sketch of a job that you had

The most important thing to remember is that you can never stop lying & no one is going to help you unless you trick them. This is especially true at work.

So if the food court manager asks you if you can work an espresso machine, & if you know that baristas make an extra twenty-five cents an hour, & if you’d do just about anything to avoid folding another burrito for people five years younger & much more stable than you, you know damn well what to say.

At first, your espresso shots are bitter & thin. They look more like dirty water than the beautiful, rippling terracotta that Sonja can pull. You get frustrated & jealous sometimes, but she just laughs it off.

Sonja’s alright. She doesn’t rat you out for clearly not knowing how to do your job, so you do some of her busy work when you can, to make it look like you are friends. You consider her an accomplice to the lie, or at least a cool aunt who doesn’t really care one way or another.

In just a few days, she teaches you how to steam milk, how to avoid burning it by listening to the foam rumble. “If it sounds like it’s screaming, just stop. You’re doing something wrong,” she explain-demands in that way that she does. Sonja’s movements are precise. She’s been working at the cafe for years & can use every machine in time with some secret rhythm. She says she used to be a dancer, but she doesn’t keep in practice anymore. You wonder if those skills haven’t just gone to different ends.

Lying takes a lot of upkeep, especially for you, because you’re the best at lying, which means you bring 110% to every falsehood & also don’t know when to quit. You watch youtube videos, read the backs of coffee bags like periodicals, linger at Starbucks counters just long enough to catch some jargon. After a month or two, you get pretty good at pretending to know anything at all about coffee. You don’t really consider the possibility that maybe you’ve earnestly learned anything—it’s all definitely pretend.

You don’t even like coffee that much. It’s been harder for you to drink it since you quit smoking. The taste is invasive on your uncured tongue. A lot of things have been harder to drink since you quit smoking, actually. It kind of feels like a curse to actually be able to taste an IPA.

One time, Sonja tried to be accommodating & use a gender-neutral pronoun to describe you, but afterwards her face twisted up like she’d tasted something awful & tanic. Maybe she just needed a cigarette. You regret telling her anything about yourself.

Over the course of a few more months, you decide that your favorite thing about espresso is actually the tiny cups it’s served in. The first best thing about the cups is that they are adorable, & the second best thing is how easy it is to slip them to attractive people for free when the manager isn’t looking. You give away a lot of espresso like this, because a lot of very attractive people like coffee, like it to be in adorable cups, like it to be free, & are willing to pay attention to you to get it. This arrangement works out too well sometimes, & a few of the attractive people have actively attempted to befriend you, which you find repellent.

The only real friend you have among the customers is the early morning custodian from the communications building. You offer her any free drink she likes, because you spent all last year as a custodian & feel a kinship with her—& also because her smile does something to you. Each time you watch her cheeks wrinkle around the corners of her mouth, you feel like you might die immediately (you tell her all of your best jokes). She only ever orders a small drip coffee with room for cream. You oblige, even though you’d gladly give her every tiny cup in the cafe if only she’d ask.

One cold morning, you arrive at the cafe to find the manager scrutinizing the various coffee machines. He doesn’t acknowledge you, but the workstation isn't very big, so you both sort of awkwardly dance around each other for a bit, trying to do your separate jobs.

You had been looking forward to making yourself some free coffee that you hate, & you are beginning to get impatient with the manager blocking the espresso machine, so you ask him what he is doing. He sighs, & says that the cafe has been making significantly less money on espresso this year, & he can’t figure out why. His boss is getting worried, & she is being terrible as a result. You hate his boss, & so you manage to briefly empathize with the plight which you are causing.

“Oh no,” you say.

The manager shrugs, resigned. He says that probably something just needs to be recalibrated on the machines. It’s not unheard of that sometimes a bean grinder will simply grind too much bean. “Yeah,” you say. “We've all been there before. The chafing should clear up in a day or two.” The manager nods solemnly, continuing to pretend that he doesn't understand your wilely lesbian comedy.

Regardless, for your empathy & your humor, you figure that you've won the conversation. As a victory lap, you excuse yourself to go eat some of the disgusting, caffeinated chocolate which the cafe sells, since it looks like you won't be making coffee anytime soon.

Leaning on the counter, you take a moment to imagine how the rest of the morning will unfold.

You imagine that Sonja will arrive on-time, right when the cafe opens. She'd shoot you a stern-but-toothless look when she hears the manager's tale of woe. She's long since discovered your various bean-skimming activities, & doesn't agree with your lifestyle, but won't cause any problems.

You imagine the manager puzzling over the grinder a bit past opening, maybe getting some of the coffee grounds on his face or shirt, which you'd politely point out before any of the customers saw him. He cares about that sort of thing, & you could score some extra empathy points from the quiet-but-gracious nod he gives when you're kind to him.

You imagine that the custodian might stop by soon, & you might offer her some terrible chocolate. She'd make a face, & glance over to the manager, still at that point trying to solve a non-existent issue with the equipment. What happened to the coffee? she'd ask, sounding earnestly concerned for coffee's wellbeing. Bean grinder, you'd indicate through a mouthful chocolate. Too much bean. Oh, she'd say. Right, I get it. We've all been there before.