Tag Archives: Coffee

Andre, my new boss

I got a new job through a temp agency, nothing to write home about really, typical office work, but they said that if I played my cards right, I had the possibility of getting promoted to something permanent. Is that a promotion? Or a new offer? I don’t know, I guess the big difference would be that I’d be getting a paycheck through them and not through the temp agency which, how much of a cut are they getting anyway? How long do I have to keep giving them some of my pay?

But I got way ahead of myself, because guess who just happened to be my new boss?

“Oh, he’s such a cool guy,” the guy sitting next to me said, “Yeah it’s like he’s more of a colleague than a manager. He even hangs out with us after work sometimes. We had this karaoke thing last week, he was so cool, and right before he left he paid for the whole tab on the company card.”

What was this, Google? I mean, this sounded too good to be true. And of course, that’s exactly what it was, way too good to be true.

“Andre?” I said when he turned he corner, holding a cup of coffee in one hand, a stack of papers on a clipboard in the other, he had on this really skinny tie, a short-sleeved button down that you could just tell he was only wearing to go for that cool-nerd look. “You work here too?”

“Hey, yeah, I work here. I’m your new boss!”

And he just stood there and smiled for a little bit, eventually putting down his coffee and extending his hand, as if we’ve never met before, as if this were some kind of mock-introduction. I already knew Andre. We used to be pretty tight, rolled with the same group of friends. But we haven’t talked in like half a year, ever since he blew me off at that fro-yo place by the subway.

“So let’s just get some of this paperwork taken care of, OK?”

“Andre, why do I have to fill out paperwork? I already filled out a ton of paperwork at the temp agency.”

And this stack of paperwork Andre had clipped to his clipboard, it was a ton of stuff, I knew it was going to be all of the stuff that I already wasted my time filling out, useless information like, “What was your major in college?” or, “Are you sure you’ve never been arrested for anything?”

“Yeah, it’s just that HR likes to have everything in our own format, you know what I mean? It’s just an easy way to streamline all of the information.”

Streamline. Please, now he was just showing off, using all of his fancy corporate terminology. Look at me, I’m wearing a tie, my short-sleeved button-down is slightly untucked in the back, like is that on purpose? Or am I just so cool that I don’t even notice that it’s untucked? And I could tell that it was a deliberate stylistic choice.

“Andre, come on man, that’s going to take like forty-five minutes. Can’t you just have the temp agency send everything your way? What’s the point of having me fill this stuff out twice?”

And really, I should have said three times, because after I submitted my resume to the temp agency, they had me basically retype everything into their website, a little separate box for each piece of information, so I couldn’t even copy and paste anything. Actually, it was four times, if you count me actually writing out the resume, and then guess what the first thing they made me do when I had my interview at the temp place? Yeah, another stack of papers, “OK, just fill out these forms and someone’ll be over in just a sec.”

“Rob, it shouldn’t take you forty-five minutes …”

“Come on Andre, how long have we known each other? Do you really need me to write out where I went to college? Come on man.”

He kind of just looked at me for a little bit before picking up his coffee.

“All right man, it’s cool,” and then he turned to the guy sitting next to me, “Morris, how’s everything man? Karaoke on Thursday?” and Morris was like, “Yeah boss, sounds great!

I looked at Andre. He didn’t extend the invitation to me. Or, I don’t know, maybe it was an implied invitation. But maybe not. Probably not, because the temp agency called me when I got home, they said that there was a mix-up, that they’re actually going to send me to work at a sorting facility at some shipping place.

And I couldn’t help but thinking that it was Andre, he didn’t want me there, cramping his style, I was undercutting this ridiculous bullshit professional image that he’d obviously spent way too long trying to cultivate, the cool boss, look at me, I sing karaoke. I wish that I got to be Andre’s boss, just for a second, not a second, but a day, maybe a week, I wouldn’t toss him out the door after one day, not even a day really, it was just once, just that one interaction, I didn’t see him again until the end of the day, but he didn’t even say goodbye, not really, he just kind of half-waved at me from his desk as I was on my way out.

And later the next day I texted him, about everything, about me getting switched, about the karaoke night. And I got a reply within an hour, “Sorry, wrong number.” What the fuck dude, did you change your number? And you didn’t let me know? I mean, my contact should still be in there. What if it’s an emergency? Or are you just messing with me? Fucking Andre, man, I really hope it’s a while before I run into him again.

I love coffee

It’s always a daily struggle to drink the right amount of coffee, to get the caffeine levels just right. I don’t know when I became so dependent, I didn’t start until after I finished school. Whenever I went to Starbucks during college, I’d always get something that didn’t really count as coffee, like a toffee nut latte, something with tons of syrup and milk and whipped cream. Or a frappucino, which is basically an overpriced coffee milkshake.

