The first one was about me. This one will probably make more sense for the title.
***
I miss my coffee job the most.
You know what I did with my Russel Group university degree? No idea, it’s in the pile of useless junk somewhere. After three years of debating Marx, Chomsky, and what makes a society successful with my lecturers and peers I decided it would be way easier to do this with people who don’t have a degree in the social sciences. So I spent a lot of time working in the service industry. I also spent a lot of silly time feeling embarrassed about it. All my friends had respectable jobs as account managers and marketing executives. They wore clean clothes and didn’t smell like coffee all the time (though that one was actually a perk).
I also worked as a theatre stage manager, but maybe we can talk about it some other time. As any young theatre professional that didn’t come from money I had two jobs. It was really nice.
***
My first ever regulars, more than a decade ago, were called Linda and Trevor. I don’t know how Linda and Trevor got to be friends. Linda was a very small lady of around eighty. She would come to get tea with Trevor every Saturday into the community coffee shop where I volunteered. (This is also where I met Julz!) Trevor was a man in his fifties, tall, had wonderful manners. The pair of them would come every Saturday and chat about all sorts of things, read the paper together, discuss it. I remember thinking that their friendship is the most beautiful connection between two people I’ve seen.
I was an 18 year old mess. This volunteering position was the only commitment I was managing to stick to. I was near getting kicked out of Uni, partying too much, fully broke, nearly getting kicked out of my apartment, and for the most part living without electricity. Apparently that happens when you don’t pay your bills. Like, literally, who knew?!
To this day I couldn’t tell you why I kept waking up at 8 am to volunteer for free all day on a Saturday. But I did. Maybe it was Trevor and Linda. They were like a warm hug personified. They were adulthood that’s been through it enough not to judge. I always felt like they looked right past my hangover and my ripped tights. In a way nobody really does with children who are supposed to be doing adult things. This was supposed to be a humorous recollection, but now I’m crying as I’m typing this. I didn’t realise how much I missed them.
In one of my old diaries somewhere I have Linda’s phone number scribbled across the page with her shaky hand. I don’t remember why I needed it. Maybe let her know about our changing opening hours. The morbid part of me wonders if Linda is still alive. If her and Trevor still have tea on Saturdays. And if she’s gone, if they remained friends til the end. If I’ll ever have a friend like Trevor. If I already do, but our lives don’t accommodate weekly tea yet.
***
There was a regular in a cafe I worked at years later. He dropped off his son at school every morning and got a quadruple espresso on the way back, ordinarily made by yours truly. He would near down it right there by the till. We would have a very short chat. His main personality trait was “In A Rush”.
-How are you then, anything fun planned for the weekend?
-Oh, Julz and I are actually going to Brighton for the weekend. It’s our four year anniversary.
-Ah, congratulations. It’s a good time, four years. It’s all downhill from there, trust me.
-… thanks?
***
Same cafe was frequented by a man who wore an Aussie hat and told us he was a count or a lord or something. He would tell us about summers at Windsor and we chuckled, because nobody believed him. We looked him up on Facebook and he had 5 friends all of who were countesses and lords. None of them had any friends beyond this .. community (?) or any elaborate information about themselves. I don’t know what this type of LARPing is called but I just hope it’s not a sex thing.
He was always alone. He had black coffee with a criminal amount of sugar. We counted the used sugar packets a few times. It was on average around 25 sugar packets per ONE coffee.
Don’t ask me. I don’t—- I scan’t explain it. I didn’t even know you could dissolve that much sugar in one small coffee. It was a mystery that we never asked him about. Come to think about it, why didn’t we just ask him?
Always a good chat though. I loved hearing what new thing he’s going to be randomly judgemental about that week. I wondered, how can someone so open hearted and well meaning could dislike so many unrelated things?
***
I had a job for a very short time at this really fancy coffee shop in West London. It was opposite The Dorchester. It was so fancy it had that Home Alone 2 look, minus Trump, which, obviously, is a huge win.
I didn’t last long there. My direct superior and I had… creative differences. See, I thought I was a great employee doing good work and getting along with everyone, loved by owners and customers alike, while my super inappropriate, rude, misogynistic, deluded fuckface of a boss didn’t agree.
But this isn’t about him. Most of our regular customers weren’t the type for eye contact, so I never got to talk to them. They were more the type for “sure I can park on this double yellow line, what are they gonna do, tow my Ferrari?!?”.
But one of our regulars was basically as close as I’ve ever seen to a superstar up close. He was a Saudi Arabian diplomat living out of the Dorchester, drinking my espresso every morning. He was so well dressed, really well spoken, stupidly handsome. When I met him for the first time I asked him, what he did. And he said, he was a diplomat. And asked: for like, a company?
He laughed and said, you can only be a diplomat for a country. Duh.
When I told him I was leaving he wished me all the best and with a suspiciously smooth handshake left £50 in my hand. Julz I’m sorry but you’d swoon, too.
***
Oh, I also had a regular at my last job, where I was an in-house barista of an office building, who turned out to be an olympic athlete. I didn’t know this until I was about to leave and go have Zoe.
He said, let me follow you on instagram, I wanna see the baby! And I said, of course, I want to see pictures of the terrible coffee you’ll be subjected to in my absence. When I followed him back I realised he was a track and field athlete. Ah, little me, rubbing shoulders with diplomats and olympians.
When I left that job people didn’t just follow my instagram. It was like leaving one of my childhood violin performances. I left with chocolates, flowers, cards.
***
I could write an infinite series about all the people I’ve met at work. I think before the pandemic I was really good at talking to people. We haven’t had proof I still am in a while, I probably lost my charm by now. I’m older, less cute, way more tired. Also the part of my brain able to tolerate other people’s shit seems to have shrunk dramatically.
But my years of people watching at work have given me a love for strangers. I don’t think much about how it shaped me, but it must have. I’m definitely more open to contact than your average bear.
You would be too, if you had met Linda and Trevor.
Whenever I wanted to escape my life I dreamed about running away and becoming a bar tender. I’m old now and have altered the fantasy to becoming a barista. I love *being* a regular and would adore it if I had my own regulars.
You're sooooo far from being an average bear. Trust me.