This is the first post in a series I’ve been working on for some time. We meet so many different types of customers, making each order a new adventure. However, many customer “types” share similar characteristics, so I thought that it would be fun to clue you all in about what I see as “typical” behaviours in certain customers. So, here we go with the first installment- check in Saturday for the next edition!
Office Drone (Mark 1)
This specimen is a Starbucks junkie in their own right. All it takes is for the boss to glance sideways at a coffee mug and this assistant is gathering crumpled $20 bills and credit cards from everyone in sight and half listening to orders. Since this is a paid break, the drone is in no hurry to return to the office. Good thing too, because half listening to orders makes for a confusing time at the register.
They consult their hastily scribbled notes to discover that the “shorthand” they used to save time didn’t really help them at all. Was that “chocolate” Frappuccino the one with coffee or without? What size was that 5 shot cinnamon dolce latte supposed to be again? But never fear- this drone is not worried about making mistakes. Life is what it is; besides, they brought in their own special to-go tumbler with their order pre-written on the side. At least one drink will be right!
In my Victorian literature class last week, we discussed the end of “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold.
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast, the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
In the last stanza, the speaker describes the condition of the world to the woman with him, “the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams.” The speaker describes a scene of hopelessness and despair, a world where nothing is real, nothing matters, a world that has become a battleground. For the speaker, this is the end of the world, the end of all his hopes of finding a reality. Faith is withdrawing from the world, and all is a dream.
We discussed in class how this seems to be Arnold’s way of working through the changes in society at the time. Darwin’s theories of evolution and the descent of man were talking hold of the world, and Christianity was slowly beginning to disappear from the forefront of life.
Fifty years later the same subject would jump the pond and show up in the poetry of the American writer/poet Stephen Crane. In his poem “Should the Wide World Roll Away”, Crane addresses the idea of the world disappearing to leave only darkness and terror.
Should the wide world roll away,
Leaving dark terror, limitless night
Nor God, nor man, nor place to stand
Would be to me essential
If thou and thy white arms were there
And the fall to doom a long way.
Like Arnold, all Crane thinks that he needs is the love of his woman- he does not need religion or a foundation if she will just hold him through it all. However, Arnold mourned the loss of faith, and hoped that it would come back. Crane acknowledges that faith is gone, but he thinks that God and faith are not essential to him.
In the 1970s, British author Douglas Adams addressed again the subject of the world dissolving away into nothingness. Where Arnold sees religion as ebbing and Crane sees it as unnecessary, Adams sees religion as a thing to mock. It does not matter what happens to the world, religion, God, or love. In fact, Adams goes so far as to talk about how God went wrong, and uses the idea of faith to “prove” that God does not exist and never has. For Adams, all you need is your towel, a portable guide to the galaxy, and improbable luck.
I really don’t have much point in posting this here, other than to show how quickly godlessness took hold in the world of literature. A scant 100 years after the first seeds of doubt about God and the Bible were planted in society, they became a weed that took over secular literature and eradicated all thought of faith.
Today we assume that “secular” means godless, religionless, faithless. This is the product of the changing times. Before 1850, it was not uncommon for secular literature to deal with religious and faith issues. As the issues seen above spread, though, the religious sphere and the secular sphere began to separate. Now, we have complete separation, but at the same time total confusion as to what matters in the world, why we are here, and what our purpose is. Unless we can unite our spheres again, the world is only going to become more and more confused, until it actually does disappear.
I’m not sure if we can do anything about this, but it is worth thinking about.
This is my obligatory post on snow. Not that I’m a big fan of the cold wet stuff myself, but seeing as how we’re all having trouble remembering the last time our city was covered in white, a few words are in order.
First- that whole “no two snowflakes are alike” thing is a myth. I swear I totally saw twins out there, but I couldn’t grab my camera in time.
Second- snow makes people do stupid things. Case in point- I never wander around my neighbourhood. I just don’t. However, throw a few snowflakes in the mix and I’m tramping around like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Because of this, my friends and I had a snow ball fight in a complete stranger’s driveway. It rocked!
