to?” Because I didn’t think she could even drive, and I still am not sure what the answer is. Actually, I learned from several stories and anecdotes and facts that she proceeded to tell me, that she can drive but doesn’t have a license. So, I was the one going to Margaritaville. I grabbed some of the warming bags to return to them, and off I went.

… TO BE CONTINUED

The Margaritaville Starbucks is only a few minutes away, a hop skip and a jump. I walk in and as I am wearing my Starbucks hat am immediately recognisable as a fellow agent of the Siren, and find that the team is there waiting for me, all four of them at attention, with nothing to do. They must have just been shooting the poop, as they say, and the leader immediately greeted me, and we handled the business, I scoring one bag of cold brew coffee beans, not two because they were running low as well. The interesting thing that happened here was that, while the gal was in the back hunting for a bag of cold brew, I noticed that one of the crew was wearing a Nirvana shirt, that I had never seen before. I could see the iconic font of the word Nirvana, in between the loops of his apron, and when he turned around that confirmed it, because I saw the In Utero angel. I thought, because this was a special shirt, not the casual Nirvana shirt that everyone wears with the smiley face, that you just know most of the people wearing couldn’t tell you more than 3 Nirvana songs, at least I suspect so, but because this guy had a rare shirt on, he must be an actual fan, just like me, who has a rare Nirvana shirt. So I said to him, “So you must be a real Nirvana fan?” And he looked at me, laughed, and said, “No. I just like the shirt.” The girl then walked back out with a bag of cold brew, and I thanked them and left, but honestly, I was pissed. More like, I was having a.. What do you call this exactly, where something activates you, and you go on a rant? Because now I was feeling that way, thinking, Even this guy, this cool looking dude with a rare Nirvana shirt, even he doesn’t really like Nirvana! Even he isn’t a real fan! So, who is?? How can I find them?? I was so confident that he would be something else. That he would be, like me, a real fan. But no. He just liked the shirt. (It was a really cool shirt.)

So then, believe it or not, on my short trip back to Cummins Station, with this in my mind, what do I spy but another Nirvana shirt? Two guys at the 8th S and Demonbreun intersection, looking to be in their 30’s, and the one guy is wearing a blue crewneck, with the In Utero angel, that said “Live in ’93.” I think it was ’93. I looked at that guy, and I thought, This guy, is he a real Nirvana fan? He’s wearing a rare crewneck. I’ve never seen it. It says live, did he get it at a live show? But no way because he wouldn’t have been old enough. And then I had a very strong urge to roll down my window and shout, “Hey! Are you a real Nirvana fan??” I was so close to doing it. I was very close. But even if he shouted back, “Yeah!!” We couldn’t have really known. I did meditate then on the power and influence of a rock band like Nirvana. The scale of the reach that these bands have, that all this time later people are wearing their clothes, here in Nashville, that it’s so ubiquitous, and they don’t even know about the band.

I told this to Stacy Hamilton upon my return. I tell her many things that I know she is not that interested in hearing. I just have to get it out. I don’t even need a response. She understands. She will generally reply with something very short and generic, but spot on, and then direct me towards the next order of business.

I have picked up the Hamilton biography again recently, and I came away from it feeling strongly that Stacy Hamilton is like George Washington, the leader, and I am Alexander Hamilton, the aide de camp, running various missions and errands, and handling business on her behalf, and making reports. I think about this often and do enjoy being this kind of an aide.

After this Margaritaville expedition, nothing particularly extraordinary happened for some time. Taloya did ask me for some advice regarding some loan of hers that had been passed to a collection agency. I was having a hard time nailing down exactly what seemed to be going on because it seemed like she didn’t even know, but basically it seemed that she had had a student loan that she didn’t know about, and it was like 8 years old, and had been passed to a collection agency who was now gearing up to collect from her. So I said she needed to contact them and find out what was going on. You may be thinking, sounds fishy, but from what information I could gather it didn’t seem to be a scam. She immediately set to work handling this business from her smartphone, as I would see her in the back filling out various forms and typing away, as I passed by her to do my Starbucks business.

