I am not an idiot.  

J, don’t think I don’t notice your snide comments about my dyed hair, and pierced nose. and as for your Americano? It is hot water an a shot of espresso. No it is not too difficult to grasp, but I’d love it if you ordered without the “can you even handle that?” or “Is that too difficult for you to understand?” “Do you need me to repeat my order? wow? you don’t?” followed with you throwing your money on the counter and walking away.

The news story about a whale who drowned her trainer in the middle of a performance suddenly springs to mind; he grabbed her by her feet, and dragged her to the bottom and wouldn’t let go. Here’s the thing: I’m convinced that whales’ domination of our planet is hindered only by their lack of opposable thumbs. They are intelligent fucking animals, so why the needless act of murder? I don’t know for sure, but I strongely suspect it had something to do with being pandered to. Why else make such a spectacle? The whale could have done it during training, not while families were watching. Years of jumping through hoops and doing mindless tricks finally caught up to him. 

Why am I telling you this story? The point is, Do not disrespect intelligence of intelligent creatures.

But back to the Americano. 

I’m not necessarily saying I’m want to grab you by your ankles, drag you down deep ocean until you can’t breathe and demand that you question my intelligence then, but I’d be lying if I didn’t dream about taking justice the way that whale did. Just once.

Dear J,

An Americano, is actually a drink that I can handle.

-D

Barista’s make terrible enemies. I always preface this story by saying I had been watching a lot of Dexter at the time, but I’m not sure if that excuses me. My judgement was certainly a bit skewed. BFP got a decaf coffee with steamed milk. Sometimes he would get five of these in a day, as he sat at our tables for hours on end typing away on his computer. BFP was also a homophobic, racist asshole and treated the employees like dirt. It took a while of tolerating his horrible commentary before I started to feel the urge to climb out of my cage like a tiger and maul him to death. But society generally frowns on that, so I had to get creative. Did I mention I had been watching Dexter a whole lot?

And so I slowly built up his caffeine tolerance for a month, adding in more and more “splashes” of regular to his coffee. I even made a point to joke with him about it (“oh no, did I accidentally pour from the regular spout? Wouldn’t that be the worst?”), to make sure he didn’t have any underlying heart conditions (he didn’t). And that was good. Because I didn’t want to kill him, I wanted him alive. I would wait until he turned away, and as I steamed his milk I’d start to pull shots of espresso. The game became ‘how many can I pull before he turns around again?’ It got to the point where he was getting (unbeknownst to him) a large fully caffeinated coffee with 3 added shots of espresso and steamed milk. Five times a day. 

Then I switched him back to decaf. He was itchy and had the shakes and didn’t know why. 

Yeah. I wouldn’t know anything about that.  

Dear BFP, 

I wish I could say I did this to make you a better person, but truth is you will never know it was your racist, homophobic ways that resulted in your month-long caffeine bender and subsequent withdraw. I really did it because you are a terrible person and I wanted something bad to happen to you. 

Love, 

Your bitter barista

-L

But being a barista does something to you. It’s being a drug dealer without the respect or fear. People yell at us, tip poorly, have unreasonable demands, and on top of that most of us don’t get paid more than minimum wage. 

I watched a man tear a coworker of mine apart, reducing her to tears, over 10 cents. You have to build up armor to this sort of behavior, and thats why baristas come across as snobby and bitter: we have to be. Customers are caffeine deprived and view us as standing in the way of their fix; people are always in hurry, upset about having a full workday ahead of them, or worn out because they’ve been working all day. 

I used to joke that being behind the counter is like being in a cage at a zoo; you can stare at us, mock us, and do whatever you want, but we are still stuck back there without the means to exact revenge. 

But thats not entirely true…

I remember when I saw on the news one day about those boys who were mauled by the tiger they were taunting at the zoo. He had scaled the walls of his cage, hunted them down, and took revenge. 

Good for you, tiger. I know that feeling. I’ve never climbed out of my cage and mauled anyone to death, but I’m not going to lie and say I haven’t thought long and hard about it. But instead we have to all be a bit more subtle than that…

-L & D