Third- snow fall reveals what kind of people we work for. Chick-fil-a decided to close the night before the storm hit. Starbucks had employees in at 4:30 am as usual before letting them out around 3. The state schools decided to close down today, and sent out a text to let students know. My university finally decided to close down, but no text message- just a hard to find news article.
By the way, this is the same university that woke us all up at 5am the first day of spring break last year to tell us that classes (that we weren’t having) were delayed two hours (which didn’t matter because we weren’t having class- spring break and all that). Oh yes, and not just one text, but texts and phone calls until we acknowledged receipt. More than one phone was hurled across a room that morning; but I digress.
Fourth- snow days are uninspiring on weekends. Just thought I’d point that out.
Fifth- impromptu snow parties are fun. Add fire, cookies, and coffee and you have a winning day!
Sixthly, enjoy some of my pictures, because it really was a nice change from the norm.
My backyard:
Back fence 5-6″ deep in snow:
Well, we did have a lot of fun. Enjoy whatever winter weather you have right now, and snow long until next time!
(You didn’t really think that I could make it without one bad snow pun, did you?)
This week at Starbucks restored my faith in humanity, and my enjoyment of the job. I won’t lie- it’s been rough at work lately. Labor must be kept under sale volume, which means that we are understaffed most of the day, every day. Then the holidays hit, and we were dealing with extra merchandise in the back room, extra drinks to throw in the mix, and customers with about as much patience as a stick of lit dynamite. Once the holidays were over, we obsessed about our white-glove cleaning inspection, where so much as one coffee bean out of place would earn an “excessive dirt build-up” rating (and yes, I am serious about just one solitary bean out of place).
This week, things calmed down. We still had our crazy “line to the door” times, but in between those moments were moments of pure peace. We could actually focus on issues, we could tidy up the café, we could restock merchandise.
You know what? It made us nicer people. At one point, mid afternoon, our café was completely empty for 20 minutes. Hmmm, what to do? How about we put on the Jazz Crooners, crank up the music, and belt out The Look of Love while sweeping up crumbs and wiping up spills? Oh yes, that will work!
Customers noticed the difference. Soon after our little singing session, we had a customer come in and order a Venti Breve Latte. I was on bar, and unconsciously called the drink back to the register partner in iambic senarius (try it yourself, daDA daDA daDA). The customer cracked up, and stayed for another ten minutes telling us funny stories about how snooty baristas usually are at other stores, and how nice it was to see baristas having fun with their job. That’s when it hit me- we were having fun again!
So the next time you go into a Starbucks and the partners are less than stellar (ha! See what I did there?), just keep in mind that they might be stressed out of their minds. It’s not an excuse, but it is a reason. I’m hoping, though, that our less-stressful atmosphere will continue for a while- I like having fun at work!
Warning: this post contains a long-winded English major talking about business and budgets. Read at your own risk! The author assumes no responsibility for misinformation, because the city’s information is confusing, and she refuses to go to business school just to understand it. All the best- Miss Woodhouse
I’m missing a library book.
Wait, stop! Please don’t pass out!
Okay now? Good; I’ll move on.
Here’s the deal: it’s somewhere in my room, and I will find it. Hopefully, I’ll find it tonight. It’s just that it’s a small little paperback, and I have a lot of books. No, really, I mean it. A lot of books. Too many books, if there is such a thing. (I don’t believe that there is, but others have a differing opinion.)
What I find amazing is that if I go buy the same book as I lost for the library with the same ISBN, it’ll cost me about $6. Seriously, and that’s for a new copy. They, however, want me to pay $16 dollars to replace the book, with no guarantee that they’ll get a new copy to replace the one I can’t find. They can make $10 or more on this transaction! Arg.
But this post is not meant to focus on my inability to organize. No, this post is on the ridiculousness of libraries. First off, library fines don’t go straight back into the library budget. They instead go into the city coffers. I have a bit of an issue with that. If I get a speeding ticket, then I expect my money to go to the city. If my book is a little late, then I expect my money to go to the library.
