I’m out of coffee. As you might imagine, I’m less than amused with that.
     This crappy little sports car, some beat-up T-Bird or something, drives up and down the road in front of my house several times a day. I swear, every time it drives by, it’s blasting “Crazy Bitch“. I like the song — or I used to before they played it six times an hour on the radio — but damn. I’m sure the album has other tracks. Try them out.
     
     Lately, I’ve been coming in to work, and the place is filthy, nothing’s stocked the way it should be, we’re out of things, and the restaurant’s empty. We’ve hardly had any business. I get up front to the coffee counter, which is where all of my clean-ups are — stocking, cleaning, filling ice, whatnot, and nothing’s done. None of this is hard work. A couple of things are vaguely annoying, like folding napkins, but that’s it. You fill ice. You wipe things. You clean things. You set the counter back up. That’s it. It’s easy. And it isn’t getting done. I’m just a little tired of this stuff being shoved off on me.
     I come back on my days off, and it’s obvious that no one has cleaned anything up there in two days. It’s particularly obvious at the coffee machine, which will have two days worth of coffee grounds built up under the water arm, where the filter basket sits. The basket itself will be grimy and brown. The burners are full of coffee stains. Y’know, that thing takes about two minutes to clean, honestly. Coffee filters will be prepped, but the coffee packets themselves won’t be filled. All you have to do is walk twenty steps, fetch a box of coffee packets, walk back up front, pile them in a drawer, and go put the box back. The box is not particularly heavy or anything.
     The ice bin will be nearly empty, which is a slightly more difficult job, if only because the ice buckets are heavy. But you know, last year, when my back was all messed up, I still managed to get the full ice buckets up front, and get the bin full. A few days I had to put the full buckets on a cart and wheel it up, but I did it. There’s no excuse . . . except laziness.
     The pop tower up there is disgusting lately, as is the hot chocolate machine. You have to keep up on those two, because they have sugar elements — hot chocolate mix, pop syrup — you let that build up and it gets nasty and starts growing shit.
     None of this is hard. I mean, I can clean and stock the whole counter area in, oh, maybe forty-five minutes, and only that long because you have to trek all over the restaurant to get stock for everything. (That doesn’t count folding napkins, though. You can fold napkins for long, mind-numbingly boring hours. Nor does it count cutting pie for the pie case up front, but that only needs doing a couple of times a week.)
     And the incessant whining of the people I work with: Nothing’s getting done, I do everything, there’s no customers, I haven’t had a raise . . . and on, and on, and on. Well of course nothing’s getting done — no one is doing their work! And you can’t be doing everything, because nothing has been done when I show up! Aaargh! I haven’t had a raise either, and I’m still doing my junk.

     Friday I got called in for no reason at all. Literally, I sat at the counter and drank coffee for two hours. I could have been enjoying my day off, getting together with my folks, doing something with my family — but no, I get called in. They were short a girl, and basically I got called in so that the cashier on duty wouldn’t have to run around herself if it actually got busy. Yesterday, the girls were all pissy because it actually had gotten a bit busy later on, towards the end of the night, and the cashier had just stood up at the counter, running her mouth at another customer she knew. So, there was my Friday, shot in the ass. Great.

     After getting out of “work” on Friday, I drove down to the other end of town, to the new Starbucks, to get an application. I walked in the door, and lo, they had a table set up, with applications and pens set out, and a sign advertising for baristas and shift supervisors.
     ”Wow. It’s like a sign.” MrJames said when I told this story to Art and him later on.
     ”Well, yes, it’s exactly like a sign. It said ‘Baristas & Shift Supervisors’.” I replied, to much amusement. You don’t get a shot in on MrJames very often. Heh.
     So, I applied, with my resume and cover letter. I have to imagine that I’m more than qualified to be a shift supervisor — that’s what I’ve basically been doing for the last four years. Hopefully Starbucks pays well. They have benefits and a 401K and other perks. (Heh. A coffee shop with perks. I’m so funny.) I’d love to tell my current job to take a long walk off a short pier.
     So, cross your fingers for me. Maybe I’ll get hired in and everything will be wonderful.

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