Do Not Try This At Home, I Am A Professional Coffee-Maker

I didn’t blog yesterday, and I apologize for my laziness. It was my first time to “close” which means it was a late night…actually later than anticipated as SOMEONE was completing the last task of the evening for closing shop which is to empty the mop bucket into the drain (a task so easy that my 6 year old nephew could do it) and SOMEONE pulled the handle up as hard as she could and caused the whole shindig to tip over onto the JUST shined floor of the back storage room. In effect, causing a all-hands-on-deck new cleaning of the back room and everything that got soaked by the dirty water from the bucket (which included MY….I mean HER…pants)… Yes, confession time for a clear conscience, it was me that tipped the bucket (as if you didn’t know) which caused us all to leave about thirty minutes later than necessary.

In the evening shift, I made a discovery- a smile can go a lot further in the evening than it does in the morning or rush hour of afternoon. In the morning, people are too distracted, too many “to do’s” on the invisible list in their brain to really want to pay attention to someone that they are giving orders to. And in the afternoon, people are irritable and often don’t even CARE that you are smiling. But in the evening, people are in this “floating” stage of the day…they are usually more casual and personal with conversation and they notice little things. Everyone seems to have a “chillaxed” vibe in the evening. I like it a lot.

Today was just a normal afternoon shift. I had a lot of time to look over my shift manager information. I even explored a little bit on the world portal for Starbucks on our computer. It is so vast, I am just barely even touching on the knowledge that I can possess from this company. I still have so much to learn about the coffee and the general effect of Starbucks on the local community. You think I’m crazy, but there is a reason that Starbucks is so successful. Once I get to the bottom of it all, I will be extremely jittery from all the coffee, but business savvy beyond belief!!!!

A funny story- I wore a watch for the first time today. It doesn’t work, but it looks great with my outfit. When I pump syrup into a flavored latte, for some reason or lack of skill, I always get a little bit on my wrist. I noticed this the first day when I got home, I had quite a collection of vanilla syrup (the most popular), along with some caramel and cinnamon dolce caked up just above my palm. It’s too high up on my wrist to get cleaned when I wash my hands (and I do wash my hands religiously because I heard a rumor that the coffee beans will stain my fingernails for life and it’s like the whole “your eyes are gonna get stuck like that” thing parent tell kids that cross their eyes).

So, I was on my break, sitting at a table and talking on the phone. I noticed that my watch had goop all over it, and I knew it was syrup, so I licked it. I licked my watch. I thought it was no big deal until I looked over at the table next to mine and this lady was STARING at me like I was crazy. I mean, she was, literally, staring at me because she had seen me lick my watch. Instead of saying, “I spilled syrup on my watch and it’s good tasting” like the a crazy person she already thought I was. I said, “Flavored watches, what next...?” And then I took off because she looked like the kind of woman that would have a kid the age that would want a flavored watch to lick and I didn’t feel like having to make up a store where I got it. That was today. In a nutshell.