The Worm Has Turned

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*-TOO MUCH INFORMATION

Last night was what I consider my first real shift at Starbucks. It was fairly busy, meaning there were a few lulls. Didn't mean I stopped moving though. I hate to stop moving. That sounds rediculous coming from a person as bone idle as I can be, but at work I like to keep moving. Because if I stop moving my body says, Oh, time to shut down, what? And crashes. So even on break my legs are jiggling like crazy, trying to fool my body.

I still needed help finding things on the register screen, but I did much better keeping the coffee up and I made lots of bases for the blended drinks and ground lots of coffee and washed lots of dishes and did lobby sweeps and took out the trash all without being reminded and before the situation got out of hand. I felt better yesterday, less incompetent. But ah, I still have to learn drive thru and then bar.

Bar...(shudder). I need to get over my contempt for the fact that this job is not a real barista job. Not to say they don't work hard, they work very hard and they're fast...but there's no art to it. If there was art to it people'd be waiting three times as long for these drinks. But if one of these kids (most of them are kids) came to my old shop, they'd have to be totally retrained. At Starbucks nobody pulls their own shots, you just set up the glasses and push a button, the machine does rest for you. Nobody learns the feel of the grind, how hard to tamp, how a shot should look when it's pulling, how to know when something is off, if the crema isn't right, if the grind is to small or too large. And the steaming...steaming HUGE pitchers of milk. You get the steamer started and then you can walk away...walk away! It shuts itself off somehow. I don't like that at all. I knew how to backflush the machine, clean the heads and the filters...

Now, I'm not saying I could enter the Intl. Barista Competitions... but I was a real barista. I miss my old job. I really do. Because I was good at it. I try not to get too upset over it, bitterness is counter-productive. I need to concentrate on doing well here so people won't need to pick up any of my slack and I can make shift supervisor soon. I need the higher wage.

It doesn't help that I had a dream about my old shop last night. I dreamt I went in there and I met the new manager.

The new manager at the Starbucks is so cute and nice, a tiny little Asian lady. She has an accent, which kind I don't recognize. She's very effecient too. We shall call her LittleBoss! Shall we not? We shall.

Okay, time to go.