Coffee Shop

Working as a barista I heard several phrases that cut me and then dug deep into the nodes of my brain. They never entered my vocabulary because I am not that brave. I remember verisimilitude and germane and salient from vocab lessons in 7th grade Study Skills class and I use these often, sneaking them into conversation to make myself sound erudite. Oh, that is a coffee shop word. We, like any shop worth its latte foam, had a chalk sandwich board. Problem is my hand writing is a ten car pile up into a burning factory awful. "It looks retarded," my wife once said. "I will never forget your handwriting" says a former coworker on Facebooks and she knows how to decipher words from bad notes left in the warehouse.

But on the sandwich board I wrote "Tyger tyger burning bright, in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye, could frame they fearful symmetry." Its a lovely bit of poem by William Blake. I decided to scrawl this on the board (Note last time I wrote on the board I wrote "Have a Latte of Labor Day" and this got sneered out of existence by the coffee intellegista. Karens with advanced degrees!) and it tickled the fancy of some passing men* to say "What an erudite sign"

"Why the sad puss?" That's another one. And, wait, woah. That is some ballsy stuff to say to Chelsea over here running the counter. I would be so embarrassed and this is also sexual harassment, right? "Oh, it means face."

No, the fuck it does not. Really? ***Checks notes*** I will be damned it does mean that but c'mon you knew what you were saying. It caught us both off guard and jacked up the serving line. 

"I will take a peach cappuccino. Like at the gas station."

Wait, what? Excuse me, ma'am but we don't have peach and I don't recommend that. I tried Pineapple Lattes for a while when I was trying to be the "in crowd" and it curdled the milk. 

"Ok, well then strawberry"

No, I refuse. Note the gas station was the Valero in Jacksonville, NY, a town so tiny it wasn't even a village but instead the gas station, a post office, and eleven houses plopped against soybean fields. Its a hamlet I would say, remembering another study skills word, but I think those would feature some actual leadership. Just saying this was not a hotbed of cutting edge cuisine but instead a place where the gas station laid out every Monin syrup they could get by the sugar and creams. For iced teas, I guess?

"My name is Summer. There is nothing funnier than naming a girl from upstate New York, Summer."

This is true. I am sorry, Summer.

"I can tell you are mad at me and my feedback. But I need you to learn how to foam better."

Yes, I am mad because I am getting my balls busted for not drawing a perfect fern on the latte. Have you seen my hand writing?! Have you seen our customers? One guy is called, no joke, Dan the Communist Painter. Did I mention I am good at the register? Like never even a penny off. And I washed the windows. You got time to lean you got time to clean, right?

Source: Pexels, Chevanon Photography

*Channeling a bit of Jane Austen