Cheap Coffee

When you recall yourself as a child, what was your the dream? Do you want to be a businessman? An athlete? A  firefighter? An astronaut? A writer perhaps? Or was it a doctor or a nurse?

Well this is a story about none of those…

This is a story about a group of devastated and worn-out cooks, in their tears and their laughter. Their hardships and their success…

“When you talk about such cheap coffee, what do you think?” A Sri-Lankan man with healthy, sun-kissed, tanned skin said. He put down his white cup of the contrasting dark, bitter liquid on top of the metal table. His face was scrunched up and his tongue stuck out to show his dislike of the coffee he just drank.

“I don’t drink cheap coffee… I mean, who drinks that watery crap?” Someone said. The voice belongs to a teen girl with oriental features and a pair of glasses. Her short hair was pulled back neatly with quite an amount of gel.

“Well, that’s someone talking when you only drink CANNED coffee.” A man in his late twenties chuckled, fixing his glasses slightly as it began to slip down. His southeast-Asian features were pulled into a big grin.

“HEY! Don’t you DARE to mock MY COFFEE! IT’S PART OF PEOPLE’S RELIGION NOWADAYS TO DRINK THEM YOU KNOW! And for YOUR INFORMATION, I only drink STARBUCKS BOTTLED COFFEE!” The girl rebuked, trying to convince herself that her beliefs were right and tried to ignore the comment made by the older man.

“Riiight…” The tanned man, Shanil, said mockingly. He took another sip of the bitter liquid and stuck his tongue once again in disgust of the cheap beverage he just had.

“Come on, admit it! At least it’s not as gross as the ‘Red-bull Drink’ that Julio always drinks!” The only girl in the group, Felicia, blurted out.

“Hey, those yellow liquid is a kick-a*s when mixed with some vodka you know!” Shanil said, protecting the image of Red-bull drink in the eyes of Felicia.

“Well, talking about the devil, he’s back from his ‘breathing exercise’ now…” The be-spectacled man, Hadi, said.

The smell of nicotine and tobacco filled Felicia’s nostrils. She scrunched her nose in means of dislike. A man with retro-styled hair, dyed in the colour of sunset orange, pulled a seat and sat in the middle of Hadi and Shanil.

“Gosh, Julio... You smell like nicotine! Wash your mouth or something before you come near ME!” Felicia blurted out as she motioned her hands in attempt to sweep the smell of the overpowering nicotine away...

“Hey, if I wash the smell, sensation from nicotine will wasted.” Julio said in his heavily accented and broken English.

“Right, whatever... Well, break time is over anyways, let’s go back ladies!!!” Felicia finished her sentence and stood up from her chair.

“Stop calling us, gentlemen, “ladies”, you shortie.”

“Well, Shanil, if you stop calling ME shortie, maybe I’ll reconsider not calling YOU a LADY.” Felicia said, not bothering to turn he head around as she entered the locker room.

One thing that you might not know when you never entered a kitchen is that you CAN burn butter and no, adding wine into food doesn’t mean that it’ll catch fire right away.

“S**t! My butter burnt!” Julio said as he scurried fast to the kitchen sinks located five metres to his working table. He then dumped his pans into one of the sink before running water over it.

“That’s what you get for slacking off you prick.” Shanil said.

Yes, and another thing about the kitchen is that vulgar words are often used, believe me.

It was another fine day in a small kitchen where the four trainees spent their ten hours (which in worst case, could extend up to sixteen hours) working at.

There are nothing too special about their job, just cutting, boiling, grilling, whisking and other normal things to do in a house kitchen, but the difference, is the speed and the technique. The four of them were doing their work seriously--save for the occasional unnecessary comments from either Shanil or the vulgar jokes from Felicia-- when suddenly...

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The sound of metal cutleries falling one after another onto the floor reverberated throughout the room.

“S**T!” A feminine voice said. It was the restaurant manager, Amelia. She had successfully knocked the aluminium rack chock full of pots and pans over to the floor, and was trying to replace the fallen pots.

Her action earned the attentions from all the four workers in the kitchen, allowing Julio to once again successfully burn his butter.

“S**t! Not the butter again!!!” The boy hysterically shouted and ran to the sink to wash down the burnt remains of the saturated hydrocarbon.

“Use low fire! It’s that bad habit of yours that allowed the fragile and sensitive butter to burn, you idiot!” Hadi said, returning his attention to his stir-fry.