Apparently, this is a tough concept for the city to handle. Or maybe not.
Before I delve too deeply into this mess, allow me to confess that I am not a business-type person. I don’t fully understand the workings of city government, and all the information I have is gleaned from conversations with librarians and a PowerPoint that you are free to view for yourself here. But never fear, dear readers, this ignorance will not stop me from expressing my opinion.
Our city, by its own admission, has higher library fines than average. More to the point, its fines are much higher than the cities surrounding it. According to data from 2007 (not great, I know, but it’s the most recent I could find), other cities are between $.10-.15 per item. We are at $.20.
Now for the big numbers. Annually, residents pay somewhere in the neighbourhood of $300,000 yearly in fines. Now that I see those numbers, my $16 seems so insignificant. Wow, $300,000? That’s a lot of late books/movies/cds!
This is the part where my head begins to hurt. Library fines (which I’ve been told don’t go directly to the library), only make up 2% of the annual library budget. Breathe for a moment and soak up that information. Our libraries have a 15 million dollar budget? They don’t seem to buy all that many new materials, so I’m assuming that the bulk of that goes to building upkeep and salaries. It may look like a lot of money, but then realize you are spreading that out among 10 buildings. Not such a liberal budget after all. Anyway. It is also 13% of book purchasing yearly- sorry, but doing that math makes my head hurt. Feel free to work out what the annual book buying budget is and post it in the comments!
So, if I have this right (and again, I might not), the fines we pay make up 2% of the total budget, and that 2% of the budget only cover 13% of book buying costs. Is anyone else having flashbacks to high school Algebra word problems? Then we will quickly move on.
Now, in 2007 the libraries began using a collection agency for accounts seriously in arrears. Considering I have about $50 on my card right now (I’ll drastically reduce that by finding this silly book), I’ve been a little nervous about that agency. (Editor’s note: make that $47.60. Yuck.)
I shouldn’t be. According to my source material, 454 accounts in 2007 had fines amounting to more than $72,000. At first I thought that all 454 accounts added up to $72,000, with the average account having a $158 total fine. No, apparently these are individual accounts with $72,000 each. I don’t know if that is even possible, but unless the slides are poorly written that’s what they say. That would make outstanding fines over $32.5 million, and that seems unreasonable to me. Maybe it is the $158 instead, but who knows?
Here’s my problem- if our yearly library budget is $15 million (and again, math is not my strong suit), and the city managed to collect the some $30 million in unpaid fines (we are still very hypothetical here), that extra money would not go to the library. Instead, that money would go to the city coffers, $15 million would go to the Library budget (making Library fines support them 100%), and the other $15+ million? I guess that the city could do with it whatever they choose. This, my friends, is what I don’t see as fair.
So now my head hurts, I know WAY too much about library budgets, and I still don’t know where that book is. If only I knew how to hack one of those grossly overdue accounts. I mean, if you owe over $72,000, what’s another $50 or so? Oh well, off to dredge the room….
(Just kidding! The book is found, returned, and the debt settled. More money for the city, I guess.)
This article is cross-posted from this blog, but since I wrote the post over there, I figure I have the right to steal from myself! My school’s English Club goes once a month to a senior community, reads a short story or two, and then leads a short discussion loosely based on what we read. It’s really great, and I enjoy it a lot.
For the past week I’ve been trying to put together a nice, formal write-up of our experiences reading at Chesapeake Place’s senior community.
I realized today though, that our times with these lovely people are not formal. Rather, they are an amazing chance to interact with some wonderful people with entertaining life stories and experiences. Our part in the interaction is minimal- all we do is bring a story, read it aloud to them, and ask some interactive questions. Their answers make each meeting priceless.
These people all come from different lives, different backgrounds, and different countries. One woman immigrated from the political unrest in Germany in between the two world wars. Another woman told us what it was like growing up in a large family with a deceased mother and a workaholic father. Yet another woman shared her childhood experiences of living in a Catholic boarding school in Canada.
