Musings of an Amateur Barista

By Amanda Kozar

The bell on the door rings, and I look up from the Torani bottles I’m absentmindedly wiping down, slightly nervous. I can’t see whoever is approaching the counter due to the large array of plastic cases and glass jars displaying assorted baked goods and teas that litter the high countertop, but I hope that whoever it is, this person is in an uncomplicated frame of mind. Please order something easy, I attempt to telepathically communicate to her. By this time I can see that this person is, in fact, a woman, and that she looks nice enough. Not at all like someone who would order something outrageously complex and difficult. Good, I think. Surely this won’t be so bad. Not that I’m a lazy worker, it’s just that it’s only my second day working by myself in Beyond Coffee, the small, locally owned coffee shop in York, Pennsylvania that I had decided looked like fun, and I’m not yet completely confident in my ability to make everything offered on the menu.

The woman reaches the counter. It won’t be that bad, I remind myself again. I know how to make pretty much everything, and what I don’t know is in the box of recipe cards. It’ll be fine. I smile at the woman in what I hope is a winning and carefree manner, one that says ‘The question I’m about to ask you is not purely out of politeness and curiosity—I will, in fact, be able to make you what you ask for.’

“Hi!” I say. “What can I get for you?”

“Um, I ‘m not sure yet,” she replies. “Let me just see…” she trails off, gazing up at the menu.

“No problem!” I say, perusing the menu along with her out of the corner of my eye. Now what might she choose? A latte? She looks like someone who might order a latte, although probably with a flavor, not plain. Vanilla, maybe. Although it is the middle of summer, and therefore hot outside, so perhaps a cold drink. Iced tea? Or a blended ice coffee? Those are rather popular. And they’re easy—I can totally do those. Great! But then, she might not order that… I continue on with my speculation, mentally ticking off things that seem likely to be ordered and making sure I remember how to make them. She turns to the counter. I smile encouragingly.

“I’ll have a Peach Tea Blast—those are frozen right?”

Aha! A frozen one. Those I can do. Good, good. “Yep, those are frozen,” I say.

“Okay, I’ll have a peach one and…” she considers the options again for a moment. “A pineapple coconut one.”

I jot this down on the piece of paper beside the register and ring up the order. We exchange the appropriate amounts of money, and I tell her that I will have the drinks for her in just a minute, around the side of the counter. She wanders away around the counter and I feel the stress from earlier beginning to recede. See? I think to myself. That’s not bad, is it? She ordered two frozen drinks, you know how to make those, there’s no one else here, so you don’t have to rush, and she’s not even loitering at the side counter watching you. No worries.

I rummage around, collecting up the necessary items, and just as I get all the ingredients for the Peach Tea Blast into a blender, it comes to my attention that the woman has made it to the side counter and is now rifling through one of the menus kept there, no doubt for that express purpose. This in turn makes me realize that I actually have yet to look through one of the shop’s menus myself, despite the fact that I work here. I should probably do that, I think. Just so I know everything there is to pick from so I’m never completely bewildered by anything anyone orders. I plonk the blender onto its base, dump in a cup of ice, and am about to turn it on, when I hear the woman’s voice behind me.

“Excuse me!”

I turn around and spy her clutching the menu in a suspicious and worrying fashion. She’s going to change her order, isn’t she? Rats. Not only do I not know how to void orders out of the cash register (so as to return her the money for the drink she has apparently decided she no longer wants), but now we’ve also returned to the precarious and stressful opportunity for her to selfishly order something I don’t know how to make.

I blink nervously and attempt to re-summon my winsome smile. “Yes.” It comes out as more of a statement than a question, for some reason. Hmmm. I try to edge back toward the inquisitive, helpful barista end of things. “What do you need?”

“Are all the frozen drinks the same price?”

And we’re rapidly entering the realm of Things Amanda Does Not Know. Wonderful. I spin around wildly and stare at the menu board, willing the price of frozen drinks to leap out at me. “Ummm…” I’m wandering back up toward the cash register, searching frantically, when I see the answer. I turn around. “Yes, the frozen ones are the same price.”

“Great,” says the friendly-turned-demanding-and-troublesome customer. She glances as the blender. “Which one haven’t you started on yet?”

“The pineapple coconut one,” I say.

“Okay, could I change that one to a frozen heath bar mocha?”

“Sure!” I enthuse.

I turn around and glare ferociously at the sink, which happens to be in my line of sight. A Heath Bar Mocha? A HEATH BAR MOCHA??? Do we even sell those? I don’t even know what a Heath Bar is, let alone how to cram one into a blended ice mocha. What to do, what to do. I get the Peach Tea Blast started awhile and drum my fingers on the counter manically for a minute, trying to figure out how to make a drink in which a key ingredient is something I didn’t even know existed until two seconds ago.

A thought occurs to me, and I scarper up to the under-the-counter refrigerator under the pretense of getting whipped cream so I can surreptitiously look over the menu board yet again to see if, by some stroke of miracle, a Heath Bar Mocha is actually a listed item and I’ve only missed it the past million times I’ve looked up at the board.

No such luck. All righty, then.