And I specifically remember one day, at one of my first jobs after graduation, I was working as a paralegal, there was an office kitchen stocked with soda, granola bars, a giant coffee machine. I thought, OK, maybe I’ll drink some coffee. So I had a cup, and then I had another cup, and then a third. And then I had what I can only assume was a caffeine induced panic attack. I sat there in my swivel chair and wondered when my racing heart would finally accelerate past the point of sustainability, I’d drop face down at my keyboard, my nose and my forehead hitting a weird combination of keys that, when entered into whatever spreadsheet I was entering meaningless chunks of data into, it would come out like, “ase0oitja;lwesdddddddddd …”

I wound up surviving and I stayed away from coffee for a while. But now I’m at the point where, for the past several years at least, I get up in the morning and the first thing I do is, before I even go to the bathroom, I go downstairs and make a pot of coffee. There’s something about waking up and drinking my first cup. I can instantly feel the caffeine get to work, there’s a buzz in the background of my consciousness. Even though my eyes aren’t yet fully opened, I know that at least I’m not going to fall back asleep.

And then I have my second cup, I start to feel invincible. I get these bursts of imagination where I envision all that I’m going to get done, I’m going to go running, then I’ll go to the gym, then I’ll come back home and I’ll make some bread from scratch, while it’s rising I’ll go upstairs and bang out five or six pages of writing, while the oven’s preheating I’ll read the newspaper, I’ll start planning lunch while I consider if I have enough time before I have to head into work to go over Home Depot and inquire about renting a power saw, because I just saw this home improvement show on TV, and I should be able to put up crown molding in the living room, I mean, I’ve never had any hands-on experience, but this should all be within the realm of possibility.

But then I take that third cup, which is always this leap of faith, a Mario Kart kind of floating question mark box. What’s going to happen? Am I going to get that final needed kick that lets me get started on all that I’ve set out for myself to do? Is the caffeine going to get stuck only in my brain, allowing me not to actually do anything, but instead to sit here at my computer desk tapping my leg violently against the floor, dreaming wild fantasies about replacing the siding on the front of the house? Or a worst case scenario, the dreaded albeit rare instance where I have another panic attack, the veins in my neck visibly throbbing outward, my chest muscles clenched as far inward as possible, I’m only able to whimper for air every now and then, my mind locked in on the fact that I can’t possibly have enough oxygen in my bloodstream to sustain my heart’s rapid pace, that it’s only a matter of time before I ;iaospjdoifeeeeeeeee.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s in my head. I’ve heard stories about green tea containing the same amount of caffeine as certain coffees, but I’ve never felt it active in my system. It’s the same with Coca-Cola. I could drink like four or five cans in a row and I’ll only ever experience a stomach ache. No, it’s just coffee that does the trick, and it has to be as soon as I wake up. Once I reach that first true caffeinated buzz of the day, regardless of how much coffee I drink later on, I’ll never get up to where I was when I first got up. Every once in a while I’ll attempt an early-afternoon recharge, it has to be one of those extra-large cups from Dunkin’ Donuts, and all that can ever hope to achieve is lessening of the inevitable crash, all at the expense of what I’ll no longer be able to count on as a solid eight hour’s sleep.

But I love coffee. I love feeling like I can barely contain myself. I hope that it’s good for me. I hope that the science works out, that someday researches will discover that people who drink tons and tons of coffee always wind up much healthier than everybody else. And happier. And richer. And smarter.

There, I said it

I’m going to go ahead and say it: I don’t like Starbucks. There, I said it. Come on, it’s like, why does everybody like Starbucks? They’re so stupid, with their dumb green signs, and their lines of people waiting to buy coffee. Oh look at me, I’m Starbucks, I sell bottles of water and little packages of fruit salad in an open display right before checkout. And get a load of this, I have Wi-Fi. Does anybody need to use the Internet? Because I have Wi-Fi.

And I’m going to go ahead and say another thing: I hate Wi-Fi. There, I just said that too. It’s like people can’t go anywhere without having to log on to the nearest Wi-Fi network. Every time somebody asks me, “Hey man, do you know if this place has Wi-Fi?” I want to be like, “Fuck you, man. I hate Wi-Fi. Why don’t you just use your cell phone’s data plan? Aren’t they all like unlimited data anyway? And even if it’s not, how much data are you really using, sitting there checking out Facebook at this Starbucks? Huh? And why are you asking me, do I look like I work here? Fuck no, man. A guy’s not allowed to wear a green hat, black polo, and green pants to a Starbucks without working at Starbucks? And who the hell are you, anyway? Where have you been for the past hundred years? Everybody knows that Starbucks has Wi-Fi, just look around man, what do you think all of these people are doing with their laptops open, huh? Playing solitaire? They’re not. Get lost.”