Our printed, polished, literary short stories by Doyle, O. Henry, and Capote truly pale in comparison to the living, breathing epistles these people share with us. At the same time, it’s heartwarming to watch them listen to what we read- the peaceful, thoughtful expressions on their faces, and the way smiles creep onto their faces during humorous parts. They are so appreciative of us coming once a month to spend time with them, but really, I’m grateful to them for their willingness to open up about their lives.
I never leave Chesapeake Place without a feeling of regret- regret that I can’t spend more time talking with them, and regret that so many people are missing out on opportunities to interact with people like this. Local senior communities are a wealth of stories and experiences just waiting for an audience- why don’t you take an hour or two and invest in these wonderful people? You will never regret it!
I don’t have much energy to write tonight- having spent the last 20 hours working on a university project, I’m pretty wiped out. However, one of my resolutions was to not miss a Starbucks Saturday post, and I don’t want to slip in January!
I love when we get to do silly things at work. Passion tea, for instance, gives us several opportunities to crack each other up. I heard about some partners this summer who offered to pair the passion tea with the “luscious lemon tart”. I don’t know who names our pastries, but that name was a doozie and the passion tea suggestion only made it more ridiculous. “Cheery Cherry Pie” was cute and clever though (not to mention delicious!).
Thursday I opened a new bag of passion tea, and had half the bag left over. I folded it over, labeled it properly with “Passion”, and then wrote beneath that “we haz it!”. That made one of my coworkers crack up, as did writing “I haz a cut” on a leaking jug of milk.
If you don’t get those references, then you have to visit this site. Warning: time waster!
On a related note, cleaning up the bottom of an industrial fridge after three cracked jugs of milk have dripped all day and half the night is not fun. Nor is dealing with frozen milk- it doesn’t foam well. I tried explaining this to the man whose cappuccino I had to make over (not enough foam in it), but I don’t think he believed me. I’m not a bad drink maker, it’s just the product giving us a hard time.
Our Christmas party is this weekend though, and I think that we’re going to have a ton of fun outside of the store. I can’t wait!
When I’m writing, the number 50 is really important to me. In my stories, if I can make it to page 50, then the chances are good that I’ll be able to finish it off. If I can write 50 words in a post or paper without struggling, then I know I have a good topic.
This is my 50th blog post. It’s only been four months, so I feel good about the future of this place. Fifty posts, and I’m still having fun!
In honor of the milestone, here are 50 random facts from this website. The comments in italics are mine. Enjoy!
1. If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on your right side. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on your left side. (So, if you are ambidextrous, do you chew in the middle of your mouth?)
2. If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. For when a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.
3. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying. (Wearing contacts is much more reliable. So is holding an unlit match between your teeth. Not that I do this or anything…. *looks away*)
4. Your tongue is germ free only if it is pink. If it is white there is a thin film of bacteria on it.
5. The Mercedes-Benz motto is “Das Beste oder Nichts” meaning “the best or nothing”.
6. The Titanic was the first ship to use the SOS signal. (dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot Not that it did them a ton of good.)
7. The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.
8. The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night.
9. Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day. (lol!)
10. The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.
11. Dalmatians are born without spots.
12. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
13. The ‘v’ in the name of a court case does not stand for ‘versus’, but for ‘and’ (in civil proceedings) or ‘against’ (in criminal proceedings).
14. Men’s shirts have the buttons on the right, but women’s shirts have the buttons on the left.
15. The owl is the only bird to drop its upper eyelid to wink. All other birds raise their lower eyelids.
16. The reason honey is so easy to digest is that it’s already been digested by a bee. (Um, ewwww!)
17. Roosters cannot crow if they cannot extend their necks.
18. The color blue has a calming effect. It causes the brain to release calming hormones. (The colour red has the opposite effect.)
19. Every time you sneeze some of your brain cells die.
20. Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.