Jessica did secure for me a particularly special gift card, that was in the shape of a rabbit. I have been collecting gift cards, and have asked the team for their help, and it has now become a fun activity for everyone, to score used gift cards and bring them to Steven, which everyone is happy to do, and I am happy to receive. It has become like a little game, and is definitely just better than throwing them all away. This is happening because I had the idea to collect them and make an artwork, because they are nice and it seems so wasteful to just throw them away. My plan is to make a collage. Cut them up and rearrange them. Jessica had scored for me a rabbit gift card, that I knew was very rare, and I checked the date, and it was from 2020. It was an oldie, in mint condition. Juanito scored one for me later in the day, with an illustration of a penguin sledding down a mountain with a basket of fish on the front of his sled. Another great card.

When I had first started this collection, I had about 9 cards at this point, and somehow every card I had gotten was unique and with art, as in not a generic basic white gift card, and I had just spread my collection out on the counter to peruse it. I was at the register, when two pretty girls walked up, beautiful brunette women, I must say, and they made their orders, and when the one girl went to pay, she pulled out a gift card, that caught my eye immediately, because it was a deep purple with an orange striped design, and I could tell it was awesome, and I immediately thought, I really hope I get this one. Well, she scanned it, and I saw that it had more on it than what she would have to pay, so I wasn’t going to get it. They paid, and then started to walk off, and then the girl turns back around… No, actually what happened was that the girl said, “How much do I have left on the card?” And I said, you know, $3.58, and she said, “Is that enough to get one of the cake pops?” And I said, of course, and so she got one, which then brought her card balance to $0.12, and I could then see she was thinking about what to do with this gift card, as I’m praying that it comes to me, and she says, “Umm, should I just, give it to you and you can give it to the next person who orders? Like, pay it forward?” And I said, confessing, “Actually, I was really hoping that I could get your card. I’ve kind of been collecting them..” And I patted my apron pocket to show them, but they weren’t there, and I remembered I had spread them out on the counter, so I gestured to them, where they could see my entire collection beautifully arranged, and they beheld it in all its glory and were clearly quite impressed, and I said, “When you pulled that card out, I saw it and immediately thought, I need that card, so I would love to have it.” And they laughed, they loved that, and she said, “Okay, it’s for you then!!” And she gave me the card, and I was extremely overjoyed, having ended up getting this special purple orange “You’re Awesome.” card, and from these beautiful brunette ladies. And as I stood there thrilled with my success, Jessica, after making their drinks, came over to me to report gleefully, that they were saying, “He’s so cute!” And immediately we were both making the same joke, that were they saying that I was cute like how I would want them to think I was cute, or were they saying I was cute like how a puppy was cute, or an autistic kid. Jessica was dying over that. It has been a running joke by Jessica that I must have some kind of mental illness, something must be wrong with me, because of all the unusual habits and life choices and all of the crazy things I say. We’ve taken some tests together, of which of course I aced all of them, in the good way, because I know all the right answers. So something could still be wrong with me, we just don’t know what it is. And whenever Jessica says now that something’s wrong with me, I say, “Yes, but what? What is it?” No suitable answer has been given.

I thought that there were some interesting guest interactions, but today, not much. The next thing that I can think of was that I had a particularly great joke. Juanito had made a nutella chocolate cake, that after several attempts by multiple people made to give me an opportunity to try the cake, I still wasn’t able to get a bite, and I told him that he would just have to make me another one, to which he replied, “No! I’m not making you another one. Not just for you. It’s too much money. And nutella day is over.” To which I replied, “There’s a nutella day?” And he said yes, and it’s over. And here I said, the great joke, and I said, “You know, you keep saying nutella by the way, but it’s actually nut-ella.” And I said this, and I heard Heather lose it, from all the way across the counter, and that’s how I knew it was good. Heather doesn’t have much of a whimsical sense of humor really, but the absurdity of someone saying “nut-ella”, just the sound of it, that immediately got her. And Juan said, “What! No it isn’t!” And I just kept finding ways to repeat it. “Nut-ella! Of course it’s nut-ella! Why are you saying nutella! It’s not nutella, it’s nut-ella! Like Cinderella! Nut-ella!” That was too much for Juanito.

