Night Shift

Most would expect to have a few weird experiences while working the night shift, especially young women. Though, most don’t really expect places such as bookstores and cafes would have any weird occurrences at all. I happen to regularly work the night shift at a 24 hour combination bookstore and cafe. From my time working here I can assure you that weird s**t can and will happen when you work the night shift, no matter where you work.

I live in a decently populated city, and the store I work at is right outside of the city. We actually do really good business, way better than most initially think when they hear about the store. Fun fact about the store, the owner of this place got the idea for it from a random tumblr post saying something about how amazing a 24 hour bookstore would be. Probably one of the best posts to get inspiration from in my opinion.

Anyways, since I usually work the late night shifts, I tend to get more people stopping in for coffee (and maybe a pastry) than books. Most of these customers are usually truck drivers and people taking late night road trips, as well as the occasional person either just getting off work or just heading to work (pretty much what you’d expect for a place that sells coffee at these hours). A few times the person who had just come in seemed like they might have been “adult” workers, but I paid no mind to that and treated them like I would any other customer. Obviously the occasional stray drunk or high individual will wander in.

With all the times I’ve worked, I consider myself quite lucky. None of the customers I’ve gotten so far, even the weirder ones, have ever gotten violent on me. There are a few I’ve had to threaten the more ballsy one with the metal bat my boss leaves for us to use incase of any emergencies, but nothing more than that. Still, I always try to be prepared for the small chance that things might get out of hand. You can never be too cautious during the graveyard shift.

So far tonight has been relatively normal.

A small family stopped by not too long ago. I assume they stopped to stretch their legs after being on the road for so long, as maybe grab something to drink that isn’t water. I learned from the more chatty of the dads that they are on their way to Disneyland from Montana. Apparently they were out so early because they wanted to beat the morning traffic by leaving before most people would even be awake.

The other dad looked like he was trying to keep their little boy from falling asleep in the shop. The boy, who couldn’t have been much older than 6 or 7, looked very pissed and like he would have rather stayed asleep in the car instead of woken up and in some random store. The other child, a girl who seemed to be in her older teens, was browsing through the books. Personally, I say she had the right idea. Having a good book or two (or twelve) during a long road trip is one of the best things ever. I couldn’t help but smile hearing the girl saying something about us having the next book in the series she was currently reading. The chatty dad also smiled at his daughter’s excitement.

We talked for a little bit, mostly about Disney and the shop, until the daughter came up with a small pille, like maybe 3, of books. By then the other dad had also come over with the, now barely awake, little boy in his arms. They took a few minutes to decide what drinks they wanted, asking me what I would recommend off the menu at one point. In the end chatty dad got a plain black coffee and a couple little pack of cinnamon vanilla liquid creamer to flavor it, child handler dad got an iced coconut and caramel white coffee, the daughter decided she wanted to try my recommendation of a caramel apple mineral water italian soda with coconut milk instead of cream topped with whipped cream, and the sleepy boy got a hot chocolate. They also grabbed 2 boxes of our assorted mystery flavor danishes, either for breakfast later or just to snack on while they drive. The payment for everything went smoothly, they even left a nice tip in the jar before they left.

That was all maybe an hour ago. It has been very quiet since then.

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