as the sbux turns...

Well they aren't making me work on Christmas. That's a good thing. The store is open, but I don't have to be there. Instead, I get to spend time with my family. And work on Wednesday instead of Saturday. But whatever.

Last week, in an effort to be efficient and prepared, I poured a half a pound of ground coffee into a floppy white paper filter, tucked it into the metal basket and inserted it into the coffee machine, and just like a automaton, hit "BREW."

It was the sort of moment that just keeps giving.

I didn't realize I had done such a thing and the coffee pot was already pretty full...

So it began seething out of the pot.

A customer noticed and pointed it out to me.

I reached for a cup to pour out the overfilling pot.

The spill was incredible. It happened so silently, so quietly, and it covered the counter.

I mopped it up with rags and felt embarrassed.

An hour later, two maintenance men came up to tell me that the Pharmacy downstairs reported a leak in their ceiling. The men didn't even know the sbux was still open. The liquid was brown. Yes, I said, there was an accident.

Another hour later, when we pulled out the bins under the coffee pots to check if they needed refilling, a murky liquid was pooled beneath them. We cleaned out the cabinet thoroughly.

This typifies the sort of goings on at my new job. I try really hard to show what a good worker I am and it goes horribly wrong and makes me look like a clumsy fool.

The other odd thing about my new job is the established protocol in the manuals that some person spent their time and resources on trying to come up with universal language for all things Starbuckian is constantly and pervasively ignored.

Yesterday when I arrived at work, the whiteboard in the back area had been filled with a list written in the manager's loopy script titled, "The Five Reasons For Firing"

No:

Thank you with eye contact.

Clean Apron.

Suggestive Sales.

[The other two were things I had never heard of before and can't remember.]

Then, next to that list, there were additions that someone else wrote, but instead of using the same format, they just listed bad things worth firing for (which are pretty much bad things to do no matter where you work) like being late, unavailable to work, lacking cohesiveness (though I have problems with that one).

When I asked someone about it, she was like oh, don't worry about that, you're fine. She said that it was written for two people who have worked there for a long time and it was like a warning to them. I thought it was a rather passive aggressive warning, to say the least, and that if they were that stupid in the first place then they probably wouldn't pay any heed to some scribblings on a whiteboard, but hey, what do I know?

The other fascinating thing about working at the sbux is the gossip. We had it at Siena, but it was mostly about the customers. Also, we (the staff) generally all liked each other and got along pretty well. At sbux, there's some new topic of gossip every day, and it's mostly about the other people we work with.

Yesterday I found out that one of the people who has worked for sbux a long time is pulling shifts at the Au Bon Pain that is right inside the hospital, just up the escalators on the second floor.

When I told the focused and determined young lady who I enjoy closing shifts with, she didn't go for the scandal, she went for the manual and said, "Isn't that a conflict of interest?"

I said I wasn't sure but Au Bon Pain and the guy who's working there and here didn't seem to think so.

cue evil villain riff.

I've already been working there for a month, and it has gone by quickly due to my shifts always falling on weekends. I feel like I haven't been trained much at all and very often, when things are slow and I am alone, I look at myself and the place and feel like I am dreaming.

At least I don’t have to work on Christmas.