Michelle J.’s post about her crush on a hot barista reminded me vividly of my coffee-making days. I waitressed for a decade, aged 17-27. Despite the minimum wage, exhaustion and cracked hands, being a barista was my favourite of those jobs. It was low-key creative (the satisfaction of perfectly-frothed milk, which shone as it rose). We had some autonomy, and we worked in a cafe at the heart of the community. This was before a coffee cost £4 each. People liked us, and would come in to chat, to run music nights, to draw or write.
I remember everyone I met as a barista, such as:
Wasp Nest Atomic Bomb. I had just opened on a sunny Sunday morning (the best time to work: music, papers, the coffee machine warming up) when a man came in, opened his jacket, produced a half-disintegrated wasp’s nest from its lining, and gave a long soliloquy about the connection between wasp’s nests, insects in general, Oppenheimer, the atomic bomb, and the end of the world. It was one of the most profound one-man performances I’ve ever seen. Having delivered the speech, he left without buying anything.
Mint Tea. A garrulous and genial customer who told me that the real cure for heroin addiction, in his experience, was ‘fresh mint tea and a mother’s love’.
Time Traveller. We had two ancient-looking computers in the corners of the room, and one of the things we sold was printing and internet access. This meant we attracted customers who did not have computers at home, and sometimes didn’t seem to know what a computer was. One day a woman with a white broad-brimmed hat, a white jacket, and small round shiny glasses, like a disguise, said cautiously: “Can I have access to… your… machine?”
Resident pervs. One man had a fetish for foreign women. If he heard an accent he would be beside them in seconds, like a goblin. Sometimes he’d peer through the window, scanning for any women to accost. Another man was once caught masturbating at the computer (colleague, in my ear, as he entered the cafe: “that guy is a pervert!”). I don’t think it occurred to anyone that we could just ban him; instead we watched him very closely, like a wanker shark, for any signs of self-pleasuring.
Death Threat. His eyes were all-black and he was saying to the man next to him, as they ordered coffee, “Does your girlfriend worship Satan? Because, if she does, I’d have to kill her.” The man he was talking to eyeballed me over the counter. What do we do? I fretted (probably not just serve him his coffee, but I wasn’t trained in death-threat crisis-response) until the next time he came in, non-psychotic and looking tired. “I think I do need my meds,” he said.
Go hard or go home. Would order espresso after espresso until he was shaking and almost levitating. Eventually he seemed to realise that this was giving him a nervous breakdown and switched to very large smoothies, three in a row.
Croissant. She had long red-white hair in a frayed plait, dressed like a pirate punk, and came in regularly to burn CDs with her own playlists (I imagined heavy metal or klezmer). She had never tasted a croissant. “What is that?” she said one day, pointing at it in its glass dome. “Do you eat it with butter?” “You can if you want,” I said. She finished the croissant with tears in her eyes, said it was the most amazing thing she’d ever tasted, and immediately ordered another.
Duchess Milk. A woman with a regal air, much-dishevelled, who would empty the milk jug into her glass and drink it when my back was turned.
Genius. Gave me the cure for all known diseases and death itself. The equation was something like Everything = Everything = Everything. He wrote it down and told us to keep hold of it, it’d be worth a lot of money one day.
There were, of course, worse sides to the job. On one shift a member of college staff came in and laughed at me, presumably for being a person who needed to work while I studied (weird, I know). Or that one night-walk home when a group of laughing men followed me in a van, asking if I “wanted sex”. The owner of the cafe, who didn’t work there, and didn’t understand why we gave our leftover bread to the homeless.
What I miss, though, is just the straightforward ability to solve a problem. Life can feel radically powerless. It’s not a story. Bad things happen for no reason. However: a person wants a coffee; you give them a coffee; done. You’ve improved their situation. Compare this with writing, solo, in which you sweat over your words; someone reads them, if you’re lucky; you never know why you do it, only that you have to, as your ancestors mutter I could’ve written a book too but I was too busy doing REAL work, you daft cow.
I now enjoy teaching, for much the same reason I enjoyed, at times, waitressing: you can see what literature means in action, as it lands in the middle of people’s days; you can see that it’s communal and alive and meaningful. I’m trying to treat everything more like making a coffee. There is, at least, this one thing I can do.
My substack is free. My latest books are Dangerous Enough and BLOOM if you’d like to support my writing :)
It sounds rather like working in Woolworths, as I did in the 70s. We had one regular we called The Sheriff, as he wore a sheriff's badge on his coat. I don't think he could speak, but he hung around the tobacco kiosk all day. Also, there was a man that dressed as an old-style schoolboy, in cap, blazer and shorts.
Oh I love this! Really takes me back. My favourite customer was Cowboy Man, who wore a spotless powder blue safari suit and a stetson and just said one word: 'Ristretto.' (We later found out he was homeless)