All My Clothes Have Mocha Stains

"Ventisoychaitwoandthreequartesinchesoffoamwithtwoeightsofacentimeterofcaramelsauceanda

turkeysandwichwithonlyahalfpieceofturkeyandineeditallinthenextminuteandahalfcauseihavea

traintocatch."

I've been working here long enough that I now have the coffee language down, but would it hurt for people to breath in between their words?

I look at the sixteen year old girl in front of me, decked out in Tiffany's and Bloomingdales, and then at the line of 25 people behind her also waiting for their drinks.  There is no way that her order will be ready in 90 seconds.

"Our sandwiches are pre-made."

She rolls her eyes.  "Whatever.  This is bad business.  Just give me the drink.  Now I only have 72 seconds until my train comes.

I mark her cup and call someone to ring up the rest of the customers so princess can get her replenishment via mommy's credit card.  I steam the milk, pump the chai, and top it off with caramel.  I try to meet her measurement requirements but I'm not about to whip out a ruler to get exactly two and three quarter inches of foam and two eights of a centimeter of caramel sauce.  I finish her drink in record time and pass her the cup.  She takes off the lid and peers inside, a look of disgust on her face which she then transfers to me.

"It's not filled to the top."

"I'm sorry, if I fill it anymore it will overflow and then that would be a full three inches of foam."

"Show me what's left in the container."

I take the pitcher which I steamed the milk in and show her the five or six drops left on the bottom.

"Techincally, I paid for that."

'No, technically your parents paid for that.' I want to say.

I sigh and take her cup, pouring the rest of the milk in which, as promised, causes the cup to overflow.

The girl glares at me from underneath her false eyelashes and swoopy bangs and grimaces.

"You need to make me another one.  I'm not taking that, I'll get chai on my hands."

I sigh again, my frustration becoming increasingly difficult to contain and pour the drink into the sink.  A little bit of my pride rushes down the drain with it.

I make her next drink while a pile of other orders crowd the counter space around me.  The girls whips out her bedazzled cell phone, a la Paris Hilton, and begins to bitch to a phantom friend on the other end.

New drink finished, I slide it to her and immediately turn to the next order before she can complain about anything else.  As she walks away she turns back and sneers.

"I'm going to Starbucks from now on."

"For the love of god, please do!" I call out after her, watching her mini skirt ride up her ass with each step.

Why Books Can Lead To Drinking

Here is what I have learned in the past nine months: people who shop at book stores are disturbingly unappreciative and rude human beings.  

I have experienced a range of behavior from customers that starts at holier-than-thou thirteen year old girls and ends at sexually frustrated forty three year old men.  Mix in gold digging "housewives" and bitter old men, and you've got yourself my place of employment.

Once upon a time, not too long ago, I was a motivated and jolly little college student working my ass off to become a writer.  I went to see an accomplished author speak at Drexel University one day where I was told that if I wanted to ever follow my dreams of seeing my name on a shelf, I should "absolutely, positively, without a doubt work at a bookstore."  So I did.  I now find myself standing behind a register, ringing up other authors' books, and constantly steaming milk for lattes in the cafe.  My $42,000 a year education is in the back of my brain, kicking and screaming.

It's really quite amazing how retail employees are treated by the very people they are simply trying to help.  I've had people scream at me, telling me how stupid I am just because we no longer carry the book they want from 1949.  Apparently the term out-of-print means very little to them.  Additionally, I don't know what it is about Sunday morning, but the time span between 10AM and noon brings in a hoard of wonderful men who desperately need either a bit more attention from their wives or a new collection of porn.  I don't know why they think that it is appropriate to tell me to reach into their pocket and pull out their money myself but apparently this is a completely acceptable way to pay for their copy of the new James Patterson novel.

The one saving grace is the fact that almost everyone I work with seems to share these frustrations with me.  We have accepted that our social lives must take a backseat to our heavy weekend schedules and our bills must take an even further backseat to our barely three digit paychecks.  

There are common situations that happen to every bookstore/cafe employee.  One of my favorites is the Short-Term-Memory-Loss.  Example:

"Hi, how are you today?"  I smile as I greet the customer.

Customer slams his book on the counter.

"Are you a member with us?"

Customer looks at me like I just asked him to cut open his stomach and hand over his kidney.  I take this as a no, he is certainly not a member with us.

"Well just so you're aware, with our membership you can save 40% off of bestsellers, 20% off adult hardcovers, and 10% off everything else in the store."  I keep the smile on.  You can never ever let the smile fade away.

"My wife might be a member."

"Ok, great!  Do you have the card on you or should I look up your phone number?"

Customer, keeping his death stare on me, reaches into his pocket and slams his wallet down on the table.  He blindly goes through a seven inch thick wad of credit cards: Black and Gold American Express, Visa, Mastercard, the deed to his Mercedes Benz and Jaguar.  No membership card.

"Ok, why don't I just look up-"

"215-555-4382." Customer mumbles in half a second flat, before I even get a chance to go to the lookup screen on my monitor.

"I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" Smile smile smile.  Just keep freakin smiling.

