Thanks a latte

     Sometimes I start writing and after a few dedicated minutes I read over what I've got and.. hate it. I begin to tear it apart (the inner critic's a *itch) The one thing I hate the most in my writing is my whining. My life is not nearly as bad as I make it sound or genuinely think it is at times. For one thing, I have no debt. Another, I am happily married. Another, my family is awesome. Another, I am not allergic to anything-that I know of. I could go on... I think.. wait let me think of one more for good measure. I whine a lot about my job, but as miserable as my job makes me at times, I feel hella important there. Alright, so don't feel sorry for me when I go on and on about what I want to do when I grow up, and how I'm not on the right path, or how lost I am in my labyrinth.

     My work is to serve a huge variety of people a not so huge variety of drinks. I can pour coffee with ease, steam foam with the best, and if you have a question about what to order (this surprises me sometimes) I can actually aid you in choosing- often, with very little to go off of beyond the typical "I want something that has caffeine but doesn't taste like dirt", and I can do all this with a smile. This is the part of the job that is seen by the customers, and according to our comment box- customer's like me. That feels good.
     To my co-workers, I am someone they can depend on when there is a line out the door, when they need help getting their shift covered, and when a strange coffee situation arises they can count on me to, at very least, masterfully improvise. Oh yeah and behind the scenes, I can do really good (or bad but still funny) impressions of our customers like: the guy that just realized he has an hour to finish a paper and truly believes that I can serve him a solution in a 12, 16, or 20 oz. cup, or the guy who has literally asked out every girl that works at my store.. in writing... usually on a napkin.. sometimes a pastry bag, or, the more common customer, that cannot get off of their phone to order, doesn't know the difference between a cappuccino and frappucino (btw BIG difference), just ordered the most UNhealthy thing on the menu to then ask how many calories are in it, or the low talkers that look really annoyed when you ask them to repeat their order yet still will not adjust their volume in any amount when they reiterate. Sorry for bashing. Honestly, for every crappy customer there are usually 2 awesome customers that "see" me (like they way the blue people in Avatar see each other), and about 10 that have no impact on my mood because all they want is their coffee and to get to class on time. (These statistics are complete b.s. but you get it.)
     To my big boss/es, I am a happy, little, blonde girl with excellent customer service skills who does the coffee, pastry, and milk orders well (or well enough), creates schedules and gets shifts covered, who doesn't call to complain about little things, and smiles all damn day long (despite above mentioned customer types).
That's three roles: barista, co-worker, and manager. I am three people every day at this job, and in each position I am in good standing. So what the heck do I really have to complain about.


Awkward story #1  Light or Dark?
My best friend got me a job at Starbucks. She had already been a barista for over a year  (by then you know the coffee world like the back of your hand), and I was working register. Someone asked "which has more caffeine? Light or dark roast coffee?" and I answered "dark." So the customer then chose the dark roast. My friend comes over from the bar to correct me,"Uh, actually the light roast has more caffeine." I think the customer and I said "Oh" in unison. I had already poured the darn cup, and now the customer wants light. Oy vey!- I just want to clear this up. Technically, if you are comparing bean to bean, yes, the light has more caffeine, but the difference in the amount of caffeine is so tiny that I would be surprised if you could even tell (There is more to it than that, but it's something you can google search when you are bored). I re-poured them the light with a smile.

Awkward story #2   Oh, Madison!
My first day at a new coffee shop, despite my past coffee shop work experience, I was nervous-like crazy-shaky-hands-even-though-I-haven't-had-any-coffee-yet nervous- and rusty. It had been almost a year between my Sbux job and this one. So when you are nervous and rusty, they cannot put you on bar or register without worrying about you, so they make you clean. I was asked to clean the counters, and I wanted to do a really good job because I couldn't do a good job on anything else yet.
After I have cleaned the coffee counters to their pristine glory, I decide to clean under the machines. I lift our espresso grinder and before I know what has happened, the floor is covered in espresso beans. Apparently you cannot lift our espresso grinder when their is espresso in it. I was so embarrassed, and at Sbux when you messed up, especially as a newbie, they made you feel awful about it. I waited for someone to sigh in anger or bark at me  to clean it up. Instead I got a laugh- this persons laugh is awesome btw- while my co-worker/ trainer grabbed the broom and started cleaning up. She even went as far as to relate that she had done this before. I must have looked scared and pathetic, because she kept telling me it was okay, not a big deal, that it happens, and cooing me back to reality.


Awkward story # 3  Gaston le Chat

This is not the original, but its
a very close recreation done
by the marvelous Claire Moles.

We have this white board at work, and it's supposed to be for important work related notes but it's a coffee shop so... not too many super important work related notes are left on it. It has become a doodle board more or less. (Or crazy list board-celebrity crushes, annoying customer comments/questions, and what not). Often one person will start drawing, another will add something, and then another, and another. One of our drawings started with a really fat cat, and as the night went on he became a really fat French cat named Gaston who had enough of these annoying customers. He had funny word bubbles, a few expletives were thrown in, and he was even smoking a cig and waving the bird... anyway, when you close it is your job to erase the board. After all we don't want our manager to see the sort of thing that goes on our important work related note board unless it's an important work related note.
It didn't get erased.. Thank goodness the boss found it funny. She didn't even erase him.
She did erase the expletives and the middle finger though.


