Espress(o) yourself

Well, it's finally happened. The inevitable second job that accompanies every young writer career as descended upon me.
Finding that my "real" paycheck, was not quite covering my "real" bills, I broke down and got a part-time job doing my default, slinging coffee.
The shop I'm at now it probably the hippest I've worked at. Sure as hell beats the visor-clad days of my college coffee kiosk. Which I subsequently got fired from.
Say what?!
Yeah, you heard me right. I got fired.
I basically called in sick to do an assignment and the be-othch who wanted my mint shift (8 a.m.-12) saw me in the library and ratted me out.
Well I said, take this visor and shove it! I don't need your stinking sludge. Turns out I did. If not for the money for the caffeine.
So I just became a customer instead.
Before the college "coffee cart" as it was called, I worked at a quaint mom and pop operation with some sort of Northwoods feel.
I spent my entire teenage prime steaming up sticky drinks, topping them off with whipped cream and then dunking day-old pastries into them.
It was me, and a bunch of fresh faced chickies basically running the place. The owner would come in much less frequently than the cops and weirdos that came to stare at our T&A.
There was one guy in particular, "Hot Chocolate John" I believe was his name. He was a grown man, probably sneaking away from his mom's house, who would come to the shop everyday and order a sticky bun and a jumbo hot chocolate, piled high with whipped cream. I was young enough not to realize what that perfectly piled whipped cream topping represented for him.
He had a horrible demeanour, like Boy George meets Vanilla Ice meets your black sheep cousin.
He would occasionally leave a rose in the tip jar or scratch out a horrible poem on a used napkin. He creeped us all out, but I distinctly remember all of us vying for who would get to take home the floral tip.
So now that I am at this new shop in the city, there are plenty of cops and crazies, but I am not so intrigued by them as I was in my newly post-pubescent state.
The shop owner is a do-good, fair trade, espresso brewing Nazi.
When I went in to apply for the job, I introduced myself and presented my hand for a shake. She, with holding, said, "I don't shake hands when I'm working."
Yikes!
So now that I'm getting to know her, I realize she has a O.C.D., anxiety, snarky sense of humor thing going on.
For example, the first day on the job (which by the way starts at 6 a.m.) she said to me, "I hired you to be nice to customers, at least nicer than me, and that won't be hard because I'm a bitch."
I think this is HI-larious.
She's had me working the register for three straight weeks, and despite my knowledge of all thing "barista" the closest I've gotten to the drinks is re-stocking the cups.
But all of this will change soon. I have a training session this week in which I will be asked to pull 10 shot is a row, at the perfect brew length of 25 to 30 seconds.
Sweet Jesus.
I think it will be fine, but it I don't hit the mark, I'll just go back to my old ways of drinking Folgers out of a dirty mug, for it's all my writers wage will afford me.