Amateur Barista, Professional Psychologist

By now, all of you are, i'm sure, aware of the fact that i work at a coffee shop. This coffee shop is arguably the best purveyor of espresso drinks in the downtown area. Whether this is the case or not, many people think this, and in thinking this, they are either incline to visit or not. For example, I feel extremely self-conscious when suggesting to my friends that we go to my coffee shop as opposed to any other. I still do make this suggestion, and my friends are good sports about it. All of them will get their coffee and they'll say that it's good, or it sucks, or 'who cares, Dude, you're such a fag;' they are not the kind of people who are drawn to this place.

There are whole handfuls of people, however, that love this shop. They should, I guess. It's a good coffee shop. It looks really nice and the people are nice too. There is one couple who comes in everyday, before or after their run (they go jogging together!), and order huge lattes with condensed milk or caramel, and tons of whipped cream, but fuck it, we love them. Everyone loves them. They're great.

One of the things that is great about them is that they accept the relationship between service person and customer. They are the customer, etc. There are some, however, that reject or misunderstand this relationship. These are the people that when asked how they are doing, respond, "terrible today, my dog is dying." I understand that that shit is tragic, it hurts, but i'm a fucking coffee guy. I care, i've been through it, but it's none of my business what your dog is doing. Even if i asked it still isn't my business. Mostly, these people don't play that nice little game that lends itself to my sanity; that game where i pretend i'm not hung-over and you pretend you're emotionally stable. These people encourage me to pursue lines of questioning, hoping upon hope that i will nibble on a juicy piece of gossip that might lead to stories of drug addiction, sex, death, whatever. Anyway, it's just really fucking weird. It's kinda sad. It also kinda makes me feel like we're all sliding down some weird, unforgiving slope, where once at the bottom, we will find ourselves subtly begging our service men and women to ask about our day so that we can answer them honestly, hook them with our feelers, and suck their life-force.

So fuck that. I'm moving to New York to seek my fortune and when i'm rich, or we're all rich, or we're all poor and alex is rich, we will find a city, a house, and a barbeque near one another and live like kings.