Stephen Haines

Third Place Coffee

I worked at Starbucks for eight or nine months when I was eighteen. I’m not certain how long I was there because I have never included the experience on any resume and, by now, too much time has passed. Maybe I was actually there closer to a year—I couldn’t tell you. Perhaps all of those Frappuccino and macchiato and cappuccino and latte with nonfat steamed milk in double cup add caramel sauce orders have piled high to form a craggy, mnemonic blockade. This is, no doubt, an unsung mercy. But cracks remain within that compostable range and, if I look closely enough, sometimes I can peer through to the other side.

I open the hatchback of my car, and a neon Corona sign tumbles out and cracks on the concrete. Everything that I took to the dormitories is packed into this trunk. My parents were more or less supportive of my decision to leave school; I had fled within the first two weeks after seeing all the student loan statements. The sign—Corona bottle with neon lime and pulsing salt—was given to me by my brother before I left. Something to decorate the dorm with. My friend Nate gawks at it now, unlit, splayed at our feet. What am I going to do for money? I wonder aloud. I could probably get you a job at the Starbucks in town, he says. It’s minimum wage, and the tips are garbage. I doubt you’ll ever use it on a resume. I nod. I just need money. He helps me pick up the broken sign. It won’t ever turn on again, but that’s alright because I won’t ever live in a dorm again either. He smirks. Everyone will ask you for free drinks.

Chocolate! Cherries!! I lean in and smell from one of the seven cups of coffee that have been placed in front of me for a tasting. There are twenty other people in the room doing the same thing, some looking as out of place and confused as me, some burying their noses in the steam and then raising their hands, noses throbbing like Rudolph. Puget Sound caviar! Our instructor likes this one very much—they come straight over and flick a little mark across the student’s piece of paper and hand them a cookie. My stomach grumbles. We have been in this indistinct room for the last three hours, listening to our instructor drone over how to discern the many olfactory nuances of a dark roast, why Starbucks is the greatest coffee corporation in the world, and why it is the beating heart of the greater Seattle area. I don’t really enjoy Starbucks coffee and only end up in one of their stores out of convenience or lack of choice. If in a hurry, or out of time, or in an airport, they might come in third on a list. I can’t be the only one who is ready for the boxed lunch that they promised was included. I raise my hand. Turkey sandwich with a pickle spear. My instructor muses a moment but says nothing. Another student, another new hire, raises their hand. Mount Rainier hemlock! And our instructor nearly rips the novice’s page of notes apart so enthusiastic is their pen stroke.

My tome of training material has been carefully assembled in a bulging binder. Today is my first day of “In-store” training, but I have to read for most of it: there’s lots to read. There are multiple keywords and phrases that are distinct to Starbucks. It feels like prepping for a vocabulary test or unlearning an old language. Everything has a particular meaning. Starbucks Experience is “an inviting, enriching environment in our stores that is comfortable and accessible yet also stylish and elegant…” But God help you, Apprentice Barista, “Do not capitalize “the” when it precedes Starbucks Experience. Do not use “a” to modify Starbucks Experience.” The Third Place is what Starbucks coffeehouses offer their customer base, a “third place between home and work; a place people can go to feel at ease…” But God help you, Coffee Amateur, “Do not capitalize or use as ‘Third Place Experience’ separate from Starbucks Experience.” You’re not “the” new employee or “a” human being; you are now “Associate.” Recite now from the section, The Green Apron Book, “A tool to help Associates foster human connections” post-Associateization.

Let the milk build like fluffy, creamy clouds of joy, a woman whose name I can’t remember tells me. She pivots, grunting, watching everything I do, singing Yes! or contorting No! near to tears with frustration. This is the most important part. She points to the temperature gauge, a metal thermometer that clings to its matching metal milk pitcher. There are several of these, each labeled either whole, half, non, soy, almond, or—around the holidays—eggnog. The customer knows just how they like it. She gestures to the practice order that she has written down on the plastic training cup. It reads 155°. I let the soy churn and weave like cotton candy until the red dial matches the temperature. Perfecto! my instructor tweets like a bird as I pour the milk into the cup to mix with the espresso. Behind me, the drive-thru barista is complaining about a man named Ross who wants his eggnog latte extra, extra, extra hot. She looks nauseated. The eggnog burns and curdles when it’s this hot. We can’t serve this! Another manager slides in to quell the barista’s concerns. My instructor nods. Just how they like it.

