Usually, people consider having a job to be a solidification of a status in society, a contributing member of the economy, the responsible taxpayer living their best life. People also usually consider that having a good job means that you feel more happier, more fulfilled, more societally adaptive, more content with how fate happens to play out.
You say usually, because you are 5 seconds away from just finding your manager Sho and outright resigning. It's only the promise of sweet, sweet money that keeps you together after you clock into work, take a couple of orders, and serve a table – only for some woman to sniff her drink, frenetically slam it down on the varnished wood, and screech something along the lines of this iced latte tastes like full cream milk, I know it's full cream, stop lying to me, and I ordered skim! Her furious spittle keeps flying all over the tabletop and the cute decorative succulent you watered earlier today. Someone’ll have to clean it up later and it sure as hell won't be you.
Just in case she’s actually right and you didn't just bungle her order, you glance across the room to confirm the bottle of milk just used for her drink. And. It's most definitely skim. When you look back at her frenzied state, there is definitely not a single chance on Earth that she'll listen to you – or anyone, really, except maybe Sho. He’s always had a penchant for calming down aggravated customers, which would be really useful if he was here right now. But he's not, so you just get to relish in a spray of saliva, loud shrieking, and your increasing urge to just blow up on her. You definitely have to ask for a pay rise soon or something.
The woman yells out one more thing about disgusting coffee beans – you decide not to mention that to Sho, considering he likes to pride himself on his nitpicked 1000-time-tested internationally-sourced coffee selection – and in all the joys of working in the food industry, cathartically throws her drink at you. Or launches, which is a better word for how fast it hurtles toward you.
Unfortunately, you are not very skilled in the art of catching high-speed coffee cup-shaped objects, so you have to make do with the power of determination and spite. Making do, however, ends up constituting of you trying to grab the drink from out of mid-air. It also happens to constitute your expertise ultimately failing you, as the ridged edges of the cup bounce off your fingers.
And into this back of this poor neighbouring guy’s white graphic T-shirt, which is at just the right angle for a considerable amount of latte to splash all over itstaining the fabric a milky brown that creeps outwards and clings to his skin like vine tendrils you keep trying to pull off but just end up sticking again.
Everyone else in the cafe is silently staring at you and the guy, catching every single movement as the guy slowly turns around. Having a job makes you more content with how fate plays out, you fatalistically think, happier and more fulfilled. To your immense dismay, you can't just stand there and consider quitting as a viable option just yet, so you struggle but manage to splutter out a “sorry for the inconvenience, sir, we can pay for the cleaning”. There is no way you're going to even glance at his probably very shellshocked face out of pure shame after this extreme loss of dignity.
He does not respond, leaving the cafe to just slowly and awkwardly start chattering to each other again. After the woman awkwardly realises nothing else is going to come out of this, she just hisses out something unintelligible – probably something like “never coming here again”, which, y’know, good riddance – and storms out the cafe to the cheery jingle of some windchimes.
The guy is still silent. Someone dings the bell on the counter. You decide to just risk it and go to sneak an apologetic look-
“Is everything alright?” Sho, the saving grace of your sanity, walks outside the kitchen curiously with his hands dusted with some pale white flour. “There are some customers waiting- Takumi?”
You swivel to fully face the Takumi guy. And he's staring right at you. And he is very, very cute. And you just spilled coffee on him.
However, there is no rest for mildly-above-minimum wage pay workers, so you snap to attention. “Sho, I accidentally spilled a drink on his” – you stiffly gesture in the direction of said man – “shirt. Is there any chance I can get it cleaned for him?”
Sho looks at you before laughing. You have definitely made a fatal error and you’ll be fired right now, right here, and you’ll have to dig up your resume from the depths of somewhere to go on the arduous task of job-hunting.
But then. He just goes ahead and waves you off kindly. “No, Takumi’s a friend of mine – I’ll just do it myself. In the meantime, do you mind getting the spare shirt in the storeroom for him to change into?”
There is absolutely no way he said that. As you hastily nod in acknowledgement and speed over to the storeroom, you catalogue whatever that... situation was that just unfolded.