And I don’t even like coffee. Wow, I can’t believe I just said that, but there it is, I said it. It’s entirely way too much of a big deal over nothing. You ever see coffee in the wild? It doesn’t look anything like coffee. It’s these tiny little berry things, the kind of wild berry-looking fruit that your parents warned you not to touch as a little kid. OK fine, I won’t eat the berries, I’ll just cut them open, take the seeds out, let them dry, then I’ll roast them, grind them up, pour boiling hot water over them, and then drink the resulting brown liquid. What are you crazy?

You know what else I hate? Coffee cups. Let me get this straight, you make a stupid little paper cup to hold all of that boiling liquid, you pour the hot liquid inside, and then you reach to grab it, realizing that it’s too hot to hold. OK, that might have been an acceptable mistake the first time around. But to keep doing it over and over again? And you get those little sleeves? Hold on, I forgot to say, “there, I said it.” OK, I said it. So here, I’m saying it one more time, those sleeves are stupid. Just make a stronger coffee cup. Don’t take some piece of garbage cardboard and give it to me like, look, this is for you, so you don’t burn your hand. How about just don’t give me a cup of coffee, and don’t talk to me about Starbucks.

And you know what, I said that I hated coffee cups, but I hate all cups. It’s like, here, let me totally insult your intelligence and pour all of this water into some stupid receptacle, because you’re too dumb to figure out how to get that liquid inside of your mouth without me having to literally set it down right in front of you. Oh gee thanks for the cup of water. What, no instruction manual? Whoops, I accidentally poured everything out on the floor instead of in my mouth. Looks like I’m too much of an idiot to know how to use a stupid cup.

There, I said that too. I said it all. And I hate coffee, I hate cups, I said it. There. And I hate water. I hate the fact that we have to drink anything at all. What’s wrong with having a dry mouth? I like having a dry mouth every once in a while. There. It’s like, you ever have a conversation with somebody and they start talking really fast and all of the sudden they spit a little spit bubble in your mouth? I said it. I hate it. There. That would have never happened had humans evolved in such a way that they didn’t constantly need to wet their whistles with stupid liquid water. That’s why, given the option, I’ll always choose the intravenous saline solution. Because, fuck you biology, nobody tells me how to stay hydrated. You tell me what to do and I’ll do the opposite. I just don’t like it. I don’t have to like it. Everybody else likes it? I’m not afraid to go ahead and say it. I hate it. There. I said it. There.

I’d like a cup of strong coffee

I was at work the other day and this old guy said to me, “I’d like a cup of strong coffee.” And I smiled and I said, “Yes sir,” and I went back into the kitchen and came out with a cup of coffee. I put it down in front of him with a little milk and I said, “Here you go sir, one cup of strong coffee.”

Guess what? It was just regular coffee. He made a point to order his coffee strong, whatever that means, and I also made it a point to deliver his coffee, repeating the word strong back to him as I set it down on the table. By my logic, his strong and my strong effectively cancelled each other out.

Listen old timer, I don’t know how restaurants did things back in the twenties, but what you think you’re exactly going to accomplish by telling your waiter that you want a cup of strong coffee? What do you think, we have different options back there? Strong, medium, weak? Who would order a cup of weak coffee?

Although, now that I’m thinking about it, it would probably make actually a little more sense to order some weak coffee. I’d just cut it with hot water. There you go, weak coffee. Although, I don’t know why anybody would drink weak coffee. Or decaf even. If you don’t like that caffeine kick that accompanies regular coffee, well then I just don’t understand where you’re coming from, what your idea of life is all about.

But the strong coffee guy, I put down that cup, I looked into his eye, I tried as best as I could to nonverbally communicate, hey mister, I heard you say strong coffee, yeah, and guess what? This is regular coffee. I’m almost daring him to call me out on it. “Waiter! I asked for strong coffee!”

And I’d just be like, “That is strong coffee.” Because strong is a subjective word. If I found myself in the unlikely scenario where I’d have to defend my position, I could genuinely say, sorry buddy, sorry boss, I thought our coffee was strong. I thought that was a pretty strong cup of coffee.

But all the while I’d be making that same eye contact, that same kind of half grin, like if you’d look at me you’d think, this guy’s either trying to be really friendly, or a huge dick. And of course it’d be the huge dick look. Because as soon as you start making my job that much more difficult, with your strong coffee request, I’m automatically not at your service anymore. I mean, I’ll still do my job.

But I’ll be looking at you dead in the eye, and all I’m trying to say to you is, what exactly is it that you expect from the service industry? You’re just coming in here and automatically assuming that the strength of our coffee isn’t up to your standards, that you’d like me to go back to our one industrial sized coffee machine, empty the whole thing out, make a fresh pot with extra coffee, just so you can take a sip and probably still flag me down and complain that it’s not strong enough?