"TWO.  ONE.  FIVE.   FIVE.  FIVE.  FIVE.   FOUR.  THREE.  EIGHT.  TWO."  Customer is now borderline yelling and talking to me like I'm just learning my numbers.

I look up the number and see that yes, his wife is in fact a member.  However that membership expired in 1992.

"I'm sorry your membership has expired.  Would you like to renew it?  It is a $25 renewal fee."

"Yeah, whatever, fine."

"Ok, and would you like a gift receipt with that?"

"A what?"

"A gift receipt."

"Of course I want a receipt.  What, you guys gonna charge me for a receipt?  Borders always gives receipts."

"No sir, you'll get a regular receipt, but I asked if you wanted a gift receipt.  Are you giving the book as a gift?"

"No, it's for me!  What the hell is a gift receipt?  I just want a receipt!"

"Ok."  Smile.

I ring up and the book and renew his membership.

"That will be $48.25."

"FORTY EIGHT DOLLARS!  THE BOOK IS ONLY TWENTY THREE!"

"Right sir, but you renewed your membership, remember?  I told you it costs $25 and you said you wanted to renew it."

"I NEVER SAID THAT!  DO YOU REALLY THINK I WOULD DO THAT IF YOU HAD TOLD ME IT WAS $25?!?!?"  Meanwhile, I can see a wad of hundred dollar bills stuffed into his wallet.  Pocket change, really.

I now have to call up a manager to cancel the transaction so I can start over.  I then hear the manager paging another manager and so on and so forth until someone is finally nice enough to come help me.  Oh so pleasant Customer has now been plotting my death for a full ten to twelve minutes.  As is the line of customers behind him who are whispering among themselves about how ridiculous this is and how they are missing their manicure appointments.  Side question: why aren't all these people at work at one in the afternoon on a Tuesday?

A manager finally comes up and cancels the transaction.  I ring up the book and nothing else, and tell him his total.  Customer reaches into his pocket, not into his wallet that runneth-over, and pulls out a roll of quarters.  He breaks it open on the counter, and proceeds to count out $23 in quarters.

It's barely past noon and I already need a drink.

Dear...

Dear Pumpkin Patch,

I can't promise this won't be a sappy, gooey, mushy letter.  But I can promise that it's all true.  You know that.

Here's the thing about you.  When all girls are little and imagining their perfect guy, there are certain traits that they desperately hope they can find in someone, but secretly know don't actually exist.  The thing about you is, you have those traits.  Every single one.  You're everything I realistically and unrealistically ever wanted.  And then there are parts of you that I didn't even  know a person could have.  Amazing things that just make me think, 'Wow'.  You have all of that, and you picked me.  That's what is going on in my head when you look at me and ask, "What are you thinking?"

I've gone through so much in just the past couple years alone, so much shitty, awful stuff.  But I would do it all again if that meant I would ultimately get to you.  I still can't believe I get to fall asleep every night and wake up every morning with you next to me.  I've told you before and I'll tell you again; you are absolutely stunning, inside and out.  

There aren't many people that can put up with the absolute ridiculousness that is my personality.  My singing in an awkward voice and dancing in an awkward way around the apartment, I'm pretty sure that at least 80% of the time you're laughing with me and not at me.  And that's pretty cool.

Thanks for surprising me with peanut M&M's with a list of reasons why you love me written on the bag.  Thanks for not liking it when I forget to leave a paper towel note on your mirror for you to come home to after work.  Thanks for telling me every night that I'm beautiful and that you love me.  Thanks for proving me wrong about my first impression of you and thanks for letting me prove you wrong about your impression of me.  And thanks for being hot.  Seriously, it's unreal.

I love you a whole bunch of bananas and I will for the next hundred and one years.

Love,

Dogface

Dear...

Dear Sean,

I decided to write my first blog letter after my unintentional hiatus to you because I think you should know how amazing a person you are.

There are very few people that have come into my life that have been nothing but a positive influence.  Although, and I've told you this, I wish we had become friends sooner than the last few days of my final year at Berg, getting to have such good memories near the end made me actually sad about graduating as opposed to the "get me the hell out of here" attitude that I had taken on before then.  And the fact that you live so close to my house is a nice little added bonus.

Thanks for always making me feel good about myself.  Thanks for dealing with my embarrassingly girly screams over those vicious white water rapids during our canoe trip.  Thanks for going to see an equally embarrassingly girly movie with me, and thanks for encouraging me to write every day, at least for ten minutes.  Thank you for being on the other end of the phone minutes after I lost yet another boyfriend and thanks for giving me the tough love that convinced me to finally break up with the douchebag.  You're probably one of two people in this entire world that can truly calm me down and one of the people that I feel most supported by.  That one day over a year ago when you saw me crying in the CA- at that point still basically a stranger to you- you gave me a hug and promised that you would always be there to give me a hug when I needed it.  Well you haven't disappointed me on that promise and I can't thank you enough.

Plus you're brilliant and funny as hell and always keep me laughing.  That's always a plus.

So Sean, I guess I just wanted to thank you for being not only the kind of friend, but also the kind of person that always has an ear to listen and a shoulder to cry on.  You're the best and I adore you to a bajillion little pieces.

Love,

Alexis