“I’m a student that has an awful on-call job with pretty low, but not minimum hourly pay. There is this one coffee shop around where I live that has just recently opened. It’s a shop that focuses on freshly made coffee. I like coffee, a lot. But not like drinking it a lot, I like to study coffee. (I have a huge collection with different beans and grinders) I find it interesting that different coffee mixed together can taste so good. I’m just a guy that’s very interested in coffee, so I went to go check it out.
There was this guy (probably new) that was having a hard time grinding coffee beans. Grinding beans by hand is very delicate work and isn’t easy by any means. He proceeded to try to find a co-worker to help him but couldn’t. I asked him if he needed help. He asked, ‘Do you know how to do this? Because I’m not very good at it.’
I just briefly said that I study coffee as a hobby. He then opened the door (like those you see in the cowboy movies at a bar) and I went in to help him. Like the coffee maniac, I am I started to help him with the other orders as well. I was teaching him how to correctly grind and mix and before I knew it there were these two people standing behind us. One of them (an older woman) started saying, ‘Oh there you are! What are you doing here? The dishes are in the back and I need you to clean it!’
I didn’t know how to respond so the guy helped and said that I was just a customer that offered help. ‘Oh, he’s just helping me and teaching me some neat tricks,’ He said.
Then the woman took a good look at me and was a bit surprised that I wasn’t the person she thought I was. She then tasted the coffee and asked, surprised, ‘Oh wow! This coffee is good! Are you a master barista?’
I just laughed it off and said that I was just a broke student that liked to study about coffee and wasn’t a fancy mater barista. I then politely excused myself and was on my way out. Then I heard her saying to me ‘Aren’t you interested in working here?’
She told me that she would be happy to have me working here and maybe even teach them how to make coffee! I was a bit shocked of course. But, I told her that I was interested. She then told me she was going to pay X amount as hourly pay, then I was hooked because it was double my existing job. I told her that I will be considering the job and will come again to see them, but in reality, I went home and called my boss to tell him that I quit. Life is peculiar sometimes.”