“Jesus Christ, Amelia! For God’s sake, who do you think will have to wash all of those?” This time, it was Shanil, the most talkative man in the room, that commented. Being the most experienced of all the workers there, he managed not to divert his concentration away from his pasta tossing.

“I’m sure it’s not you, but the dishwasher there. Poor Raghu, Shanil’s trying to  get all his credit for the dishwashing all to himself~” Felicia interjected and continued to work on her bread dough, mashing and punching them as if it was her sandbag.

“Did someone call my name?” An Indian cladded in a water-proof apron form his chest up to below his knees popped out from the door of the partition separating the dishwashing sink from the kitchen. The man’s right hand was holding a lathering sponge and a half-rinsed pan on the other.

“Yes, Raghu. It seems that Shanil have a confession to make. Tell him, boy!” Felicia mocked, a little breathless as she is using all her power to mould her dough.

“Yea, Raghu, apparently I was the one who shaved your moustache when you were asleep last week. I admit it now.” Shanil said, his tone was a little playful without a single trace of guilt lacing his sentence.

“Shanil! Stop it! I have some important announcement to make! Raghu! Return to your work!” Amelia desperately shouted, although a little unsuccessful as the white woman was apparently already soft-spoken.

“I KNEW IT WAS YOU!” Raghu shouted, his pointing finger was directed towards the convict that shaved his moustache. He then returned to his work while whispering some unfamiliar curses with his native tongue and returned to his work space.

“Wow, Shanil, I didn’t know it was you? I thought it was the Mongolian boy at the front desk that did it, he loves to play pranks. Even that super-glue on your boxer’s was his work too.” Felicia shrugged and folded raisins into her dough.

“Well, guys... We are going to have a very very important guess in two hours, so I think you should start to--” Amelia tried to announce, but was quickly ignored by the silly four cooks.

“Nah, we hate the Indians... Wait, what? Oh, that little s**t. I’m so going to kill him when work ends...” The Sri-Lankan said, sprinkling a little more salt to his Carbonnara.

“Guuuys???” Amelia made her second attempt, now raising her voice a little bit while her arms flailing around to gain attention. Sadly, still no one was listening to her.

“But you LOOK like them, I mean look at you...”  Felicia made her comment.

“No ways man, I have a MUCH lighter skin tone in comparison to them...” Shanil denied, scooping the now finished pasta into serving plates before garnishing them.

“Yea, right. Whatever...”  Felicia replied, still unnoticing the desperate restaurant manager that was trying to talk about the important customer coming.

“Oh, yea? Then look at you, the Chinese! There are just too many of you all over the world! You practically have at least one China-town in each COUNTRY!” Shanil blurted. Unhappy that he was accused to look like the people from the country his race despised.

“Blame our supreme skills in labouring, in all definition meanings. Yes.” Felicia swiftly answered while rounding her ball of flour and liquid mixture.

“FOR F**K’S SAKE, PEOPLE, LISTEN TO ME!!!” Amelia at last snapped and screamed at the top of her voice with an ear-piercing decibel, her chest wheezing as if she was a female Hulk that will soon grow in size and rip her work-attire apart and terrorize the town in only her underwear. Lucky for her this time, she earned full attention from the four, obnoxious workers. When she just noticed on what she just did, Amelia quickly collected herself and soon, her character is back to the shy, soft-spoken manager she was several minutes ago.

“Oh, Amelia, were you talking? Sorry for not noticing...” Felicia casually said and covered her dough with a wet cloth to ferment them further and turned to the wheezing woman.

“So, what is it?” Hadi said, turning down the heat to the lowest fire.

“Urm, well... In two hours, I guess, Sir Arthur is going to come to our restaurant for... His lunch.” Amelia slightly stuttered. Her fingers twiddled against each other and her eyes were looking downwards.

Several seconds passed without any sound from the four cooks in the kitchen except from the constant sizzling and bubbling from the soups, even the whisking had stopped. Curious as she was expecting a response, she looked up and found that the three male cook's jaw dropped.

“S...Sir Arthur is coming? Oh crap...”

To be continued...

Author's Note

Yes, once again, I shall thank Alicia_D_dreamer for being very patient editing this~
Most of the characters are based on my colleagues that I've been working with.

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[The_Dreamer]

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