weak nights

The Truth

Gillette Sensor, We Are Through

No, I will not "calm down."  You have abrased my tender flesh for the last time.

“Self-adjusting twin blades that automatically adjust to every curve and safely respond to every detail of your skin.”

Uh huh.  Bull.  Shit.  I've been loyal, but this is ridiculous and I will not longer be drawn in by your vicious, follicle-irritating lies.  I need you like I need a fish on a bicycle.  AKA, I don't. 

No, I really don't think things would be any different with SensorExcel, "microfin skin guard" or no.  And every member of the Mach family is entirely too wide for... down there.

It's over.  Go cry yourself to sleep.

Howdy, Partner: Now Bend Over

For two years, Kelsey McConnell worked at a popular coffee chain.  This is her story.

 

Previous to working at [redacted], I had: cleaned trash cans, floor mats and menu boards at a Taco Bell; been paid $2/hour for babysitting a nine year old who chased me around the kitchen wielding a knife; and done time behind a deli counter in Lake Tahoe, where vacationing San Franciscans would order absurdly complex sandwiches for children who really wanted American cheese on white bread, and who looked at me like I said I’d invented the internet when I nodded at their UCLA hats saying I’d gone there too.   

So how hard could slinging coffee be, right?  I drank enough of the stuff and [redacted] did have that 100 Best Places to Work decal in their windows.  Plus, I’d realized that my degree in American Literature and Culture was not immediately going to provide fiscal success and I needed a paycheck.

Celebrity Sightings: Starstruck at [redacted].

For two years, Kelsey McConnell worked at a popular coffee chain.  This is her story.

Geena Davis is really tall and, while polite, has a huge head.  Officer Raineesha Williams from Reno 911 gave me a congratulatory "um Hm!" when I remembered her drink.  I happen to know that a number of commercial actors do not, in fact, have the conditions they profess to suffer from on the TV.  Jack White gets soy milk.  The guy who played Eddie on 6 Feet Under used his own head shot as a screen saver on his laptop, and he hit on every woman who passed him in way that said, “I’m not a gay, I only play one on TV.”  It's Pat was truly gracious after I made an inane comment regarding Nora Jones and she seemed like a pretty awesome mother. 

Around the same time a co-worker lent me his copy of Freaks and Geeks, Busy Philipps started coming in almost daily for a medium drip coffee.  Unlike the majority of our regular customers, she was an impressively regular person.  Word behind the counter was that she had dated a Barista.  During the morning, we would chat about the sugar content of the low-fat muffins and when I got off work, I’d pop in whatever disc of Freaks and Geeks I was on, and she would appear on my TV.

While my Busy Philipps period felt bizarrely post-modern, the only person who made me feel physically overcome with excitement in two years of working in "high profile stores" was Courtney Love.  I've never really been a fan; she was good in The People VS. Larry Flynt, right?  But I was totally star-struck when Courtney Love walked up to the counter. 

Her face was pretty weird looking, and I tingled with the anticipation of the scene that was about to unfold, the craziness that she could pull from her proverbial hat.  She ordered a latte, I rang her up, she paid in cash and left a reasonable tip.  And then we both waited as her drink was prepared, Courtney sitting at a table, me pressed against the counter.  She got her drink when it was ready, took a sip and walked out the door.  She didn't spit on anyone or throw a chair, she didn't even say a swear.  Anne Heche made twenty times the scene that Courtney Love made.  Still, in the midst of some mundane task at [redacted], I often recalled the excitement I felt when I saw her first walk through those glass double doors.

Just Say No: No, Seriously.

For two years, Kelsey McConnell worked at a popular coffee chain.  This is her story.

While I worked the night shift because it didn't interfere with my substitute teaching, many of my compatriots worked the same because it didn't interfere with their recreational drug regimens. After 4 pm, the walk-in fridge was basically a lactating humidor. Someone was always selling and I blame Group Thought for my maiden voyage on shrooms.

While that experience gave me little more than a profound appreciation for Badly Drawn Boy's album Bewilderbeast and the revelation that the world and all of humanity is a series of interlocking machines, my co-workers' reminisces of past use taught me so so much.

There was Walter, who said that after the FIRST time he did PCP, the friend he did it with jumped to his death from a high rise window. After working with Walter's sister at another store, I asked him who was older. He replied simply, "I don't know" and went back to cutting the tigers out of a roll of Siddhartha Blend stickers.

And then there was Mecq'ah.

My mother warned me against dropping acid (and unwashed hair) by invoking a film strip she'd seen in high school. It showed an aged hippie wandering aimlessly, plagued by constant flashbacks. In doomed tones, the audio reel said these flashbacks would torment him for the rest of his now useless life.

Mecq'ah had done enough LSD to make that PSA a reality. After a co-worker read his birth name on the schedule, she asked how he'd arrived at "Mecq'ah." "You know how a ketchup bottle says 54," he said. "It's kind of like that, plus my Grandmother was Cajun."

One hot summer night, with a line of customers to the door, Mecq'ah stopped all the blenders and doubled over with laughter. After a moment, he composed himself and explained, "they are so adorable, and so funny."