And then what, I’ll have to go back into the kitchen and listen to my boss start shouting at everybody, “Hey! Who made this last batch of coffee? Why did you use so much coffee? Everyone’s complaining. And look, there were too many coffee grounds, they all got in the machine. Come on guys, this stuff is portioned out individually for a reason!”

It’s funny because, they actually have a whole industry set up for people who are particular about their coffee. Yeah, you can just go to Starbucks or some other coffee shop and they’d probably know exactly what you’re talking about when you ask for your strong coffee.

It’s like people that come in and ask for a stiff cocktail. You know what? All of that stuff is portioned out also. You want free booze? Too bad, buy another drink. And that just gave me another idea, hey Mr. Strong Coffee, get a shot of espresso. Or even better, order a red-eye. Stop trying to get free strong out of me.

Give me a half-regular, half-decaf. All right, all decaf for you. I’d like a thick steak. You’re just getting a regular steak. Give me a nice sized baked potato. You’re getting whatever baked potato the line cook is closest to. I’ll have a sweet soda. What do you think I’m mixing the syrup back there?

OK, nobody ever asked for a sweet soda. But come on, just order like a regular person. People ask me for crazy stuff and I just want to be like, come on, stop asking me for crazy stuff. Stop asking me things in general. Just point to what you want on the menu and that’s it.

April Regulars Day

This morning I got up and I went down to the kitchen. Normally I have a pretty set morning routine. Unless I’m running late for whatever reason, like unless I overslept or spent too much time laying awake in bed but not moving, just kind of staring at the ceiling, thinking about funny scenes from random episodes of Seinfeld or The Simpsons, I’ll go downstairs, I’ll make a pot of coffee.

While the coffee brews, I always take my dog Steve for a walk. And that’s exactly what I did this morning, just like every other regular morning. And I have everything timed just so, or, I should say that it’s not me actively doing the timing, but things just happened to be timed in such a way that by the time I come back in the house with Steve, I can hear the coffee machine, its three beeps: “beep, beep, beep” telling me that the coffee’s done.

And so it’s coffee, it’s breakfast. Ninety percent of the time I’ll have a bowl of cereal. I love cereal. But I also love making use of all of my groceries. And so today as I reached to grab that box of cereal, I happened to look down at the counter, at this plastic bag with two sandwich rolls inside. I had bought them three days ago, thinking I’d make, you guessed it: a sandwich. But I don’t know what happened, I got distracted, I forgot about the bread, maybe I ate some leftovers.

Whatever may have or may not have been the case, I was looking at these rolls. They were from the deli section, so it’s not the type of bread that I can just keep in the kitchen for a week, a week and a half, and expect to stay fresh enough for consumption on its own. No, these fresh bakery style rolls need to be taken care of, ideally, within one day, two days tops. Like I already said, today was day three.

I thought, just throw them out. They cost less than a dollar. And I was about to. I had my foot on the garbage can, the pedal, it’s one of those garbage cans with a pedal that you step on to pop the lid open, and I was just about to chuck the bag inside. Still, I felt an apprehension, I didn’t want to waste the food. I was getting mentally stuck here, blocked, all while my hunger steadily mounted.

Out of nowhere, a flash of insight, an idea: what about French toast? I remembered reading somewhere, a cookbook, a newspaper article, something about how French toast was originally developed as means of breathing fresh life into stale bread. Then my brain started really making some connections, I thought about bread pudding, I pictured croutons, homemade breadcrumbs. Whereas I was just minutes ago ready to toss these two rolls away, now I had the opposite problem, I couldn’t decide what to do with them, it was like I was overwhelmed with too many options.

But again, I was hungry. Bread pudding, one, it would’ve taken too long, and two, that’s not really a breakfast, it’s a dessert. That’s why I’m not a huge donut for breakfast fan. I love donuts, but come on, it’s just an excuse to eat cake right away. Croutons or breadcrumbs? Not enough to constitute an entire meal. French toast it was.

It was good. It was OK. Like a dummy I forgot to grease the pan, so you can just imagine the sticking-to-the-pan problems I had to deal with. Who forgets to grease the pan? I just chalked it up to hunger, the same hunger that probably made me reach not for my good silicone spatula, but the cheap plastic one, and so when I tried to scrape the bits from the pan, the black plastic started to melt. I tossed that cheap-o spatula away without any hesitation.

But yeah, it was tasty. I used milk, eggs, vanilla extract. Nutmeg would have been nice, but unfortunately I guess I don’t keep it regularly stocked. It’s more of like a fall/wintertime spice if you ask me, although if it tastes good I don’t see why anything should be limited to a particular time or season. But yeah, it was fine, tasty, a nice breakfast.

Happy April Regulars Day everybody!