I stand in front of the fridge, momentarily at a loss as to how to proceed. It occurs to me that the Peach Tea Blast has been blending for a while. I should go turn off the blender. I turn around to walk back to the blenders and notice that the woman is now helpfully standing at the side counter, watching my every move. Unfortunately, it’s going to become obvious extremely quickly that I have absolutely no idea how to make what she’s requested unless I am suddenly struck by a wave of brilliance. Don’t let her see that you don’t know what you’re doing, my panic-crazed brain thinks. I weigh my options, which are sadly limited.

I can’t look in the recipe box with her watching me like a vulture, because I’m pretty sure I’m not going to find the recipe for a Heath Bar Mocha in there, and if I come away empty handed, she’ll know for sure that I don’t know what I’m doing and will be doubly suspicious of anything I give her. The menu board option has already failed me, so there’s only one thing left to do, and that is… create my own interpretation of a Heath Bar Mocha.

I rifle through the bins and tubs under the blender counter, madly stalling for time. Heath Bar, Heath Bar… well, bar—that implies substance, doesn’t it? Not just syrup of some kind, so surely there must be something ground up into a Heath Bar Mocha. Yup, sounds logical enough. Okay, what do we have…. I locate the only two containers with something other than powdered coffee mix in them. Oreos and java chips. Great. Well, Oreos are obviously a no. Whatever a Heath Bar may actually be, Oreos are clearly not it. So that leaves java chips. Hmmm. Also fairly clearly not Heath Bar, but they’re more convincing than Oreo, and, more importantly, they’re the only other option. Right then. Into the blender they go.

The woman is still standing at the counter, watching this entire process with a fair amount of interest. And, my frazzled brain whispers, just the slightest hint of skepticism? I hurl everything into a blender and smile at her reassuringly.

I let the blender run for a few minutes, hoping that the woman is in, if not an obliging mood, then at least a fairly unobservant one. Perhaps she won’t notice until after she’s driven away that one of the drinks she’s carrying is not in the least what she ordered? Or maybe it’s for someone else? Or maybe either she or this other person it’s for will taste it and decide they like it better than some boring old Heath Bar Mocha? Whatever happens, I sincerely hope that the woman does not (a) take one look at the drink and tell me it doesn’t look right and ask me to do it over, (b) taste it and know it isn’t right and demand that I do it over, or (c) get as far as her car, discover it’s wrong, completely hate it, and come back in to yell at me and demand that I do it over.

What I will do if any of these three scenarios occur (or any other that would require me making the drink again, for that matter), I simply do not know. I mean, what could I say? ‘Ohhhh, you wanted a Heath Bar Mocha? I’m so sorry, I must have misheard you! Of course, I’ll remake it right away!’ Cue reassuring smile. The only problem would be that I still wouldn’t know how to make one and, my strategy of creating a wild concoction having failed, would be completely out of options. There’s nothing for it but to hope she either doesn’t notice, doesn’t care, or is just one of those people who never mentions when they have been given the wrong order.

I switch off the blender, scrape the whole sorry mess into a cup, and slide it onto the counter.

“There you are!” I say brightly. Just take it and go, I silently will her as she eyes it doubtfully. Don’t look at it, don’t say anything, just take it and go, take it and go, TAKE IT AND GO. She looks at the cup suspiciously, at the dark dots of java chip suspended in the otherwise innocent-looking light brown frozen coffee… and thankfully decides to go with it. She slides the cup off the counter, inserts a straw, and heads for the door, still eyeing the Heath Bar-turned-Java Chip Mocha.

Outside, she pauses, and I, positive that she’s decided she has the wrong drink and is now going to come back and want me to fix it, resist the urge to run to the back room and pretend that I have mysteriously disappeared. I wonder whether I’d get fired for doing something like that. Surely it happens occasionally, someone in the back room fails to notice that a customer has arrived? Or returned, whatever. As I’m considering this, a white car pulls up out front and the woman climbs into it. The car drives away. I nearly start laughing with relief. However, as I’m still a bit nervous that she might become angry enough to come back and demand the proper drink, I locate the recipe box, intent on seeing if a Heath Bar Mocha is actually something we offer, positive that it isn’t. I flip through the alphabetized cards for a minute—and then I see it. The recipe card for a Heath Bar Mocha. Right there between the Gingerbread Latte and the Mallow Cup Mocha.

I lean back against the counter, staring at nothing in particular. I just severely messed up that lady’s drink when the appropriate directions were right here all along. And now my crazed carelessness has led to a whole new question: should that same lady come back asking for a Heath Bar Mocha again, just what version would she be after? The correct one or my interpretation?

*****

Three weeks later, I’m still working at Beyond Coffee, and no horrible situation has yet occurred as a result of my haphazard creation of the Heath Bar Mocha. I’ve been at work for four hours already, and it’s a slow day so far. I am wiping down shelves and countertops at a leisurely pace, trying to think of something else to do once I’m done with that particular task when a man enters the shop. Finally, I think. A customer. That’ll keep me occupied for the next ten minutes or so.

This particular customer is one who, I can tell, knows exactly what he wants. He strides up to the counter and doesn’t wait for my standard inquisitive beginning to our impending customer/barista conversation.

“Hi,” he says with a smile. “I’d like an Almond Joy Mocha with soy milk and an extra shot.” An Almond Joy Mocha, I think. That sounds interesting.

“I’ll have that for you in just a minute, sir,” I reply, and reach for the recipe box.