Has anyone else noticed that the title "barista" seems to encompass a wide range of completely unrelated roles? I may only wear one hat (and it's hot as **** in that thing) but it seems that I am often also mistaken for:
- A security guard and/or wrestler. Let me elaborate. Today a man at the bar wasted five minutes of my time complaining about the homeless guy outside asking for money. My store, in particular, seems to be the hip-and-happenin place for the residentially challenged to hang out. This complaining gentleman had a problem with the man, described it in great detail about eighteen times, was dissatisfied with my offer to call the security for our shopping center, and wanted to know "JUS' WHATCHA PERSONLLY GON' DO ABOUT IT."
I am nineteen, about 5'6" on a good day, and wearing a **** apron. It is not my job to go Jaden Smith on the homeless population THAT IS NOT EVEN INSIDE MY STORE.
- A plumber and/or mechanic. If the toilet is broken, I- and I know you're shocked- have neither the ability, nor the desire to fix it. In fact, I didn't even break it. One of our eight hundred pound, drug dealing regulars probably did. Take it up with him. If our coffee brewer is broken, I'll go get my trusty lug wrench and bang on it with gusto, maybe that will fix it! Or maybe it will just break it further and send rivers of boiling coffee raining onto both my and the outraged customer's faces, which would be worth it, almost, just to see you cry tears of agony while I laugh and dance about triumphantly.
- A CEO. Guess what? Starbucks now wants to charge you for hot water. I am referring, of course, to the sudden change in price between a tall and a grande hot tea. Don't like it? Maybe you're right, that was a bad idea that I had. I shouldn't have called up Howard and said hey, Howie baby, can you raise the price of our drinks a few meager cents? I've been feeling lately like I don't get enough indignant spittle flying at my face in wet, raging sprays of righteousness. I've been missing out on the bitter sputtering of women whose highlights cost more than I make in a paycheck. And gee, all of this tip change is really heavy to carry around. Can you maybe see if we can discourage customers from tossing their table scraps into my hungry, whining tip jar? I don't need to eat this month anyway.
-A magician. Bring your soy green tea latte back all you want, I will continue to scoop the foam off of it and pour in regular milk until the cows come home and guess what? IT WILL CONTINUE TO FOAM, YOU UNGRATEFUL SWINE. This was not my clever idea of how to stiff you, that is what happens when you steam fake milk and fake green tea together. Hand me back your decaf mocha frappuccino as many times as your tiny, tiny heart desires, it will continue to taste like baby rabid bat vomit. And yeah, I know your via doesn't taste like the samples we make in the store. That's because when we make samples, we put as many things in it as we possibly can to try and disguise the flavor of the actual Via, because actual Via tastes like Voldemort's chewed-up fingernails.
However, I will be happy to bring out my inner decaf fairy and sprinkle my magic decaf dust into all of your drinks. And your extra extra extra hot latte, which I just remade because it wasn't hot enough, took an extra five minutes because I had to use five different pitchers to get enough milk to 250 degrees to actually pour into your cup, which I considerably double cupped in case it lit the cardboard on fire.