Singing baristas!

So, Sunday at Starbucks was a little insane. Okay... we got massacred. Seth started throwing up and had to go home, and the line just got longer and longer. I was working the bar, experiencing a bit of a throwback to my days at the downtown store. I reached my barista zenith there, sometime during the colder months. I remember barring by myself on a Sunday, and Dave Matthews Band music was playing, and it was like everything slowed down enough that I could just kind of watch my hands working. Time slowed down, and I was going insanely fast. Almost everything I was doing was automatic. Nonstop line for hours, nonstop line of drinks for hours. I miss that.

Anyway. By the time Zoe came in, we were still busy, but it was slowing a little. At that point, the other Diana, Gail, and I were losing our minds a little. So... I started singing. Then, Zoe joined in. Then, Gail joined in. We went through an entire Beatles set, to Alanis Morissette, the Pretenders, Prince... we finished with "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Then, I threw up, so I left.

A customer on Monday morning who had been in on Sunday approached me and started to say something about Sunday. I immediately apologized, saying we'd gotten slammed, were understaffed, and started to go a little nutty. Her reaction was, "No, it was great, I loved it! You were singing some of my favorite Beatles songs!"

Really??

Zoe and I don't have the greatest voices, but it helped lighten the mood, and we were having fun... so we're going to make this a regular thing. Singing baristas when we work together. We're building a list of songs now, with lots of the Beatles, Prince, even the Talking Heads ("Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est?"). So, um... come see the singing baristas. And get a Clover.

Life at one thousand miles per hour.

I realized how fast things are passing me by today. I can't believe it's already almost October, and I haven't taken a real vacation in ages. I've worked 42 consecutive days as of tonight. It doesn't look like I will have a vacation until January, maybe February, and who wants to take a vacation then? I can't afford to go anywhere tropical.

It seems like every minute I'm not working, I'm doing something for work, or I'm moving heavy stuff, like furniture and boxes. I can't believe my hair is already in need of a haircut again. I can't afford one anyway. I don't remember the last time I actually did my hair; I've been just washing it and then running out the door for months now. Somehow, it looks nice most of the time. My body has gotten into the annoying habit of aching really badly every time I move a limb later in the day, which is seriously slowing me down at work. I'm starting to wonder if the way I schedule myself makes me slightly masochistic. If I could have anything, I would just ask for a hug from each of my parents and my sister. I'd kill to be ten years old again, with my mother yelling at me to finish my milk at the dinner table while I feed things to the waiting dog under the table. Things I want to keep up with - world news, reading, cleaning my room, having clean clothes - have fallen by the wayside. I never feel like I have time to think anymore. One of these days, I'm really, truly going to have some time off, and all of the things that have been stuck in some corner of my mind are going to hit me all at once. Like driving too fast and then hitting the brakes hard, an ugly pileup of cars that is an insurance adjustor's nightmare. Like a ton of bricks.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to make these great strides toward moving forward with Starbucks, and the extra work is eating up what little time I have to myself. I can't believe someone who had never had regular coffee before working for Starbucks now has her arms wrapped so tightly around a coffee company and its whole bean offerings that the smell of unadulterated coffee beans is a huge comfort that soothes my tired mind. It's the first thing I notice when I walk into my room. I don't know that the me of 7 years ago - about when I first became a Starbucks customer - would recognize me now at all. Coffee addict/connoisseur, workaholic.

I'd better get to sleep. I need to be up for my first cup of the day in five hours, and ready to serve a thousand cups in six hours.

Why bother?

The title of this post takes me back to Highland Park Village, working at Starbucks, watching Dragan shrug and ask, "Why bother?" any time anyone ordered something with no fat, no sugar, and no caffeine - like a decaf tall sugar free vanilla nonfat latte, or a decaf tall nonfat no whip no foam mocha, or something like that. I guess his point was, if you're not going to do anything fun with it or depend on it for a spark, then why bother spending the $3-4? Beats me. I drink caffeinated black coffee like it's water.

But the "Why bother?" here refers to my complete lack of purpose, especially in New England. If someone here giving a shit about me at all is the caffeine in my beverage, making enough to support myself and pay bills is the whipped cream on top. Unfortunately, I have neither, and as I go through the daily grind (pun intended), I can't help but ask myself why I'm still in Boston or alive at all. Why do I work so hard when it isn't enough anyway? Why do I try to be conscientious at work when the people who will benefit from it snap at me? Why do I even leave the house when my chances of meeting anyone - literally anyone - nice are slim? Why do I do people favors when I know I can't get one in return? Why bother?

I am so tired of being snapped at, yelled at, and told "no." One of these days, I'm going to have had enough, and I'll give up. I just won't show at work, and I'll be gone.

My laptop lives again!

...Though I have to say, I didn't miss being online much. Really, I only missed it the couple of times I needed driving directions and then, the night I figured out I didn't have a country CD anywhere in my book of CDs in my car, and I really wanted to come home and burn a new one. So, I'm taking some time now to catch up on e-mail (yeah, 800 new e-mails, it's going to take a while) and facebook (while listening to Amarillo By Morning and Texas On My Mind, of course).

A lot has happened lately, but I don't think I'll get around to talking about any of it. I haven't had much time to process the craziness that is my life right now. I work 70ish hours a week and spend whatever remains of my time sleeping or doing laundry. I went for a drive late last night after work to give myself time to think. It reminded me of the times I used to drive down Preston Road in Dallas, from my Starbucks in Highland Park all the way out to Celina, past the creepy graveyard and closed gas station. Unfortunately, the territory was foreign, not familiar, so it was not as relaxing as it would have been had I been on State Highway 289 in my beloved state of Texas.

