A tedious argument of insidious intent

There are good days, and there are not-so-good days.

Sunday was a not-so-good day. I mean, it was good. Nothing bad happened. (I was at work.) No one was rude or anything, no one complained about me being slow, no one said anything rude or anything like that. It just...

Sunday was the hottest day of the year so far. I don't do well in heat - I don't do well in extreme temperatures, period, but at least I can bundle up with cold weather. In heat... well. The coffee stand where I work is wonderfully insulated and retains heat beautifully... on hot days. On hot days it's like a bloody greenhouse. On cold days, it's a refrigerator. It's BRILLIANT, right?

So on Sunday I was working a seven hour shift, in 90+ degree weather (probably 100 in the stand, I should bring a thermometer of some kind one of these days), by myself, and the patronage was on par with the 5:20am commuter ferry. Somewhere in between the 5:20 and 6:20. FOR SIX HOURS. (One hour for closing.) And yes, tips were insanely good, but ambient stress levels were NOT.

Granted, this was through no fault of the customers. They were all wonderful - most of them were fine, just getting coffee and moving on, you know? A few were complicated but still fine. A handful were beautiful wonderful human beings who laughed at my 'I am stressed and worn out and trying to be quirky and personable' attempts at humour, asked concernedly if I'd had a break, sounded mildly indignant that I was there alone (not in a 'You are slow hurry up' way, in a 'You need backup, this is too much for one person' way), and/or were generally lovely people in some way shape or form. I absolutely adore the clientele who come through the place where I work. They're all fantastic (well, the overwhelming majority are).

It was just... have you ever had a day where you felt like you couldn't catch up no matter how hard you tried? You weren't necessarily falling behind, but you started out a bit short and couldn't quite catch back up no matter what? Yeah that was Sunday. Add to it the fact that I really hadn't eaten anything, the fact that it was much much hotter than I can comfortably deal with, the fact that I'm still defencive from the time I was 45 minutes late and the other time I completely forgot about a mandatory class and the OTHER time I almost didn't have my food handler's permit on time...

So yes Sunday was crazy and hectic and somewhat intensely stressful.

So that's the not-so-good day.

I wish I could think of a good day off the top of my head. Everything lately has been full of so many mixed feelings. The other day when I posted about the woman who said she'd follow me if/when I leave my current job? That day ended with yet another lecture on how my room is a 'shithouse' and I think I ended up online until way too late just to try to erase that feeling of worthlessness.

And then there were just Days and nothing really stood out

And then I'm currently running on less than five hours' sleep, no caffeine, and no food (I should go eat something like SOON), and a reiteration of the nicest thing that's ever been said to me.

At work this morning, I didn't get 'MY' window (I was stuck MAKING the drip coffee, that window usually stresses me out like no other, but today it was pretty alright) but I DID get to end up NEAR 'my' window during the rush before the 8:45 ferry, and LO AND BEHOLD my lovely friend came through and she had a very pretty blue turquoise-ish looking necklace on and she laughed and said she likes 'our' morning routine and I thanked her for what she said last Wednesday and she said that she meant it. No matter what industry I go into, where I end up working, what I end up doing.

But now I am tired and crashing and waiting for my cousin to call me back (phone tag FTW) about tomorrow/Thursday and woo.

Off to go eat.

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

(I struggled to find an appropriate quote for this; most of the poetry I know off the top of my head is actually insanely depressing or introspective or at the very least moves me to mild depression. I'm still not happy with the one I chose, but it's Prufrock and Prufrock is almost always applicable - and it mentions coffee, which is one of the focal points of this post.)


I'm not sure how to preface this, other than please bear with this massive text block. I know I've neglected this blog somewhat of late, and I do apologise for that (sorry, all zero people who actually read this) (seriously if you read this, comment or something or email me to let me know you exist? I am reachable at shisler.grace@ymail.com), but I'd like to share something that happened today that affected me very deeply.

So I work at a coffee shop, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, and I have done for… oh almost 11 months oh wow. And for most of the morning shifts I worked for the first… eight months? I worked at the same window - doing brewed coffee, tea, and food. That side is only open from about 4:30 ‘til 8:45. (It’s not-so-secretly my favourite window, still, to work.) Once in a while I get it again, which is nice, because the people who come through there are the ones I recognise most readily.

Another thing that happens when I’m at work is that I try to mention when people look nice or have nice smiles or something that stands out about them or what they’re wearing. I mean, we all know what it’s like to put effort into our appearance and have no one comment, right? It’s frustrating and you wonder why you bother since obviously it doesn’t matter. I know that I’ve always thought to myself when people have obviously made a bit of an effort, or even if they haven’t when they look nice, and since I started working at CC I decided that I was going to tell people. I’m just a barista, after all, people aren’t going to be like ‘Hey you’re that weird person who commented on my -article of clothing- *weird look*’. And if I can make someone smile when they get their coffee, then I’ve done my job.

So I got ‘my’ window this morning, and there’s a few faces I try to look for - people who have good reactions to compliments, people I have ongoing conversations with, people I try to make a little extra effort for, people I have good rapport with, etc. There’s this one woman who comes through for the 8:45 ferry who I find to be very cute. If someone ever told me I looked like her, I would be extremely flattered. She’s got short brunette hair, cropped to about her jawline, a heart-shaped face, pretty eyes (can’t remember what colour, the sun was in my eyes this morning), and the coolest dark-magenta-maroon-burgundy-wine-coloured glasses frames. She also has one of the more flattering reactions when I tell her she looks nice (which she always does, pretty much, I don’t see a lot of skuzzy-looking people on commuter boats).

This morning she came through and saw me and before I could even say anything aside from ‘Good morning!’ all happy because I like talking to her (she talks BACK and there is CONVERSATION, I LOVE conversation with people in the mornings), she told me that she’d decided if she saw me she was going to let me know that if I ever leave CC for whatever reason (people move on, and all) that she would follow me to wherever I ended up working as a ‘devoted customer’.

This happened at like 0830 this morning (it's almost 1500 now) and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m STILL blushing.

This is without a doubt the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me EVER. Telling me that she would change her habits and patterns of movement JUST to have me as her barista? Do you KNOW how flattering that is?? I’m still giddy and I am so insanely pleased and it is SO nice to know that people like seeing me.

I mean. I’m not gonna be all self-deprecating and ‘I suck I don’t matter no one would notice if I was just GONE’ because it’s not one of those days (partially thanks to this young woman). But, I’m just ME. I don’t feel like I’m anything particularly spectacular or noticeable or out of the ordinary. Yeah, I try to make people feel good, and I try to get them to start the day with a smile, but that’s just my job. (Even if my coworkers kind of laugh at me for how over-the-top I can get sometimes) It’s how I feel people should be, and I don’t see people decidedly NOT doing it, so I don’t feel like I’m doing anything special really. I’m not doing anything that anyone else couldn’t necessarily do BETTER. If I left my job for whatever reason, maybe a few people would ask after me, but I wouldn’t expect them to do and I would be surprised if people actually DID.

So to hear that I’m enough of a positive aspect of this woman’s life that she would voluntarily seek me out if I changed jobs, is just so utterly overwhelmingly flattering and I hope she knows that she gave me the best compliment anyone ever could.