What goes through my mind in the grind…

For no apparent reason, this morning I was thinking about gas stations. 

Have you ever seen the fuel delivery at a gas station?  A huge tanker pulls in.  The driver uses a wooden dipstick to determine the volume of fuel in the underground storage tank.  Why do they still use a 12 foot long stick to tell the how full the storage tank is?  Wouldn’t you expect someone to have figured out a no-nonsense way of doing that measuring remotely?  You could have little floats up the side of the tank that would be in the on or off position depending on where the level of fuel was.  Kinda like how the tank on your car works (it only has one float, usually). 

Does the tanker driver have to handle the gassy stick with his hands when he is done measuring?

What tricks does the tanker driver have for getting the smell of gas off of you and your clothes?

Does the tanker travel with its own sticks?   Or do the gas stations keep them handy?

Who makes the dipsticks?  Who makes paint stir sticks for that matter?  What an interesting industry that might be… stickmaking.

So… Is this the end of Gristle??

Faithful pessimists,

As you can tell, there hasn’t been much new in the world.  At least, not that interests me enough to form opinions.  In fact, I’ve left the employment of my greatest inspirational source, and school has me so drained that not much has my attention outside of accounting, economics and quantitative methods.  I’ll post something here directing anyone interested to my next great passion.  I hope to keep up Gristle with a new focus, but may move elsewhere.  More to come!

God’s blessings to you all.

NEM

Courtney Love has become a nanny…

This girl comes in pretty frequently to the coffee store to get a 110 degree white chocolate kids milk with whip cream in a sippy cup, and a handful of other things.  She has two little kids on her hip, but she is way too young to have birthed them.  She speaks in that voice that is kinda squeaky breathy and raises to a question at the end of every sentence spoken.  She dresses in vintage Courtney costume reminding me of the ‘Doll Parts’ video every time she comes in.  She’s spacey and forgetful (left her wallet with a lump of cash and a platnum card in it), but seems to really love those kids.

The dearth of news from me has been because of a palpable lack of love for the job the past few weeks.  We are losing a lot of great people as school starts again and folks head off to do their learnin.  I hope to have more witty and scathing commentary to offer again soon.  I just need a few more hits off the coffee.

Huffer has a mom…

Preteen huffer girl and her mom came in last night.  Mom reeked of weed and could hardly hold her head up.  They spent about $10 buying drinks and madeline cookies and sat down at a table near the espresso bar.  Mom began to cry and was speaking softly to huffer girl for over an hour.  They put their nearly empty cups on my bar and left.  They returned about 25 minutes later, along with a cloud of weed stench stronger than before, wondering aloud where their drinks went.  I let them know that I threw them in the trash.  Appalled, they demanded replacements for their “nearly full” drinks.  I obliged, because I didn’t feel like being a dick to these troubled people.  Another hour went by, mom still crying into her frozen caramel blender drink, moaning to huffer girl about this, that and the other.  As they got up, mom asked if I could make her a small chocolate frozen blender drink to take to her friends.  She promised to return with the money to pay for it in 10 minutes.  Sure, what the hell, I thought.  Over an hour later, mom came back with money in hand and a nearly empty cup from the frozen chocolate blender drink.  She could hardly speak, she was so baked, but I managed to understand that the whipped cream on the drink tasted sour, and could she have another.  As you’ve gathered by the theme of this post, my response was… SURE!  What the hell!  At this point, I’m fascinated by how this will all end.  But surprisingly, the final exchange was uneventful.  I handed off her drink, got a genuine-feeling thank you from huffer mom and a dollar tip from huffer girl.