Really, I miss Texas, and all of the Texans I love. I'm tired of being alone. Work at Starbucks has been going fine, but I have utterly failed at meeting people outside of work. I'm not used to having to try so hard. I will be coming home for one of the major holidays (I haven't decided which yet; all I know is I've been told I can take one holiday, and the Starbucks that hired me has offered to take me in while I'm home). I hope I make it that far. Life isn't easy right now, and it seems like it's just getting harder.

Other things to look forward to this fall... my Starbucks anniversary is December 4th, so I will be hosting some sort of dinner. The Head of the Charles is coming up, and I will be flying my mother up for either that weekend or the one right after. Hopefully, I will have furniture by then. Ha. But really, it would be nice to get off of this air mattress.

Well, I guess that's it for now. Hopefully, things will get better, and I'll feel like eating again. At least I now have a working computer again.

Brownie mania!

I love to bake.

It's very therapeutic. It is very similar to cooking, but is more simple. So, I do a ton of it when I have a day off. Last weekend, I baked a total of 120 brownies, and delivered them to several different locations - Brookline fire stations, Starbucks locations in my district, and even the Chipotle where I know a good portion of the crew.

There's a secret recipe involved. They are delicious. Aaron at the Dedham Chipotle described them as "chocolatey wow". They go well with Paulaner Heifeweizen.

I have taken them to five Brookline fire stations (1, 4, 5, 6, 7), six Starbucks locations, and the Chipotle in Dedham. If you are a partner or a firefighter in the area and want my brownies delivered to your store or station, leave a comment with the location, and if it's within a reasonable distance, I will add it to my list. I have twelve locations on the list now; I try to hit about eight of them each week, between the two days I have off each week, which may or may not shift. I bake between 40 and 80 in each session; 10 brownies go to each location.

There is no charge. There are two requirements: 1) you and your colleagues must be willing and able to eat all brownies before they expire (I would hate for them to go to waste) and 2) anyone with allergies to milk, wheat, or soy products must refrain from consuming the brownies.

One more reason I do not like Boston.

Don't you hate watching your car roll down the street? Obviously, if you're watching, you're not in it, and when you own a car, you kind of feel like if it's ever going down the street, you should be pushing the pedals and holding the steering wheel.

I was walking back from Arcie's apartment last night. Said goodbye one last time. As I'm walking back to where I parked, I see a black tow truck going the opposite direction down Comm Ave, pulling a green 2004 Honda Civic. The popularity of this car helps me tell myself it's probably not mine. But it's the same shade of Acapulco green, which is moderately rare among 2004 Honda Civics. My stomach turns over, and I start running to where my car is parked.

...Or not parked. That was my car being towed. I parked at the Brookline Liquor Mart, where I've parked before for short periods of time without a problem. There is a sign stating that if the store is open and you are parked there for reasons other than purchasing items from the mart, you may be towed. The store was already closed, so I figured I would be fine for a little while, especially since I've parked there late at night without incident before.

So I called the towing company listed on the sign. I give the guy the car make, model, year, color, and plates, and he tells me they definitely don't have a Civic with Texas plates. I protest, telling him I just saw it going down the street a few minutes before, and maybe they just haven't gotten it in the system yet. He tells me they haven't gotten a call to tow from that location at all tonight, then suggests that I call the police and see if they have it.

So I call Boston Police. I get put through to the towing line, get put on hold for a few minutes, and finally they check for my car. He tells me they don't have a green Honda Civic with Texas plates. I beg him to check again, tell him I just saw it being taken down the street, they must have it. He tells me to hold on a minute, something just came in. I hear some commotion, and then, the guy gets back on the line and tells me my car was towed without clearance, which basically means it was stolen, and the company that towed it is going to try and make me pay the fee. He says he told the company to return my car to where it was towed from in fifteen minutes or less, and tells me to call him back if it's not back in that fifteen minutes.

So I wait, and exactly fifteen minutes later, a tow truck pulls up with no car attached to it. The large Hispanic man driving the truck asks me if the Honda Civic was my car. I take this opportunity to lose it, telling him everything the police just told me, telling him there's no way the owner of the store had it towed because I know her, telling him I want my car back, now. His story keeps changing. First, he tells me they were told to tow my car specifically. Then, he says
that they must have gotten confused, because they were told to tow all the cars by the owner of the liquor mart. I ask him why they didn't use the posted towing company, as is the law, and then he tells me that a guy who rents the spots overnight called him to have it towed, not the owner of the liquor mart. I tell him I'm calling the police back and pull out my phone. He tells me to just get in the truck, and he'll take me to my car. I get in the truck.

He takes me to a yard off North Beacon pretty far out in Brighton. There's my car. I go over to inspect it, and he tells me to just leave, not to pay anything. Other people having their cars towed turn to watch me pull the car off the lot without paying. They looked a little pissed.

The police still say it was technically stolen, because if the owner of the liquor mart had called a towing company, it had to be the posted one, and since that was not the company that towed my car, the owner of the liquor mart did not likely call anyone to tow the cars in the lot. I can press charges.

Anonymous comments.

I received some anonymous comments (they seemed to be from the same person) on the post I put up about getting promoted.

I am sorry, but I am not going to allow those comments. I am not going to turn my blog into a place where people rant about Starbucks. The main point of that post was my growth with Starbucks, not the current state of the company. Whatever the stock price, whatever the roast being served, it is still a good company. Starbucks is my employer, and partners in all areas of the company, in high places and low places, have been good to me in many ways. I will not show them disrespect by allowing rants like that on here. There are web sites for people who want to argue about Starbucks.