Juan is a smart, witty, mild-mannered 20 year old string bean. He can take it and he can dish it out, but mostly he just takes it. It’s just so easy to mess with him. And he is always cracked out on espresso shots. There is a running joke that is really a running truth, that he is addicted to caffeine and really should stop chugging so many espresso shots. Then he gets flustered immediately, and has small crises, hundreds of small caffeine-fueled crises a shift, that I can’t help but to exacerbate, by saying things like, “Are you stressed? It’s okay Juan. Just take a deep breath. Just don’t panic. Everything will be fine.” I say this over his shoulder as he makes a Venti Iced Coffee, light ice, 2 pumps sugar free vanilla, Strawberry Cold Foam, which all definitely stresses him out.

Ah, I just remembered. Juan really likes to go tell people at close that we are closing. For some reason he enjoys doing that. I don’t particularly, so I’m happy to sic him on them, so that I don’t have to. But today, we had a young lovebird couple who were going hard on each other. I didn’t see it, because I didn’t want to see it, and I’m not watching, but Juanito was disturbed by this, and couldn’t look away, and said they were “French kissing” and Heather was implying that we should say something, but I didn’t care and figured they would stop soon, and it wasn’t bothering me anyways, but after Heather told me that maybe we should get them to stop, I had the brilliant idea to go over to Juan and say, “Hey Juan, if you see them getting real friendly again, why don’t you go over there and say something?” Knowing that he usually likes to do that kind of thing. But this time he immediately protested, crying, “No!! You do it!! Why should I do it!! You’re the shift supervisor!!” That brought me great delight.

Luckily they did stop soon after this, Juan saying they’ve “cooled down” which was great because I really didn’t want to go over there and say something, although it would have been funny. “Hey kids, can you like, stop putting your tongues in each other’s mouths at our Starbucks? That would be really great. Thank you.”

The only other thing I really have to write about here, and my hand is starting to hurt, is Lexi. Lexi is a beautiful blonde headturner that works in the building and frequents our store. She is tall, absolutely gorgeous, and fair, like a Swedish princess. Like some kind of princess. I recently learned that her last name has something of an r that you roll in it, so maybe she’s Eastern European, her name almost sounded Russian.. you know what, she could actually be a Russian princess. But her and I have had many interactions now, and of course I flirt with her, such as when I commented on her nice brooch, and she said that she was really into pins lately, and so as she was sitting there drinking her little evening doppio espresso, I brought her one of the extra Christmas pins we had, that says, “Cheers To You!” and I said, “A gift for you.” And give it to her, and she said, “It’s so cute!” I have learned many small things about Lexi from our interactions, such as that she is a musician with fans, because she had a gift card that “a fan” had given her, and that she plays piano, because I asked her what she wanted Santa to bring her for Christmas this year, and she said she didn’t really need anything (great) but that she wanted piano lessons (incredible).. But she really impressed me when she was once perusing the wares, our incredible array of Starbucks merchandise that seems to rotate every week, she was taking a look over it all and when she came over to the register I said, “I see you were perusing the wares.” And she replied, “Yes, but you know, I don’t think I’ll buy anything, I’m trying to be less into consumerism.” And when she said that, she really had my attention, from that moment on, because we then had a conversation about being anti-consumerist, and embracing minimalism, and then she wasn’t just beautiful or musical, but intelligent. And she does wear glasses sometimes showing a more.. a nerdier side. Lexi is a catch and a special girl for sure, and I say headturner – she literally turns heads, mine included. She often wears cowboy boots, that make some noise when she walks and plus with her striking figure.. I was at the register once, and Lexi walked in, and there were exactly 3 men in our Starbucks, in the lobby, seated separately, and I saw all 3 of them look up, in unison, to check her out. It was incredible. Since that moment, I’ve thought of her as being literally, a head turner.

Jessica was talking about Lexi to me recently. Jessica has been looking for a girlfriend for me, and has had Lexi in mind. There has been something that has made me hold on making any move on her, something that I was getting, that seemed to me like she’s just been keeping a little distance, and not becoming too friendly with me, if you know what I mean. Well, Jessica discovered a week ago, that Lexi is married, and I think it must have just happened, because I swear I never saw a ring on that finger. Jessica came up to me and said, after I had been with Lexi at the register, “That girl is cute. Really cute. Is she taken?” And she spied the ring on her finger. Taloya also said that I needed to “get on that.” Her exact words, “Steven you gotta’ get on that.” But, she’s married.

