Sometimes I think back on the time I spent working as a barista, and it seems SO STRANGE to me that “coffee shop AU” has become synonymous with narratives that are low on conflict, high on wholesome romance. During the year I spent working at a coffee shop:
A coworker of mine took a bunch of psychedelics, walked through some strangers’ plate-glass door, and threatened them with a bowie knife, leading to his arrest and imprisonment (and, needless to say, a late opening for the coffee shop that morning).
Another coworker, an ex-military type with a young wife and a new baby, decided to smoke up for the first time ever with two other mutual coworkers, in the back of one of their trucks; and ended up having a three-way with them which ended his marriage.
I had a nervous breakdown, stopped being able to eat food or hold conversations, and ended up sleeping on my coworker’s couch for three weeks before she finally called my parents to come collect me.
Multiple store managers were fired for embezzlement. (Reminder: this was within the space of a single year.)
Yet another coworker, who was seventeen at the time, started dog-sitting for a couple of regulars in their (I’m guessing) early 50s, and ended up in an ongoing creepy and incidentally illegal ~relationship~ with them both.
Various employees discovered, in the course of cleaning the bathrooms: couples fucking in the bathrooms; junkies passed out in the bathrooms; drunks puking in the bathrooms; both adults and children weeping in the bathrooms; a woman bleeding all over the bathroom from a gash in her throat (??); a dude standing in the middle of the bathroom floor and pissing in the opposite direction from the toilet, so that when the employee opened the unlocked door she got piss all over her (????).
The owner of the bridal shop across the street was exposed as both abusive toward her employees and also cooking the books, which led to my coffee shop taking on a couple of untrained and weirdly conservative bridal shop workers for a few months while the bridal shop was shuttered and sold to new owners. Later the larcenous former bridal shop owner came down with some horrible disease which caused her to lose both her hands.
There was a regular universally referred to as “Sketchy Steve,” who came in at 7am for a three-shot latte with room for Seagrams 7, and dealt drugs to all us baristas. I actually, at one point (I cannot believe I was this stupid), went inside Sketchy Steve’s house, and allowed him to spend like half an hour showing me his collection of découpaged outlet plates and also soliciting me for sex while I uncomfortably yet studiously declined.
Right before I started, the store manager had walked off the job in the middle of a shift, and ¾ of the employees had walked out after him. None of them ever returned.
Like, working on the front lines of food service was the most operatically sordid professional experience I have ever had, and one of the most surreal; and it is hilarious to me that THAT, of all jobs, is the one that has come to stand for soft-focus domestic romance in fandom circles.
This is the Coffee Shop AU we deserve.
Two of my managers got fired for having an affair with each other. There was this guy I never really talked to, so one time I see him and ask how his weekend was. He says “I wanted to drop some acid but I couldn’t find any.” Never saw him again.
I had a friend whose manager used to sit in the backroom doing lines of coke before opening at 7am. It was and I quote ‘the only way to deal with this shit’.
My own manager, who was heavily pregnant at the time, told an asshole customer to take their latte and shove it up their arse, before walking out and promptly going into labor.
We had homeless people sleeping in our dumpsters who used to throw the trash back out at us when we opened the lid.
I have myself uttered the phrase “M’am, I am the manager” after they dumped a cream cake over my head because it wasn’t what they ordered except it was. They even pointed at it first and said “that one”.
I had a customer piss themselves out of defiance when we asked them to leave. Then when the police were called they did it again, like some vengeful piss camel.
I’m telling you friends, I have stood at the precipice of hell, I have stared into the void and plummeted into the depths of humanity and it tips less than 20%.
Found it. The origins of everyone starting to send me the phrase Vengeful Piss Camel instead of Crucifix Nail Nipples for a short time. Amazing. I do not miss catering.
I’m sorry but the very concept of Wario willingly paying taxes is laughable
Many of the characters are royalty, and therefore collect taxes, not pay them, though Ganondorf might (and this is a very slight might) pay taxes to the greater Kingdom of Hyrule.
Dark Samus is a Phazon entity who has no concept of anything other than Death and Phazon.
Bowser Jr. is not only a prince, but also a minor without income.
All the Pokemon are literal animals. Duck Hunt too.
Unpopular opinion: straight people using “partner” to refer to their SO actually helps normalize the term so that lgbt folx can use it without automatically outing themselves to strangers. It also helps other straight ppl get comfortable with the fact that strangers aren’t entitled to information about other people’s gender or sexuality.
Give op their hard-earned notes
Tbh I hear “partner” and assume gay, I didn’t know straights used it. Very fair point, OP
I hear ‘partner’ and think ‘gay’ too. A girl at work used it for months and I just went with it. When she would say ‘he’ I even thought maybe he was trans*. Anyways, someone using partner makes me more comfortable and I came out to her. She was just an intelligent straight girl that liked the term and was knowledgeable in human sexuality so definitely someone I should have felt comfortable coming out too. It’s a good sign of a straight person uses it IMO.
As a mental health clinician, this is actually my blanket term when discussing any romantic relationship. I agree it normalizes it, but I also think it’s a relatively safe term to use to describe most romantic relationships without making any assumptions about the person’s orientation or identity. I also use the word “partnered” when describing a monogamous relationship status.
The term “partner” also removes the implied hierarchy of boyfriend/girlfriend vs husband/wife. This is relevant both to non-monogamous people, and unmarried individuals for whom the importance of their relationship isn’t dictated by its legal status.
well maybe if adoption was more accessible to single parents and lesbian couples, witches wouldn’t have to go haggling for people’s firstborns
ironically all the people I’ve heard of who’ve been out here stealing people’s firstborns are evangelical Christians and border agents, while the witches and queer people I know oppose stealing children
I was teaching kids today and they got fixated on the usual ‘are they dead now?’ question when I was talking about historical figures. So I was just like ‘Yes, they’re dead now, everyone who was alive in the 1800s is dead now.’ and then one kid was like ‘Except for you’.
sky's stuff 