On their way out the door, they were approached by a woman who was dirty and disheveled.  She looked to be in her 60s, in the way that a 40-something hard living woman looks to be older than she is.  She was asking for money, but huffers had none to spare.  Undeterred, homeless woman came in and explained that her son had come in earlier for iced coffees and cakes, but the coffees had spilled on the cakes and they couldn’t eat them.  This presented a huge problem for homeless woman, because, she explained, she was diabetic and needed the sugar from the cake to manage her condition.  I asked which of the cakes it was, and, licking her lips and leaning on the pastry case window in the way that starving waifs do in movies, she pointed to the blueberry coffee cakes.  I don’t think she could read, because she seemed surprised when I said blueberry.  I handed her two pieces, got God’s blessing from her, and she was on her way.

The corporate coffee experience’s official position on customer service is that we should to find a way to say “yes” to situations that arise.  This thought never crossed my mind, as my heart guided my hands with these people, not letting my brain get in the way.

Is it a full moon or something?

Weirdos.  Freaks.  Creeps.  Whatever.

In the past week, we’ve had the most unusual group of customers I’ve ever seen.  It must be in part because of the weather, bringing things out from under rocks nearby, or something.

Two girls are tops on this list of customers.  They were probably a couple.  One reminded me of a drug-addicted vegetable.  Really just arm candy for the other girl.  She never blinked in the nearly ten minutes she spent asking me questions about lemonade.  She asked her questions slurring syllables around at least two tongue piercings.  She didn’t touch anything she wanted to look at, or anything at all really.  She wanted to look at a CD… her friend had to hand it to her.  She needed money out of her pocket to pay for the frozen blended coffee she ordered; the friend had to reach into this girl’s pocket to get it for her.  Really spooky.  I can make eye contact with pretty much anyone for as long as I choose, but this girl creeped me out.  She wanted to know if our choco chip cookies were soft.  My response: “well, they aren’t crispy”.  Her response “wha’s cripsy?”  She then asked to touch the cookie, and determined it was too hard.  And, when it came time to exchange money for goods, the cash was held out in mid air, as if this girl was paying someone standing four feet in front, and slightly to the right, of me.  If I didn’t know better, I’d think this girl was a comic’s puppet, being controlled almost convincingly by someone else entirely.

Then there were the huffers.  Two kids, maybe 15 and 12, maybe brother and sister, came in for an iced chai.  They smelled like gasoline or turpentine or some other thing distilled from heavy crude, and they were covered in greasy grime.  I’ve seen the older one before.  Usually talking on a cell phone too loud to really interact with me.  He always gets a caramel frozen blender coffee, but not this time.  The two of them were trying to out-dumb each other I think.  The younger one had trouble counting to four (with her dollars).  The older one was having fun calling the younger one ‘dummy’, but also didn’t seem able to count effectively the change needed for the bevvy.   Neither of these two blinked, either, over the course of our discourse.

It’s always the young people that catch my attention most.  What precious few moments they have had being taught life skills by responsible people seem to have been focused on things other than how to properly interact with other humans.  And what will become of these kids in the years ahead?

The older folks that have come in… now they are a different story entirely.

Okay, Okay, so “Daily” might have been too optimistic

Loyal chewers of the Gristle,

So I’ve hit a dry spell. I can’t help it when it’s this hot outside. The AC struggles to keep the house under 80 around the time that I usually have a moment to write.

I was confronted by death in a surprising way the other day. In my commute to one of my jobs I came across a scene where a pedestrian had been hit by a car and killed. It must have happened recently. The EMTs were there just standing over the guy, and the police hadn’t yet arrived to secure the area and cover him up. The guy really looked like the dead people you see on TV dramas, lying in the street in some unnatural position.

I haven’t felt so fragile in a long time. Family, friends and responsibilities filled my head. Regrets, worries, love and laughter. I got lost in my thoughts immediately. The air horn of a huge Kenworth truck brought me back quickly, and I went about my day, changing little in the end.

Give your loved ones an extra hug or kiss or smile today. Life is all too quickly taken away.

More Woes Herr Diesel

I think I’m writing a lot of about diesel fuel lately because I saw it as a missed opportunity in the auto market.  Small, efficient diesel engines run much of Europe.  The auto racing series that I enjoy watching most has been dominated by diesel Audis for a couple of seasons now, and privateers are finding a lot of success in racing barely modified diesel BMWs in England.