I wasn’t suprised to find that out. I had a feeling she was taken. With a girl like that, chances are very high, when every guy in the world is falling over her. So today, she came in with her husband, and I wasn’t at the register, and I didn’t get a good look at him, and I didn’t make his drink, but I checked him out a bit, and he was a pretty classic, masculine-looking man. Short hair, muscular, beard, tall, wearing a flannel and boots. But you know, I have never been a jealous guy. They sat together and had their drinks, I couldn’t hear anything they were saying, but they seemed happy, and I was happy for her. I was happy for them both. I’m always like seeing a happy couple.

Lexi and I still managed to have a cute little interaction though. I was at the espresso machine nearest the customer pickup area, the drink handoff area, and Lexi came over and said, “Hey, do you think I could maybe get some cream, if that’s possible?” She is really very dainty and sweet, for someone who is that much of a bombshell. I said, “For you, you got it.” And she said, “You might need to pour a little of that out. To make room for the cream.” And there was already room, so I said, “Oh, you like a lotta’ cream!” And she laughed, and I poured some out, and then brought the cream over, and she was still holding the cup, and I said, “You hold the cup and I’ll pour the cream. Just tell me when.” And I started pouring, and she said, “When!” In a very small and cute voice. And she said thank you, and I had just put the cream away, when I was thinking, I wonder if she knows that we are now having customers pour cream themselves, that we have a container sitting out? And if she does, that the container is empty? You can see how with this incredible deductive reasoning skill I have risen up to being a mighty shift supervisor. And I looked up and over to the container, over at the trash station by the front door, and saw Lexi holding the container and kind of looking my way, and she said to me, smiling, “I didn’t know that you guys were doing this now!” And I smiled and said, “I was just wondering if you did!” And she said, “Now I know!” And she set it down, and looked at it for a second, and there was a little bit of a pause, like she didn’t quite know what else to do, and then she looked back over at me, smiled, and said “Well, have a good one!” And walked out.

I think that what made this special, if not conveyed in the writing, is that in that little aftermoment, both of us were thinking about that cream container. And we came back to each other over it. She was feeling a little silly I think, and I was thinking about her and if she had known about the cream container, and then she had discovered it, and she wanted to tell me about it. It was definitely, very cute, and made me feel good inside.

Also great that for this moment, her husband had already left the Starbucks, and was nowhere to be seen.

Do we have something like a Jim, Pam and Roy scenario going on here? Only time will tell. Writing this, that’s definitely what comes to my mind.