21. The verb “cleave” is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.
22. When you blush, the lining of your stomach also turns red. (How do we know this? Why do we know this?)
23. When hippos are upset, their sweat turns red.
24. The first Harley Davidson motorcycle was built in 1903, and used a tomato can for a carburetor.
25. The lion that roars in the MGM logo is named Volney.
26. Google is actually the common name for a number with a million zeros.
27. Switching letters is called spoonerism. For example, saying jag of Flapan, instead of flag of Japan. (So what if I say my Mail Harry’s in the Chatholic Curch?)
28. It cost 7 million dollars to build the Titanic and 200 million to make a film about it. (I’ve not seen the whole thing, but from what bits I caught on TV they could have left out the sad ending and made it more cheaply. Not that I cried or anything.)
29. The attachment of the human skin to muscles is what causes dimples.
30. There are 1,792 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower.
31. The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.
32. Human hair and fingernails continue to grow after death.
33. It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.
34. The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.
35. Most soccer players run 7 miles in a game.
36. The only part of the body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It takes in oxygen directly from the air. (Thus, we cover it up with a piece of flexible plastic so we can see better. I really hope my contacts do breathe as promised!)
37. Every day 400,000 babies are born, and 140,000 people die.
38. In most watch advertisements the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch (and make it look like it
is smiling).
39. Colgate faced big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command “go hang yourself.” (Remind me not to brush my teeth in Mexico.)
40. The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning its head are the rabbit and the parrot.
41. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair. (So redheads are more intelligent? I have to think this through.)
42. The average person laughs 13 times a day. (Wait, didn’t we establish that adults laugh at least 15 times a day? Was that previous figure including cyber laughing?)
43. Do you know the names of the three wise monkeys? They are:Mizaru(See no evil), Mikazaru(Hear no evil), and Mazaru(Speak no evil).
44. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.
45. German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog. (I deg to biffer. I should qualify that their biting is mostly in the line of duty. Pitbulls, however, just bite for fun. Big difference.)
46. Large kangaroos cover more than 30 feet with each jump.
47. Whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound. (This mostly applies to the bull whip. Just think, those Oregon pioneers were breaking the sound barrier long before we invented flight.)
48. Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protesters to death. (…and their name was Legion. Wait, wrong story…)
49. If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural cause. (What does it mean if it’s just a statue of a horse? Do the same rules apply to how the horse died?)
50. The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet!!
And because my mum raised me to have a song for every occasion, watch this:
Work today was rough. I heard a lot of sad stories, and saw a lot of pain and confusion in people’s faces. From the parent that has to tell his daughter that months of chemo didn’t work, to the mother who realizes that her last child is growing up too fast while her oldest is drifting off, there’s a lot of pain in people’s lives.
This song is running through my head on a continual loop- every story I heard, every flash of pain I saw brought a different part of the lyrics to mind. Feel free to listen, feel free to read the lyrics.
But above all, dear customers, remember that this little barista cares about you and is praying for you. I may not be able to do more than offer you coffee and a listening ear, but I’m there for you whenever. Be at peace.
Lately I’ve been wondering exactly where the fine line between helping people and hindering them in their personal growth is. I get frustrated when people are supposed to do something, and then they don’t. So, do I continue to poke, prod, and remind them about their commitments? Or do I just grit my teeth and complete the project myself just so it gets done?
Both tactics have their pros and cons. To continually be reminding people is stressful for me, and annoys them. On the other hand, this does give them the opportunity to step up and complete the project. I may have a heart attack, but at least they get the satisfaction of a job well done.
To do the project myself also stresses me out, but the job is done to my liking. The only bad thing is that the person with the “responsibility” doesn’t have to follow through with their commitment. While this might help them out in the short term, it doesn’t teach them to manage their time and responsibilities.
Both plans stress me out, and we all know that I can’t stand any more stress then I already have. I’m not sure if there is an alternative that doesn’t cause stress. If there is one out there, I’d love to know what it is.
Tonight, I chose the latter plan of attack. I must admit that I found myself growing very annoyed to have to do this on top of all the other work I have this week, but in the end it felt good. The project is done, I’m set up better for the next time I have to do it, and I can sleep well tonight knowing that all is well.
Still, it doesn’t seem very fair. Welcome to the real world, I guess!