Surprisingly, I found we had a mutual acquaintance: a friend of mine he'd worked with years before at a non-[redacted] job. He spoke with supreme tenderness about how she'd pick him up at his shelter and take him out for long drives and hot meals. He said he'd always wanted to tell her how much that meant to him. Hoping for a Hallmark moment, I told all this to my friend. "All I remember is I had to fire him for stealing and now I still see him everywhere," she responded.

A year after I left [redacted], I was walking down my block when I heard someone screaming my name. I turned to see Mecq'ah hanging out the window of a passing BMW SUV, flailing his arms in my direction. I was startled to see him so close to my home, but took comfort in the fact that I was about to move to a new apartment, one Mecq'ah had never visited. But late one night, months after I had moved, he left me a voicemail saying I should go roll up my car windows, because it had started to rain. I figured it was another flashback, until I walked to my car and realized he was right.

Previously:
Bad Santa: Bad, Bad Santa.
Just Have It Your Way, You Expletive Expletive
The Eye of the Siren

Bad Santa: Bad, Bad Santa.

For two years, Kelsey McConnell worked at a popular coffee chain.  This is her story.

He was christened Bad Santa on account of his full white beard, round belly and penchant for sweater vests. Well, sweater vest. Unlike the woman who made the entire block smell like stale urine, Bad Santa always paid. With crisp bills pulls from a manila envelope, folded and tucked under one filthy arm. And he always seemed to have enough for coffee and sometimes enough for an entire Ralph's birthday cake, which he would bring with him into the cafe and enjoy with his beverage.

One day, he came in and went straight to the bathroom. He stayed in there a long time, but we were preoccupied with a late morning rush. When the line had cleared, I handed Newbie a rag and bottle of sanitizer and told him to go spot clean the bathroom. He returned to the counter seconds later looking like a PTSD case.

His facial expression was so suffused with horror that I was convinced he had seen more than the usual bathroom grossness. So, I grabbed a co-worker and we went to investigate. We walked into the bathroom to find a thick line of blood smeared waist high around the entire perimeter, more blood on the floor and toilet and the sink filled with bloody paper towels. My coworker downed three successive shots of espresso, put on several pairs of plastic gloves and two aprons and she cleaned the shit out of that bathroom with her own mixture of sanitizer, bleach and tile cleaner.

Previously:
Just Have It Your Way, You Expletive Expletive
The Eye of the Siren

Just Have It Your Way, You Expletive Expletive

For two years, Kelsey McConnell worked at a popular coffee chain.  This is her story.

In the barista business, you come to dread the sentence, "Can I show you what I mean?" With those white cups in their eager hands, customers feel empowered to mime all manner of requests. And while their creativity is noted, it is not appreciated.

Drink orders speak to you. A sudden switch to decaf says, "I'm pregnant!" Half soy milk, half low-fat milk, one shot regular, half shot of decaf, two pumps sugar free vanilla syrup and whipped cream says, "Hey, I'm a fucking asshole."

That was the drink I made every day for a successful realtor on the Westside. She was very thin. Like Karen Carpenter thin. And when her trainer gave her the tragic news that she had gained one pound, she stormed the counter accusing me of messing with her soy to cow milk ratio.

Interestingly, [company name redacted] doesn't actually order "low-fat milk." They order non-fat and full-fat milk and to make low-fat milk, the barista combines the two in equal proportion. Adding soy to the mix does mean making a third milk recalibration. Well, Skeletor the Realtor could see that my degree had failed to equip me with the concept of thirds and she was gracious enough to make sure I got me some education on the subject.

I once heard Barry Levinson order a PA to get him "a medium, ice blended coffee, not too much mocha syrup, blended twice and scanned for large ice fragments (reblended if necessary), whipped cream on top, if it wasn't runny." I heard him say those words and thought, "that man has a very small… sense of hubris."

The Eye of the Siren

For two years, Kelsey McConnell worked at a popular coffee chain.  This is her story.

Being Irish, I can make a night out of whiskey, potatoes and spinning yarns. With the village children gathered at my knee, I tell tales of my years working as a barista at [name redacted to protect The Man]-- Tales that leave them squealing with delight, until they sober up and ask if they will suffer a similar fate after they graduate from college. And then I laugh and say, "yes, yes you will. If you major in American Literature."

But after I impress upon them that the liberal arts breed poverty, I reassure them that working at a [redacted] can be an enriching experience in its own right. From coworkers' diverse walks of life, the desires and shameful secrets of paying customers and a bathroom accessible to the mentally ill homeless, I gained enough wisdom to fill a pyramid...

The Castaway: Free Coffee and Street Alchemy.

Vagrants tend not to offer many personal details, so we baristas developed our own names for many of the homeless regulars. The Castaway looked basically like his namesake: tall and very thin, long crazy hair, clothes in tatters. I would see him walking a wide loop around the Fairfax/Melrose area, eye fixed forward and otherwise expressionless.

Without fail, he dropped a fistful of dirt and grass into the coffee that we would give him sans charge. The only day that I ever heard him say anything other than "free sample" was the day he brought in his own cup and tilted it forward so I could see that there was a small flower in the bottom. It was pretty, really, its bright yellow petals and green stem against the white of the cup.