… TO BE CONTINUED

Today I bonded with Katerina over Russian literature. This has been a major source of bonding for us in recent weeks. It started with me bringing in a book of short stories by Anton Chekhov. I was getting so bored at closing that I was losing my mind. So it wasn’t before long that I brought a book in, and I had the perfect book for the job. My cousin had gotten me a book of Anton Chekhov short stories, as we both like Russian literature, and I was having a hard time handling such fast paced, condensed stories, some of them being only three pages long, and the book is full of these, and I had just read Don Quixote, which is over 1000 pages long. But I thought, this light reading is perfect for downtime at Starbucks, when you have 5 or 10 minutes to do something with, and that’s after I’ve exhausted the nearly endless list of tasks to take on, because when you really get into it, there’s almost always something you can find to do. Stocking, cleaning, tidying, arranging, checking up on things, fixing some small problem that’s been neglected, hunting for small problems that haven’t been noticed… But sometimes you just don’t feel like doing all of this extra stuff anyway. So that’s where my Anton Chekhov was going to come in handy. Well, lucky for me, on our team we have a real blood and bone Russian, 24 year old Katerina from Kazan, which I can remember because Kazan means “volcano” in Japanese. And Katerina is pretty much liked by everybody because she is of a very rare type among the Starbucks crew: quiet, hardworking, smart, and causing no drama. That is a very rare type, that has made her respected and beloved. Katerina is quiet, but as it goes with many quiet people, it’s not because she doesn’t have anything to say, and I have had many good conversations with Katerina. She has a good sense of humor. You just have to give her space and time to respond, and ask her questions. She also has to work around the language barrier, and I know exactly how hard that can be, and I think that’s why I can have more of a connection with her. Well, that’s one source and an early source of bonding between us, because I understand what it’s like to integrate into another country and culture. It’s hard. So I try and have tried to make her feel welcome and comfortable. To try and remove that distance and that feeling of otherness that can happen when you aren’t seamlessly a part of the culture, and struggle to understand the people around you because you don’t know the slang, don’t get the references, can’t understand the dialects. Even on our small Starbucks team, you have a seriously diverse range of slang and accents being used, some regional, some racial, some generational. Southern, Black Southern, Midwestern, Gen Z, Millenial, and Boomer are all present, and they all have their own set of pronunciations, vocabulary, colloquialisms, etc. And then you mash all of this up, and that’s the kind of talk you’ll hear behind the counter at our Cummins Station Starbucks. I know that Katerina is just lost a lot of the time, which is hard. Excluded by default. But anyways, Katerina does have a good grasp of English, but still that bar for fluency is so high. She has only been in the US a few years, here on political asylum, I actually just learned. Her and her husband. So, I brought in the book of Chekhov, somehow not even thinking to talk to Katerina about it, and she asked me what I was reading, and I told her, “Russian literature.” and she said, “Who?” And I didn’t know that Anton Chekhov was famous, or a big deal, but Katerina told me that he was, and I said, “You know him?” And she said, “Of course I know him.” And she said that they read Chekhov in school, and I asked her if pretty much everybody in Russia knew about Chekhov, and she said yes. So I learned about Chekhov from a real Russian, which I think is awesome, and she kept telling me I needed to read Kashtanka, which was a story that they would read in school, and it was in the book. Well, she kept asking me, and I kept disappointing her, and I had then fallen out of reading the Chekhov because the stories just contained so much drama and arguing for me, and they weren’t really holding my interest, even though they were good, and I didn’t want to just skip all the way to Kashtanka, which is in the middle of the book. But last night, I had nothing to do, and read some Huckleberry Finn, and then I wanted something else, and I thought, you know what, let me read Kashtanka. And I read it, and it was actually genius, and exactly what I needed to read right then, in that moment. Actually I thought it was so brilliant and so evocative, my mind able to capture the story so entirely and conjure up the images with such clarity, like I was watching a movie, that I nearly had chills at the end. And that night I knew that, the first thing I was going to talk about with anybody tomorrow was that I was going to tell Katerina what she wanted to hear, that I had finally read Kashtanka, and that it was genius. And I told her, and Katerina asked me what I thought the moral was, which is a great question. I said I didn’t think that there was a moral, but Katerina, in her wisdom, replied, “There is a moral in every story.” And she said she needed to reread it, and then she would tell me what she thought the moral was.

… TO BE CONTINUED

Today I did not expect to do any work for my special Cummins Station Starbucks. Yesterday I had gone in, and had ended up doing a very small amount of work, taking some boxes down to our storage room, which took me about 5 minutes of easy labor, and for which Stacy Hamilton rewarded my very light efforts with a command to go on over to Wild Wasabi and buy myself some sushi. I almost protested at this, because I felt it was so unnecessary and that she should know that I would have done this small task out of the goodness of my heart and out of my love for the store, but I knew that she already knows that, and that she probably just wanted to buy me sushi, and so I was not going to refuse. So, I took her $20 bill, after carrying this light load of boxes, and for the first time went and bought something for myself at Wild Wasabi. Wild Wasabi is mostly a Japanese restaurant, with sushi being their core offering, and it’s at the other end of our long sideways Empire State Building building. It’s right next to the Gibson Garage, which is my special, magical place, like Santa’s Workshop, full of shiny and expensive toys that you can’t have until Christmas, or in my case, until I’m not poor anymore… And usually when I head down to this part of the building, it is to go to this magic Santa’s Workshop. So now I was excited to have some business with Wild Wasabi, and I actually thought, as I was leaving the restaurant, how incredibly lucky it is that I actually work in a building that contains establishments related to some very core loves of mine, which are guitars and Japan. And then, I get to work at a coffee shop, and a nice one, and live out my coffee shop dream. That is pretty incredible, so thought I, walking out of the Wild Wasabi. But not much happened inside, as there was nobody really in there, and I didn’t want to spend too much of Stacy’s money, and I am really a vegetarian, so I just got 8 measly veggie rolls. I say measly to no offence of Wild Wasabi’s, I just say that because they’re veggie rolls. Who’s thrilled about a veggie roll? Nobody’s thrilled about a veggie roll. But they were fine, and importantly, I had quite a ceremonious meal. I made sure to say my 頂きます, with my hands together in prayer, and give a small bow, before snapping my chopsticks, perfectly, which I rarely do, and must be good luck, and I made sure to eat all of the wasabi, and all of the ginger, and every single grain of rice, leaving absolutely nothing behind, as all of my Japanese girlfriends would have wanted. And, when leaving, I made eye contact with one of the sushi chefs, who smiled at me and nodded, and I said, smiling back, “ごち”そうさまでした！” Which I was sure he would be surprised and thrilled to hear, but he seemed confused, and held his smile, and nodded again, before looking away. So, I don’t think he was Japanese, which surprised me because I thought he actually did look Japanese. There must be someone on the staff who is Japanese, but maybe not. I know the owner isn’t, the owner being Karen, who is an extremely friendly and amiable lady. She was not at Wild Wasabi on this day, and I haven’t seen her in awhile, but when we were first opening the store, she took a great interest in our activities and came by nearly every day to see what we were doing and to chat with us.