Most days, Danny tumbles in midway through the early-early shift, which starts at four in the morning, and immediately orders a triple-tall latte. He’s the highest-ranking store manager and the youngest-looking store manager. He’s sleeping with a barista that just turned twenty-one, Erica, who has red hair, big eyes, and takes every training bullet-point directly to her head. Danny acts like he’s my and Nate’s age, but we think he’s closer to thirty. He has us over to play Halo at his parents’ house where he lives; he is Chinese American and, I think, culturally, this makes it less strange. His mom serves us egg rolls as he sets up the connection between the three different televisions. When I ask him how long he plans to stick with the company, he says, I’m doing life! like it’s prison. But he seems to like it well enough, and it makes me wonder what my future self would look like if I gave up on getting my degree and just kept working at the store. Would I retire as management? Would I get some kind of medal in the shape of a coffee bean? Danny is getting text messages non-stop from Erica, and he’s trying to respond to her while still playing a three-way deathmatch. He sends her something that makes him smile and kills Nate and then me, one right after the other, with sniper headshots from halfway across the massive map. He sets down his controller and tries to swallow an eggroll whole. Jesus, Mom! Too hot! he shrieks.

Nate’s apartment consists of a mattress on the floor of his bedroom, and a loveseat on the floor of his living room, and a bong which, typically, wobbles between his legs. The only food in his refrigerator is Starbucks sandwiches—mostly the vegetarian ones that nobody buys—that arrive to each store every morning and, if unsold, are supposed to be thrown in garbage cans at the end of every night. Some managers let people take the uneaten food home; others are obstinate about the policy. Nate’s cupboards are stocked with tea and coffee—a box of tea or a pound of coffee is the “bonus” on your $7.25 minimum wage every two-week pay period—but he doesn’t have eggs or bread or orange juice. He has healthcare but can’t pay the deductible. He chain-smokes cigarettes, and the few of us who come over to get stoned, also smoke too many cigarettes. Nate works full-time at Starbucks, but he will still end up evicted and homeless in a few months. He will live in his car with a friend named Kyle, and they’ll sell bad weed to high-school freshmen until Kyle has a seizure and dies in a house behind the local Wal-Mart.

My friend James walks in the front door, and the bells jingle. It’s Christmastime, and Starbucks thrives on Christmastime like a vulture draining marrow from a dead reindeer. Tinsel is on the windows, and the holiday-themed merchandise has been out since before Thanksgiving. James avoids the short line and careens toward the counter where paying customers pick up their big, absurd coffee drinks. His is biggest and most absurd of them all. It’s in the biggest cup, and it’s bloated with heavy syrup, and it has two extra shots of espresso. He’s getting the beer tonight, and this free coffee is my part of the informal contract we have developed since I took the job. Even though I’m broke and can’t afford my own apartment, I can still trade in a hazelnut-latte black market. We rise high on the caffeine and sugar and nicotine during the days that I work, and then gently descend with alcohol and pot in the evening. Upper. Downer. Coffee. Beer. A Proletariat Speedball.

Paige has the entire staff over for a potluck at her house one week before Christmas Day. Paige is the manager of our store, but she is a Jehovah’s Witness and so does not observe the holiday outside of pushing Starbucks merchandise. She encourages us all to volunteer to work with her over the holiday—she always works over the holiday—and tells us that People tip really well Christmas Day. She hands me a sugar cookie with red and green sprinkles that has no formal affiliation with the colors of any pagan-derived holidays. At some point, I work up the nerve to ask her. I was raised Catholic. Are we related? She smiles and serves an assistant manager a large glass of punch. Aside from Witnesses being nontrinitarian and restorationist, yeah, you could say that, Stephen. I don’t know these words, but I slowly piece together what they must mean. Catholics have a lot of fancy words also. Catechism. Circumincession. Paige chokes hard on her little sausage wrapped in puff pastry. I’ve apparently mumbled these words out loud, and I piece together that she has oops! mistakenly trimmed away a Circumcision.