     I love being a barista- for the most part.
     I love the people I work with. We are allies. We can get through the day together. We can share a laugh. We can double bar. We can make polo shirts and aprons look cool (no? oh well).
     I love the people I serve. They need coffee as badly as I do. They smile. They joke when I blotch the coffee script (ex. asking if someone wants room for cream in their frappuccino). They say they missed me when I was in Oregon and that they're happy I am back.
     I like (love's a strong word) my bosses. After a truly hard day or week, they assure me I have done well. They congratulate me when I exceed expectations. They have freed me from wearing the polo shirt of lameness (free dress = yay yay yay!- dorky dance included). They appear more and more human. They even curse and swear when their day is rough or they've blotched something (that's right, they blotch things too)

     I still do not want this to be my career, but I am definitely fine with it for now. After all, I still want to learn how to do a rosetta on a latte.

Marilyn and Me

     I do not remember with perfect clarity when my obsession with Marilyn Monroe came about. I was probably 7 or 8 and had decided that I wanted to be like her, because she was so pretty and likable. I hadn't even seen her in a movie when I had decided that. I remember my mom telling me that the mole on my chin was a beauty mark and someone saying that Marilyn Monroe had a beauty mark too, which made me feel special- actually more than special. It made me feel beautiful. 

My Marilyn themed
dress and hair... and yes,
that's Matt. We have been
together that long.

     I have to take a moment to reflect on that. Yes, I remember feeling beautiful, before puberty struck. Then came acne, and hips, and boobs, and a bunch of crap magazines with pictures of celebrities with waists as big my wrist, and... well I kind of didn't feel so beautiful anymore. That lasted a while (most of high school actually, which of course felt like forever), and the sugary caffeine-loaded frappucinos from Starbucks paired with lots of fast food was a big step in the wrong direction.
     During that period of my life that I sometimes think of as my dark ages (especially when my dad loads the most awful pictures from those years onto our digital picture frame for friends and family to see), I had a growing collection of Marilyn memorabilia that included posters, two shirts, and a clock. I kind of started to idolize her. Or at least the image of her. In my senior year, I even bought a dress and styled my hair to look as Marilyn as possible for prom. 

     I may have had a collection and all, but I didn't really know much about the woman. I mean I knew that her real name was Norma Jeane, she was an actress and a sex symbol, sang happy birthday to JFK in a sultry voice, that diamonds were her best friend, and that she died young from some sort of drug over dose. I could say that I know more about her now because I've read Wikipedia entries about her, did my fair share of Googling, read magazine articles, and watched a number of her movies- as well as My Week with Marilyn.Yet I still feel like I don't know who she was. There's a lot about her laid out clean and clear, but beyond her stardom, her image as a sex symbol, her way with the camera (clothed or not), she remains a mystery. Marilyn Monroe was really a pseudo identity. Norma Jeane was sort of... lost to Hollywood. So I wonder what it would have been like to be that girl.
     Almost fifty years after her death as I was placing my groceries on the check stand, her face on the cover of Vanity Fair held my attention with a force as could not be ignored. I made the purchase (with zero buyer's remorse- can't say that when I buy In Touch, Star, or People ) and instantly flipped to the pictures... I mean article.
After I finished reading, I realized she was human and vulnerable yet still beautiful. Always beautiful. The obsession I had in childhood has sort of evolved. There's something about her looks, her smile, her energy that is captivating. But it's that realness that I like so much about her now. (That and she makes femininity seem like a super power.) It's probably not right to idolize anyone, but I definitely think that both Marilyn Monroe and Norma Jeane are worth remembering.

"I didn't pay much attention to the whistles and whoops, in fact, I didn't quite hear them. I was full of a strange feeling, as if I were two people. One of them was Norma Jeane from the orphanage who belonged to nobody; the other was someone whose name I didn't know. But I knew where she belonged; she belonged to the ocean and the sky and the whole world."-Marilyn Monroe

I spent Saturday night with Matt at the Getty. We Missed the Kings game for some romance, and hey, they still won. We have been married just over six months now, which Brings our total relationship time close to 8 years (no small feat for a 23 and 25 year old). And somehow, marriage has made a world of difference. First, it feels like something has been accomplished (there's a big sigh of relief), then it feels like I am looking back on a dream when I think about my wedding and honeymoon, and then the start up, which was perhaps not so dream like (We moved to Oregon for 3 months but our job search had no avail. Then we came back to California searching for work, back in with my parents -don't worry we still love each other.. and my parents, back to work, and now looking for apartments-some great and some not so great- on the weekends.)

It is strange, though, to go from seeing each other all day every day to seeing each other a couple of hours with only the weekends to fully spend together. Maybe that's what being grown up is all about. That seems unfair though. It would be more accurate to say that is what working full time is all about.

Anyway getting back to the Getty (which is no longer free after 5 pm on Saturdays), Matt and I succeeded in having some peaceful, romantic, wonderful alone time at one of my favorite places in Los Angeles. I did the unthinkable by asking if we could leave the tv screen during NHL playoffs, especially when our team was playing, and Matt did the most beautiful thing a husband could do. He turned it off and took me out.