The entire reason why I was at my Starbucks on this day, and was about to carry these boxes and receive a wonderful sushi reward, was because on this day I was enjoying my life and visiting the cafe as a regular civilian. This is something that has baffled some members of the team, as to why anyone would ever want to go in to their place of employment on their days off, but as I said to Jaz just that day, as I was again asked why I was there (this is now the 23rd time that I’ve been in the store as a regular civilian), when she said why would you come to work on your off day, that I didn’t see it that way. I have explained to them, tried to explain, that the whole reason why I wanted to work in a bustling, bright coffee shop was because I liked being in them, and so it is no surprise that I would be going to one on my day off, because that’s what I do, and I might as well go to mine, because I know everybody, and like being there. And there are perks, such as that I can basically always score free food and drink, and on that Wild Wasabi day, I even scored sushi. Going in and hanging out at the Starbucks on my off days has presented me with many opportunities, as is the case of being in the right place at the right time, and also, the whole thing about third spaces, just hanging out somewhere in public, where you can have no pressure and spontaneous interactions with people in your community, or the people of the world. Unfailingly, every time I go in to the store to hang out, someone ends up talking to me, usually my coworkers, who find ways to get away from the counter and come chat with me or discuss the day’s drama, as every single day contains at least one notable event of major drama, but I also have had many conversations with customers. And this is exactly why I like being in coffee shops. You can eavesdrop, and listen these people’s conversations, maybe they’re on the phone with a colleague, maybe they’re with a friend, maybe having a job interview, seeing an old friend, tourists, bachelorette girls, or discussing serious business, and you catch the tone of the their voices, the general content, the relationship of the speakers, and their mood, and you realize that all people everywhere are kind of the same.

As the register king, the POS king (point of sale) which is the position that I gravitated to and excelled in (if I may be so humble as to say) and loved, because I have a nearly endless stream of quips and banter, and because I can also actually listen well and hit the right buttons on the machine, which is actually an enormous responsibility, because getting even one single thing wrong can be the death of a $10 drink, a twelve-step process, or simply neglecting one word, can result in your barista working hard to make this beast of a drink to perfection, and then handing it over to the customer, who says, the dreaded and infamous, “Umm, this was supposed to be iced…!” Or perhaps they take a sip, and they say, “Was this made with oatmilk? It tastes like regular milk.” To which you reply, “No, was it supposed to be? It wasn’t on the ticket. I’m so sorry about that, I’ll remake that for you, right after I go over to the register and throttle Titania, who has now gotten 7 out of the last 9 drink tickets wrong, and now there are 25 people standing here waiting for their drinks, and by the way, who’s on warming, and why, how is it possible that we have no brewed coffee right now, at all? How could this be possible? So literally no one has brewed it?” This is how it goes.

