By Maude Perkins

Even amidst all my misanthropic haranguing and violent meditation, I am constantly grateful for the positive self-reflection that my elite customers inspire. As I’ve said before, my own sanity is certainly more apparent when up against the specially-minded few who practically hyperventilate when the espresso bar is temporarily out of order. When I encounter these fragile characters, I am just thankful to have real life problems.
Also, when observing my store’s rich, pancake-assed customer base, I feel further fortunate that I don’t have tons of money distorting my mind into thinking that half the shit they think matters, matters. The money would be welcome of course, just not the distortion. Each and every day, I witness great moments in yuppie prioritizing. And if yuppies can’t teach us all a thing about values, you may as well tell me that Santa Claus doesn’t exist and take away Christmas and all the presents too, you Grinch bastard.
Take, for example, the lessons in accepting responsibility that I learn from observing the mom and boogery kid rush that happens sporadically throughout the weekdays. It is during these rushes that a yuppie mother truly shines, demonstrating what great work she has done with her kids. During these mom conventions, it is evident what matters most in their lives: town gossip, reality television gossip, Oprah gossip, skim lattes, shopping gossip, hair/nail gossip, and, oh yeah, their children.

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Posted on December 7, 2006

By Maude Perkins

Now that Thanksgiving 2006 is but a glowing, tryptophanic wino reminiscence, Christmas is officially around the chronological corner! Aww, hell – November may as well be over, let’s just turn the calendar now so we can see the exciting announcement typed permanently into the 25th box!
Knock off all that unmarketable thankfulness bullshit; it’s time to celebrate warm tidings and peace on Earth – with just a dash of religious undertone in place to anchor and justify the actual horror of what Christmas has become, including the tragic irony of such peaceful tidings in the first hateful place! I mean, can’t you just feel the love knowing that holiday shopping is now a high-risk undertaking, sometimes resulting in human casualty? God, I love peace.

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Posted on November 23, 2006

By Maude Perkins

Boy am I glad I wrote all that nice gooey stuff last week because I don’t think I’ve ever had a more trying time in terms of restraining my tongue and wishing I owned an automatic weapon than I have since then. Yesterday alone, I uttered the words “I’m going to shoot up this place” no less than once every fifteen minutes. Luckily, I work in a coffee shop and not an airport, or else I’d be writing (or not) from a torture room right now, which, don’t get me wrong, my editor would more than encourage for the sake of fresh unparalleled material.
Alas, I am just a weaponless barista, teetering on the sanity fence, ready to fall clear off the next time I am expected to read the mind of some yuppie scum on a cell phone who mouths her order to me and then gets pissed when the drink is made incorrectly. Silly of me not to assume that when someone mouths “Grande Mocha,” they really mean, “Venti non-fat, no-whip, three-pumps of mocha Mocha.” This may seem comical now, but at the time I wanted so badly to kick this woman in the fucking head. Repeatedly.

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Posted on November 19, 2006

By Maude Perkins

I realize that more often than not, I am ranting about the gloomy side of working for a corporate coffee chain. I may have mentioned before that the customers are not always the friendliest, nor even often bearable, for example. Perhaps I have referred to them as “assholes” once or twice. I even recall complaining about my district managers and some of the company’s policies with which I may not entirely agree.
But despite my sanity-sucking hatred of corporatism, fast food, the general public, and, worse yet, the combination of the three in harmonious capitalism delight, I really do have a soft spot for my job. In sheer anticipation of the madness about to ensue now that the holiday season is officially underway, I want to reflect, even if only briefly, on the few enjoyable elements of my job.

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Posted on November 12, 2006

By Maude Perkins

It is officially time again to unlock the hard liquor cabinet. And leave it unlocked.
At least that’s my approach to the next two months of holiday fucking bliss. Hopefully I’ll be just lucid enough to remember the safe codes, but just hazy enough to forget it all ever happened by February.

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Posted on November 5, 2006

By Maude Perkins

My struggle with catering to the whims of every belligerent customer who comes through the door reached comic proportions the other day when a patron especially sensitive to breast cancer came in for a skim latte and left in a huff. How was I supposed to know?

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Posted on November 1, 2006

By Maude Perkins

I am out of the muck. I have suffered through the last of the workshops, role plays, ritual whale sacrifices, and workbook scenarios that challenge me to solve crises such as the one in which my imaginary customer, “Jose Espresso,” chips his tooth on a nutty pastry and for some reason comes crying to me about it.

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Posted on October 21, 2006

By Maude Perkins

My java retraining continued today with a five-hour workshop at corporate headquarters. This class was specially designed for new employees, and focused on memorizing the various prongs of the company’s mission statement. I was the only veteran barista in a class with ten doe-eyed coffee virgins; all painfully more willing and excited than the next to be cooped in that room for five straight foodless hours. I could smell their fresh naive blood across the room – it smelled earthy and nutty, with a full rich body and a dull acidity. Pairs well with . . . brainwashing.

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Posted on October 16, 2006

By Maude Perkins

Almost exactly two years ago, I hung up my apron for what I assumed was good, and left behind the caffeinated world I’d come to know. I bid adieu to nearly three years working for a worldwide corporate coffee chain. My departure was bitter and hostile – not toward the company as much as my manager, whose job I did for a year while he was out schtupping some hussy from another store on his three-hour lunch breaks.

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Posted on October 9, 2006

By J. Bird

Well, I’ve done it all. I’ve worked. And I’ve not worked. And I can’t say either one really fulfilled my expectations.

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Posted on October 5, 2006