First, you fumbled a drink horrendously. Second, you got this poor guy’s shirt ruined. Third, you probably-most-definitely jeopardised the Google rating of this cafe. And fourth, you somehow managed to not get fired after this crazy debacle, just to make up for your horrific luck today.
As soon as you get home, you are going to go to sleep and pretend nothing happened today. Absolutely nothing. Not at all. Right now, though, you grab the shirt neatly folded underneath some dish towels, and take some sweet, sweet time to close the door. Sho’s busy wiping up all the coffee on the floor, so you hand over the shirt to the Takumi guy whilst emphatically not making any eye contact, and shuffle-run back to the counter to get to serving the small gaggle of people waiting there. Hopefully, you’ll never see him again and you can forget all about doing latte DIY on his shirt. Hopefully.
Your shift thankfully ends without any more fiascos, and life is looking up for you. It’s so consoling, in fact, that you have to remember that you have another shift tomorrow just to keep your hopes down. Goddamnit. Definitely no rest for mildly-above-minimum wage workers.
-
When you clock in the next morning, everything is as usual. The table of the incident is clean. There are no mysterious coffee stains on any fabric. Maybe, you desperately hope, everything will be fine today!
After making a slew of drinks for regulars and newcomers alike, you’ve almost shoved the events of yesterday out of your mind. That is, until you’ve just served a latte (you refuse to acknowledge the type of drink) and the assistance bell rings. You look up from the counter and towards the customer. It’s a guy in a shirt that looks very familiar, and when you take in his face, you realise just exactly who this is.
He grins awkwardly at you. “Uh, hi?”
Your head starts frantically sounding emergency sirens. It’s Takumi. The guy you just spilt coffee on yesterday. It is so over. You are so over. Autopilot, however, kicks in and saves you from making a fool of yourself. “Um. Welcome. What would you like today?”
He helplessly stares at you for a few seconds, before pulling out a kind of crinkled neon-pink sticky note from his pant pocket. “May I please have your number?”
Sorry. What. “Sorry, what?” you echo in shock, stress removing the formality of your speech. “Huh?”
“Oh. Um. I, uh” – he squints to read the words on the paper – “thought it was worth a shot?” There’s a sad and very pitiful expression on Takumi’s face, which is too much for you to bear, so you hastily clarify what you said.
“Uh, sorry. I assumed you wouldn’t want anything to do with me after I ruined your shirt?”
“Ruined?” His eyes are very wide in bafflement. “Don’t worry, Sho’s very good at cleaning out coffee stains. Actually, I was grateful you spilled it on me, because otherwise I wouldn't have-”
You stare at him. He stares back at you, before caving in and looking away. When he realises you’re not going to say anything else, he frantically apologises. “Sorry. Was that too much information? Uh, I shouldn’t have trusted Keigo-”
“You’re fine,” you assure him awkwardly, grateful for the few customers inside. “Don’t worry.” This Keigo character clearly didn’t brief Takumi well enough if whatever's going on here is any clue.
“Oh. Cool. Um. Can you- we- go- guh. Can I get a hot chocolate? Medium please,” he blurts out so fast that you almost struggle to figure out what he ordered, but you're luckily versed in the art of deciphering drinks from mumbles. It's a skill you've developed from this very job.
You scribble his order down on a cup, professional 'I am just a calm, composed, paid worker at this cafe' mode activated again. "Anything else?"
"Uh." He consults the sticky note again before looking at you with so much hope that his face can probably be used in one of those tests where you try to identify someone’s emotions. "Can I um. Can I say your number again?"
His optimism is so inspiring, it's so obvious he doesn't work in the food industry. Why not, you impulsively decide. Why not.
“Sure,” you tell him indulgently, and the way he looks at you almost makes being a mildly above minimum wage worker worth it. Almost. Because now you have to ask him to pay for the drink, but you also don't want to ruin the moment, nor do you really want to put it 'on the house' since it'll be deducted from your paycheck, so you're kind of just standing there at an impasse.
Such is the life of a victim of capitalism.
"I'll make that for you right now," you sigh in defeat, and try to ignore the way your heart thumps a little too hard and fast at his excited smile.
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