My red apron is covered in caramel sauce and burnt milk. The bell on the end of my Santa hat chimes every time I move from my drink-making station to the register, like a collar on a dog: like a collar on a Reindeer. It’s Christmas, after all. The woman working the register has been with the company for twenty years. Her name is Beth. Beth doesn’t have a hat with a bell or a red apron or even an apron at all. She’s working, but not by choice, and she’s letting all of us know. Paige’s smile loses a layer of persistence every time it encounters Beth taking an order from the drive-through or sneezing without covering her mouth. Venti Mocha, extra whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Achoo! We are all going to get sick because Paige won’t send her home. Jolly, jolly, ho, ho, ho! At the end of the big shift, we divvy the tips. My share is $18.

Frank’s remaining teeth jut out of his purplish gums. He comes to our store often, wheeling in his cart filled with everything he owns, coughing and wheezing. He always has a bit of money—enough to buy a small coffee or occasionally something bigger—and then he lingers inside, or around the corner outside, waiting for someone to notice the kind of shape he’s in and take pity on him. He rarely uses any sign; it’s apparent that he’s homeless, and that he needs money, and that he hasn’t seen a doctor or a dentist in at least a handful of the sixty-odd years that he’s been alive. Everyone at the store knows him. We make small-talk with him—about weather, sports, politics, and so on—and flinch as each question habitually dribbles out of our mouths, glancing periodically in the direction of store managers. Whether or not he’s homeless, we say with our eyes, he buys something three or four times each week; and so, he’s a regular. We’re supposed to greet regulars, remember their names, recollect their stories: try to be neighbors, their home away from home. Everything is going splendid. Frank coughs, emptying his pockets onto the counter: there is a discolored ten-dollar bill, twenty or so nickels and dimes, too many pennies to count, and half of a cigarette; the cigarette smells like it was dunked in piss and left out in the sunshine. He fidgets for the ten with bruised, tremulous hands that are capped by spotted, yellow fingernails. I got a raise just now. He gestures to the empty sidewalk outside.

I can see myself at seventy-three-years old, a retiree of Starbucks International, enjoying a Blasted Peppermint Snickerdooda Ultrachino in a Corporate Social Responsibility megastore (C.S.R.m.), the lobby so enormous that taking walks back and forth across it have become my daily workout regimen. I will meet friends here once every week or two—sometimes I’ll log onto a workstation and complete in-store surveys for extra credits. I’ll be retired, technically, but all I got for the big milestone was a faux-gold coffee bean glued to a wood plaque, and I’ll need extra funding to pay for my wife’s healthcare—my wife, dying slowly from dementia, will not be cleared to leave our Bucks Bunker without an escort. The C.S.R.m. is where I’ll visit friends, where I’ll work, where I’ll exercise, where I’ll pray; it’ll be my living room, my office, my gym, and my temple; I won’t need a Third Place anymore because the C.S.R.m will have evolved by then, in all of the training manuals, into my “home and so much more.” Starbucksmas™ decorations will be everywhere all year—tinsel on the windows and the tables and sticking to the wheels of cars in the parking lot, even when it’s August and eighty-seven degrees outside. Santa Clause won’t just come to town once a year anymore, fa la la, he’ll be with you every day, a green messianic mermaid branded on his ass. He’ll work overtime, with no holiday pay, selling goodwill door-to-door. He won’t even use the chimney anymore.

Bio

Stephen Haines is an MFA graduate of Western Washington University and the former managing editor of Bellingham Review. His work has appeared or is forthcoming at Epoch Press, Rathalla Review, Sidereal, Thin Air, Adelaide, Creative Colloquy, Bright Flash, and Bellingham Review.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephenluke1/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shaines1

Twitter: @StephenLHwrites