My point being here that pushing buttons at the register is a very important part of the Starbucks factory line, and I knew that, but then I learned one day that Stacy also knew that, and that’s why Stacy always put me on POS, because I would push the right buttons. Prior to me fully realizing that I had a special gift of being a good register button pusher, charm and conversational skill aside, I would often give up the position or trade it with other team members, because they wanted to have a go at it, and because after about 3 straight hours of being at the register and having 200 small conversations in a row, I would get tired of it. If I actually got tired, and needed a break, such as to be relieved of my frontline position after 3 or 4 hours of intense rush action, that’s a different story, and I could get relief, but if I was just bored or indifferent, then sometimes I would give up my spot to Charlie, who would be itching to say to every customer who walked up to the counter, when he would ask them how they were today, and then if they would make the mistake of asking him how he was today, he would reply, almost always, without fail, “It’s a great day to have a great day!” Now, Charlie was extremely corny, and he also had a habit of shouting out every 15 or 20 minutes everyone slaving away at their battlestations, “You’re doing great, everybody!” And it was amazing, the team’s varying reactions to this strange, corny, positive encouragement. We were not used to being treated this way, and to hearing such words. Christopher Bodily, Granddaddy Snow, back in the days when he had graced us with his presence as the Assistant General Manager, before he left us for bigger and better things, I think had the best response, that he could use every time, and that was always nice, that was, “Not as good as you, Charlie!” Jessica meanwhile immediately hated that, and immediately hated him. Stacy Hamilton would generally just say nothing, probably not even registering these useless words, and some other members would laugh, and sometimes, when he would announce it after a particularly turbulent time, a tense time, where Stacy was pissed, and everyone was battered and bruised, and then Charlie would announce, his timing now being somewhat awkward, but he could never help himself, God bless him, “You’re doing great everyone!” And if Chris was around, he would be the only one to reply, “Not as good as you, Charlie..” Forcing it out, and saving it from falling completely dead, on silent, disgrunted ears.

Depending on my mood, I would either like to hear his corny, stock words of encouragement, and I would reply, or I would like them, but would have nothing to say, or I would think that they were corny, and then sometimes, I would think that they were corny, and that I desperately wanted to then be sarcastic, which would get laughs, and so after some time, because I didn’t want Charlie to think I was a meanie butt, and needed him to know that I was just a jokester and fond of ribbing and roasting, and that I did actually appreciate his words of encouragement, but I just needed to ease some of the corniness tension, I would then say after his words, to some friendly coworker who was deserving of or seemed to want to receive some good ol’ ribbing, “Except you, _____.” Which was often Jessica. And that would get a response out of them, and kill the corniness, wipe the corniness from everybody’s minds, a bit.

Although he was corny, and had a habit of hugging everyone on the team, including the people who he should never have been hugging, because you know there are 100% people who do not like to be hugged, and if you hug them they will hate you, he would hug those people, and they would hate him. I’m mainly talking about Jessica here, who if you really knew, you would understand immediately that Charlie hugging Jessica was an enormous transgression and should never have been done. But Charlie was just like a puppy. Very genuine, very direct, smiling, and friendly. I liked that about him, and I did like him, but unfortunately, this personality type, as lovely as it is, has no place on Stacy Hamilton’s ship, because Charlie lasted for about two weeks before he got the axe, which is an extremely short period of time. Stacy Hamilton could not stand his corny joy, his boundless, caffiene-fueled, positive energy. He was also always walking around with a cappuccino, and Stacy noticed that, that he would come in, and the first thing he would do was make himself a cuppuccino, and then 7 more throughout his shift, and when she said that to me, my mind was filled with memories, all of the visual images of all of the times that I had seen him strutting around with a cappuccino in his hand, sometimes, I swear, if my brain is not lying to me, even two cappuccinos, one in both hands. He may have lasted three weeks, but he did not survive long, and I was somewhat sad to see him go. We actually did benefit from his blind positive energy, his persistent motivation, even if we all thought it was varying degrees of stupid. Charlie did not know what to make of me, in the beginning, a masculine man that I am, and presenting a very tough, cool exterior, with quick wit and sarcasm. He tread lightly with me, before warming up to me, and then hugging me, which then was the sign that we were officially friends. I think that took about three days.

I write about Charlie now, and I do miss him. And since he’s been gone, ever since Charlie made his short impact on the team, I will occasionally find myself filled an urge, as I walk out from the back and see the whole team before me, mulling around, having done great work, or not, having nothing to do at all, I have the urge to say those magic words, “You’re doing great everybody!” Because even in corniness, even in irony, they work. When I have actually said the words, and I have confessed that I have these urges, when I have said those words, those who remember Charlie, they understand.

