3:56:13

No, it’s not a citation of a chapter from the Bible. I’d be about the last one to come up with one of those. I was just checking on Amazon dot com to see if one of my favorite movies, “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”, is available on dvd yet. It isn’t.

Down at the bottom of the Amazon page was a fairly large display of 3:56:13 that caught my attention. It then changed to 3:56:14, then 3:56:15 and I realized it was just a clock and then I noticed that it was an advertisement. It reads, “It’s (time) Do you know where your career is?” turns out it’s an ad for Monster dot com. And, as it happens, I’m pretty much sans career right now. Not for want of trying.

I’ve spent the last few weeks in a Barnes and Noble Café trying to learn the barista trade. The enterprise can best be described as ill fated. For one thing, until I started working there I not only did not know the difference between tall, Grande and Venti I didn’t WANT to know the difference. As I once told a friend, “I’m not going to learn jargon to buy a cup of coffee.”

Which points up a second problem. I drink coffee black. I don’t add anything to it. I don’t want it to taste like vanilla or chocolate or hazelnuts or anyone else’s nuts. I don’t want cream or milk or non-fat milk or soy milk. I don’t care if it’s 160 degrees or 140 degrees or 130 degrees so long as it’s hot and if it’s not hot enough…I’ll probably just chug it and either go back for a fresh cup or go without for a while. I could go on about the whole latte situation but you’ve probably already gotten my point.

Now from a marketing standpoint the Café is just brilliant. I love to get a cup of coffee and sit and chat with my wife before we separate and head to our favorite sections of the book store coffee and tea in hand respectively. Although the Mrs. would prefer if they’d just offer plain black tea along with all the herbal nonsense but that just proves we’re well matched, doesn’t it? Anyway, marketing = brilliant. Employment = stupendously dumb.

First off Barnes and Noble treats their employees abominably. Booksellers are considered interchangeable parts and treated as such. The corporate approach is, “I’m sorry you’re not happy here. NEXT!!” That said, many of the management types, at least the lower and middle ones that I had contact with, are good people and treat their colleagues well.

But we’re getting off the main topic here which is, as always, me. Because I’m underemployed I figured I’d take a shot at the café when I heard there was an opening that could lead to full time with benefits. If you’ve paid for your own health insurance lately you know how willing one can be to put up with a fair amount of crap for those two magic words with benefits. So they tried to teach me to make lattes and frappuchinos and various other concoctions.

Ever heard the saying, “Never teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and it annoys the pig?” That sums up my experience trying to figure out how to construct those drinks. A couple of shifts doing that and I was asking, “what else can I do around here because this is a disaster.”
So they put me on the cash register.

How hard can that be? It’s touch screen. You find the appropriate grouping: coffee, espresso, sweet street, sandwiches, hot tea, frappuchinos, etc. Then you find the appropriate item, put your finger on the touch screen and you’ve got the first item in their order. So there’s a dozen or so groupings. There’s a learning curve but so what, right? Bet you wouldn’t guess that there’s more than 80 friggin’ frappuchinos options would you? And that’s before you get into the whole sugar free-hold the ice-add protein powder set of possibilities.

Okay so somebody just wants a cup of coffee (you understand that “tall” means small and if you want a large that’s a “Venti”) and a brownie. The screens are set up alphabetically…sort of. Because when you look for “brownie” it’s not under “B” (although cheese cake is). “Brownie” is under “U.” Because it’s not just a “brownie” it’s an “Ultimate Fudge Brownie!” Well, that’s not too bad because a lot of people eat brownies and after a while you just remember that brownie is under “U.” So why is cheesecake under “B?” Because it comes from Boston Cheesecake Factory so it’s listed as “BC Key Lime,” “BC Original,” “BC Pumpkin Spice,” or “BC You’re not going to find what this person wants in less than 20 minutes.”

Now, the only reason I prepare food at home is that I have to eat something, not because I’m interested in culinary art. I’m a meat and potatoes guy. So when somebody for whom I had made a mocha-java something or other handed it back to me complaining that it didn’t taste like chocolate what I wanted to say was, “if you want something that tastes like chocolate how about you buy a friggin’ candy bar?!”

When people complain that their coffee tastes too much like coffee it’s time for me to go.