Lattes & Cocktails 001

A Story by Peach

Tales of a barista/bartender...names and locations are changed to protect the innocent.

I've spent a large portion of my life behind a bar. Whether it be as a barista by day or a bartender by night. I have loved every minute of it.

I was working the afternoon shift at our city's best specialty coffee shop. We truthfully were contenders with the "green giant" depending on who you asked. Our shop was nestled in the middle of a plaza along with a Chinese restaurant and an ATM. I had an hour left of my shift and we hadn't had a customer in the past 40 minutes, so my co-worker and I were doing our best to keep ourselves busy. Suddenly the headset nestled over my ears began to gently vibrate, notifying me that someone had pulled up to our drive-thru. My co-worker quickly sprung into action.

"Thank you for choosing Common Grounds, my name is Caleb. What can we get started for you today?"

He had the best customer service voice out of any of us at the shop. All of our customers adored him. Though I was never quite sure he really enjoyed the job much at all. A man responded reluctantly.

"Yeah, uh, do you guys do lattes?"

"Yes sir we do, we can make that hot, iced, and with a variety of our housemade syrups if you're looking for something a little sweet."

I began to zone out during their conversation. I felt my chin rest comfortably in my hand as I leaned on the counter in front of me. This customer had obviously never been here before and needed to be "shown the ropes" as they say. I truly adored this coffee shop almost to a point of idolization. It was everything to me. My love for coffee was treated like a growing flower, nurtured every moment of every day. I watched the sun's rays dance through the wall of windows behind our retail shelves.

"Do you guys have half and half?" I heard the man ask. This was nothing surprising, many customers asked for 'breve' lattes all the time.

"Yes, sir absolutely I can make that latte a breve for you," Caleb reassured him.

"Okay great, yeah. Uhm...do you guys have those butter packets too?"

I felt my brows furrow. This was an interesting segue. I heard a pause in Caleb's voice.

"Yes, sir! Were you interested in a bagel or..." Before Caleb could finish his sentence the man interrupted.

"No no no, wh-what brand are they?"

My attention was completely captured at this point. I felt my posture change as I stared at Caleb to see his reaction. He went to the fridge and pulled out a small square packet of butter and read the name brand to the customer.

"PERFECT!" He boomed. "Can you put four of those into my latte please?"

My eyes bulged out of my skull as they locked with Caleb's.

"Don't," I whispered. Caleb's eyes were wider than my own. Horrified with what he was about to do Caleb spoke through his headset.

"Absolutely sir will that be all for you today?"

"Nope, that should do it!" The man was unphased.

"Please pull around and we will have that total for you at the window."

$5.29 later, a curdled hot 20oz. THICK LATTE passed through our drive-thru window.

I've often wondered what this drink would have tasted like. I'm too afraid to try.

© 2018 Peach

Author's Note

I adore this story and I miss this coffee shop. Obviously, I have changed names and locations. Does anyone else take their lattes EXTRA breve?

My Review

Would you like to review this Story?
Login | Register

Featured Review

barleygirl

This is superb storytelling. You have nailed it with the way you combine dialogue & vivid asides to describe body language as well as the spoken one. I was completely absorbed in your story & my mind was also going off on a tangent on the side. I’ve done a number of years behind various “bars” so my memories are stimulated. I love the way the narrator sorta drifts off, then becomes alert during the ordering – this comes across crystal clear like a motion picture film. I’m not sure I get what you’re getting at, as for the point of this story. To me, butter doesn’t sound too bad, even tho I’ve never tried it in any hot drink. But in my family, we are likely to eat butter on most anything (born on a farm with cows, so we had lots of butter to use up!) You are an expert at getting across your character development without using long boring passages of description (((HUGS))) Fondly, Margie