I was writing about Charlie because he was often one who would want to take over for me at the register, and told people, over and over, “It’s a great day to have a great day!” And I would generally let him do this, until one fateful day, when we were having an intense rush, and I was on one end of the counter, and Stacy Hamilton was all the way down at the other, with about 3 or 4 baristas in-between us, and I was checking over on her, standing down by the handoff area, making drinks and handing them off and handling customers, the maestro and the orchestrator, and we made eye contact, and she gave me an expression and a look that said, someone or everyone had f***ed up one too many times, that she was fed up, and things were not going well for her, and so I took some food from whoever was at the ovens, and brought it down to the handoff plane myself, and on the way I watched her take a drink from a customer, saying nothing, and immediately dumping it, and she caught me and said, in some desperation, “I’ve had to remake 15 drinks. 15 drinks already. If they get one more ticket wrong I’m going to kill somebody. This is why I put you on register. This is why I want you up there.” It was something to that effect, and that was the moment that I understood the method to her madness. Prior to this, I had thought that she simply wanted us to stay planted, which is the lingo we use for saying you have a battlestation and you stick to it, you don’t abandon it, you don’t leave it without being covered. I thought that that’s why Stacy didn’t like us moving around, but as long as everybody was planted somewhere, and all positions were covered, it didn’t matter where you were. But then I understood, I was assigned register and was expected to stay at register, because I was good at it, and that was important. So then, as a barista, I hardly ever left my spot, as the POS king.

I gravitated to POS, and it is still my home position. I have ranked up, and have now a larger set of duties and tasks that I must fulfill, and bounce around, all over, running on missions and quests and etc., but the register is still my home position. And if we were to say that our Cummins Station Starbucks were a ship, which I think about often, and Stacy is the captain, our Captain Ahab, the register is the steering wheel.

Everyone has their favorite spots behind the counter. Their favorite positions. Emily and Chris K. are the brewmasters. Emily in particular, the hot drink, the espresso machine, the latte art aficionado. Emily never gave up on her love of making latte art that no one cared about and no one would see. I encouraged this and supported it, and whenever she would make something particularly spectacular, I would say, “That’s amazing, Emily, you must show this to the customer!” And she would, and of course they would love that, even if you could tell that they didn’t really care, but you know, who isn’t going to be at least a little happy to see some latte art on their latte? Everybody is at least ever so slightly tickled by that. But Granddaddy Snow, for as much as I loved Emily’s latte art, Granddaddy Snow could not stand it, and would say, “If I have to look at Emily’s latte art one more time…” It was actually going to make him snap. And she never detected the sarcasm in his voice, when she would show him her art, and he would say, “Oh wow, looks like latte art!” And then immediately look at me and smile, that kind of smile that implies you are about ready to murder someone. So I would encourage Emily to show her wonderful latte art to either the customer, or Granddaddy Snow, when I felt that he could use some latte art in his life.

The big problem with Emily showing off her latte art and with her discussing anything in her life in general, or telling you about anything ever, is that it involved you looking at something on her phone, sometimes many things on her phone, an extensive, never-ending catalogue of personal photos and videos and social media content. Once you got sucked into that, there was no escaping. But, that’s actually not true. It’s more that after every 5 seconds of talking with Emily, you would then be forced to look at something on her phone, which for Granddaddy Snow was mostly latte art, and he couldn’t stand it, and I couldn’t either. So very quickly, very early on, Emily would talk to me, and say, “Hey Steven, I have to show you something, c’mere.” And I now, wary, would say, “Is it on your phone?” And she would say yes, and I would say no, I’m not looking, and sometimes she would convince me to look, pitching whatever it was that she had for me skillfully enough, catching my interest, but sometimes she would fail, or I simply refused to look at a phone screen in that moment, and I would say, “Just tell me about it. It’s okay. Just tell me in words.” And I remember, this happened many times, but there was one specific instance where she said, there was something I “needed to know”, that it was very important, and I refused to look at her phone, and that she had to just tell me, and she finally caved and told me, that there was a new flavor of Red Bull. I can’t even remember what flavor it was. It was not an extraordinary flavor. And after she told me that, I thought, okay, you literally could just tell me that in a sentence, and you’re trying to get me to watch a video, and so out of curiosity, to see what I could have been missing, I had her show me the video, which was a 26 second Instagram video of a girl holding the can and rotating it. For 26 seconds. Just a can in her hand. Basically, showing that it existed. And that video had 80,000 likes.

You can see why I stopped looking at Emily’s phone.

… TO BE CONTINUED