Does $4.75 a gallon slow the fury of interesting diesel vehicles being developed?  Several prototype diesel motorcycles were in development for the armed forces.  Has anyone heard from Biodiesel lately?  Maybe the worldwide food crisis has hit that fuel too hard (sorta related; check out Bill Maher’s bit about corn if you can… about as enlightening as Super Size Me).  Since moving to Denver, I haven’t smelled one french-fry powered delivery van, though there were supposed to be a whole bunch here.

Now, Who’s Fault Is That?

I saw a vanity plate on a Chevy Suburban yesterday worth noting. ‘2MNYKDS’

Well, if you don’t know how it happens, I’m not gonna tell ya. I could see a time in my life when I’d think this was a funny comment. Imagine if their kids were a little slow in developing humor… “mommy, are there really too many of us? Do you have to sell one of us for gas money?” Now, I’m starting to laugh a little!

My New New Favorite Customer

Let me introduce you to Ms. JL Cooper. The other day, she came into my store, dragging her two pre teens along with her. She ordered her iced caramel macchiato, then changed her mind, preferring an iced caramel americano, non-fat, light ice, 2/3 decaf, 1/3 caf, 3 pump caramel. With her first drink on my mind, and hearing that she was expecting a number of espresso shots in her drink divisible by three, I committed mortal sin. I added $0.55 extra to her drink for an extra bolster of liquid confidence.

You’d think I had just stabbed this woman’s daughter in the ear with my milk thermometer. “I’ve come in here every day for years and gotten that exact drink, and no one has ever charged me more than $3.35. An americano comes with three shots already. How can you do this!!?? I HAVE GOTTEN THAT DRINK 3, NO 4 HUNDRED TIMES MAYBE AND IT IS ALWAYS THE SAME!” Shocked, and really wanting to jump over the counter to act in some way more fitting of her response, I mumbled “you’re right ma’am; you’re right” and, wait for it, removed the $0.55 even quicker than I added it.

I’m so proud of this woman for teaching her progeny that this is the correct way to respond to every mistake you encounter in the real world.

So, dwelling on this encounter for a few days, I had almost totally forgotten it when, who to my wondering eyes should appear?  Cooper! She recognized me almost instantly. She scrutinized my cash register input intensely. She seemed satisfied enough. Oh, did I mention she ordered a completely different drink than the one she has gotten 400 other times? I walked to my espresso bar to make the drink, and hearing her exclaim “oh, oops” from behind me, I walked to her casually to ask her if she needed something else. I have never been given a look like she gave me in that moment. I liken her expression and response to my approach as though I were a zombie coming for her brains. She was this mix of anger, fear, confusion, sour lemon and puzzlement. Her face nearly imploded. I could hear tendons pop from behind her shirley temple cheek bones.

I don’t smell bad, I don’t have an unpleasant appearance according to the old ladies who think I’m super cute and pump the tip jar (not a euphemism for something else) at my register. How could I cause this nasty person to react so violently??

Proud To Be A Coffee Schill

Perhaps in the hope of appeasing the elites like this guy, The Corporate Coffee Megadon has started a promo this summer that is rewarding people for using registered coffee cards to purchase their bevy’s and nosh. But the marketing geniuses at the Corporation were on a different track, choosing to reward regulars (and non regulars, I guess) to the tune of about $0.40 a cup (and not on every cup mind you!). Another great decision was to roll out the promo without fully training the baristas on how to correctly discount, without updating the cash register software to fully support the program, therefore relying on the customer to be sure to reward themselves. If you haven’t been in line at Corporate Coffee lately, you may have missed the anger that sometimes comes with incorrect prices charged by a novice barista, or by someone overwhelmed with the line. Now, imagine putting a system in place that regularly causes price fluxuation between outlets (many customers have a store for the morning and a different one for the afternoon fix) and even between baristas within the same store.

Mutiny is at hand.