She worked at a cafe that was bad at being a cafe, and she was bad at working there. It was always out of either food or coffee, carried no espresso, which is what most everyone wanted, had no toaster, was in heinous violation of the health code, frequently mice would run across the counter and occasionally across the floor. There was no front or back room, just a stall with a metal counter and a metal door that got rolled down at night. She kept a legal pad behind the desk, and every time a customer did something upsetting, she wrote it down on a list covered in water stains with the "lessons" scrawled across the top in a micro-point pen.
lessons
- don't talk about god
- don't make it obvious that you enjoy being served
- don't make it obvious that you really really like the attention of a young female service employee.
She stole a great deal of food and occasionally a carton of almond milk for home. She was remarkably chatty and amicable, often asking the graduate students about their theses and home lives, except that like clockwork, at noon everyone who approached the bar became a personal affront to her attempt to become an artist, to read her book, to do whatever work she shamelessly kept up on her laptop below the iPad which functioned as a register.
She thought -- or thought aloud to herself, thinking it would be a good line to write -- that coffee should brings us together, rather historically it has, but instead, there are those who get a Dunkin' Donuts $3.25 jumbo black coffee in the morning, there are those who get a 7.25 almond milk cappuccino at the blue bottle up the block, and the utter lack of crossover between these clienteles is emblematic of a much larger class issue, class alienation, rather...
"Hi, what can I get going for you today?"
The architecture grad student starts telling her how he is writing a thesis based on Jaques Derrida's theory of non-space. She asks him how you can build a building about non-space.
"It's about open space... or, inaccessible spaces. Who is allowed in and out of a space. Who is welcome."
"oh." she replies.
"Like, disabled people, or people of color."
"oh." She replies. "Do you want milk with this?"
"Um, no." he walks halfway out before turning around. The floor is concrete. She wonders if he is contemplating it's non-space, before he lifts his head and says:
"Actually, what kind do you have?"
"Milk, whole and skim, almond, oat."
She pours. He sips.
"Oh. It's cold now. Do y'all have a microwave?"
"There's one right behind you."
He looks startled, and then confused, maybe a little hurt.
She is picking the almonds off of the almond croissants with a fork, putting them in a little cup for herself, returning the pastries to the case, and calling them "sweet croissants" to all the customers for the rest of the day.
She texts the boy she likes who works upstairs at the library check out desk. "Come downstairs if you want free shit", but she deletes "shit" and changes it to "snacks etc! :)"
Am I trying to attract men who want to fuck a summer camp counselor? she wonders to herself.
******
"Where do you get your coffee? I asked it nicely."
"And that's why it's so crucial to listen to -- what?" he was barely willing to be interrupted.
"Do you get your coffee, in the mornings, at a shop?"
"What does that have to do with this?" he barely asked. "I'm saying the value of a work-day is human because we can work communally --"
"But have you ever-"
"--WHAT?! Have I ever what!" he heaved.
She shifted, appearing to zip something together towards a center, small pieces of anger flying with opposite charge from her body.
"I just notice," she went on slowly, "that you seem to think working is very fun, and very egalitarian, and very communal, but that you never have -- save your uncle's hobby farm, ok, don't bring up that again, please? -- that otherwise you've never done things like stick your hand down a sink full of wet food, or punch in iced latte into an iPad for 7 hours. Because it's not glamourous. iI's not the most dangerous or grueling job, but it's still mind-numbingly awful. And I'm just worried, for our sake, as a club, that you're utter dissociation from the reality of virtually everything, except, well, except virtual reality, which you have this really dogmatic faith in, because optimism for you is just an idea, just like work is. And you know no one can fight you if you say an idea is subjective, is just like clay -- the issue is not everything is just an idea to everyone."
He took a long, and purposeful, pause.
"Of course it's not. You're right. That's exactly the injustice -- not all people have equal access to philosophy."
"They're calling your order."
****