When I was in college, I only spent one semester without a
job. It was my very first semester, and I thought I could get along just fine
without one.
Until I realized that life costs money.
Sure, I had a meal plan, but if I wanted things like snacks
or pop or late-night toast at Don’s, I needed spendin’ money. I used most of my
high school graduation money to buy a laptop, but the leftovers held out until
the end of my freshman fall semester. After that, it was time to get a job.
My then-dear-friend-later-boyfriend-now-husband James had a
work study job at Media Services on campus, and he offered to get me a job
there. Which he did. If only real-life jobs were that easy. I worked happily at
Media Services until the end of my junior year. Due to an uptick in crop
prices, I found out I was no longer eligible for work study. Yay for farmers,
boo for me and my job. Which I loved.
By then, having a job wasn’t just a question of having
enough money to buy toast and beer. I had moved off-campus when I was a junior,
and I now needed money for rent and utilities. So job = essential.
I secured a ten-hour-a-week job working for the on-campus
Center for Small Towns. My job was to collaborate with the Morris Movie Theatre
in order to write an operating manual for everything from the concessions stand
to the film projector. It was kind of awesome.
However, ten hours a week at minimum wage wasn’t enough to
pay the rent. It was time for me to venture off campus.
The first (and only) place I stopped for a job application
was a little coffee shop downtown called the Common Cup.
I filled out my
application and was called back for an informal interview shortly thereafter. I
sat down with Sue, one of the managers, and she asked me about my availability
and previous food service experience. Thanks to four summers working in a camp
kitchen and three summers working at various ice cream establishments, I
totally had that covered. At the end of the interview, I expected to be thanked
for coming and to be told that they’d let me know. Much to my surprise, Sue
instead asked me to come in at 6 the next morning to get started on my
training.
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being hired on the
spot, which is a rare nowadays. (Yes, I said nowadays.)
I began my barista training bright and early the next
morning with Rose, the other manager at the Common Cup. The Common Cup opened
at 7, so there was plenty that needed to be accomplished in that hour. I can
still remember that opening list:
· brew the house coffees
bake muffins
bake cookies
bake coffee cake
fill the front cooler with beverages and refrigerated
desserts
grind espresso
start the soup
buy a copy of the Star
Tribune from the machine outside
open doors
The Common Cup smelled just delightful every morning:
brewing coffee + baking muffins = cozy. I loved to bake the muffins: they were
monstrous, and I got to choose the day’s flavor. I was (and still am) a big fan
of blueberry, especially since making the blueberry muffins involved using huge
scoops of real blueberries in the homemade batter.
The muffins and coffee cake were made from scratch each
morning, but the cookies were a tad easier. They – like the muffins – were also
gigantic, but the cookie dough was premade into little frozen balls that you
just put on a cookie sheet and baked. Rose was the cookie master, and she was
the only one to make the dough. The cookies always turned out perfectly soft
and as large as a saucer.
(I have to interrupt myself for a minute here and talk about
Rose’s desserts. During the fall and around Valentine’s Day, she’d fill the
dessert case with pumpkin bars and little cheesecake hearts, respectively. I
have never had – and probably will never have – chocolate cheesecake better
than Rose’s. I had died and gone to dairy heaven. It’s been more than six years
since I’ve had that chocolate cheesecake, and I still dream about it.)
(Anyway.)
By the time my opening list was done, it was just in time to
open up the doors.
My class schedule dictated the hours I could work at the
Common Cup. During that first semester I worked there, I had about an even
split between opening shifts and closing shifts – never the mid-shift, as my
class schedule had almost no breaks. The Common Cup was closed on Sundays, so I
did work an odd Saturday here and there. The closing shifts were the best – I
would get there after concert band rehearsal ended at 5, and the coffee shop
closed at 8. There wasn’t much traffic at night, so we were welcome to bring
our homework and work on it in a booth when business was slow. I wrote a whole
lot of art history and English papers in a little booth at the Common Cup
during my senior year.
After some practice, I really got the hang of espresso
drinks. I learned the difference between an Americano and a breve, and I learned
how not to explode scalding milk all over my face. (That totally happened
once.) I learned the importance of keeping chilled shots of espresso for iced
drinks and lament the fact that so few coffee shops actually do this. (You know
when you take a drink of your iced latte and it’s warm? That’s because it’s a
hot espresso shot. If the whole drink is cold, the coffee shop used a cold
espresso shot. Because when I ask for an iced coffee, I want it COLD, dammit.)
But you know what I never learned? How to properly make a
wrap.
The Common Cup served lunch, and every now and again, my
shift would overlap with lunchtime. The menu was mostly made up of salads,
sandwiches, wraps, a soup of the day, and the daily special. I was fine with
all of it… except the stupid wraps. I could never figure out just how to fold
the wrap and make that nice little pouch so that its contents didn’t ooze out
into the customer’s lap. Some things are beyond my capabilities, and I think
wraps may be one of them.
If I worked the opening shift, I was given the dubious honor
of writing the specials on the board. Each day had an entrée, which was chosen
by Rose. There was also the day’s soup and the week’s specialty espresso drink.
It was while writing one day’s special that I learned a very important lesson:
though brisket rhymes with biscuit, it is not spelled as such. Having never
encountered brisket before, I wrote it as “briscuit.” My, how quickly did I
learn.
The soup of the day once saved me from an entire torturous
Saturday of concert band rehearsal. It was an October weekend, and I was
scheduled to work at the Common Cup in the morning. It was the same weekend as
the Festival of Bands, so we poor concert band members were expected to
rehearse all day Saturday with the visiting bands, and then perform in concerts
on Saturday night and Sunday morning. My shift at the Common Cup was almost
over, and I had to high-tail it to rehearsal. Just a few minutes before I had
to leave, I was dishing up some chicken tortilla soup for someone – and I
spilled the blisteringly hot soup all over my hand. Smooth.
But hey, I thought – maybe I could still play my clarinet. I
scooted to rehearsal on my bike, trying to ignore the searing pain in my hand.
By the time I got to the rehearsal hall, I couldn’t even move my fingers. I
showed my bright red hand to our director, sheepishly inquiring if I could
maybe sit the rehearsal out. He sent me straight home, instructing me to take
it easy on my hand – for we had concerts coming. I was in good enough shape to
play the two concerts, and let me tell you, I sure enjoyed my afternoon off.
Aside from the minor burns, of course.
My class schedule changed during the spring semester of my
senior year, and so my Common Cup schedule followed suit. I had a rough (well,
relatively rough in college student world) schedule that semester: class at
10:30am on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and class at 8am on Tuesdays and
Thursdays. I had made it through seven semesters without the dreaded 8am class,
and here I was: at the finish line, and I had my first 8am class. For a college
student, any class before noon basically spells death.
Wondering how on earth I was going to find time to work, I
delivered my class times to Sue at the Common Cup (who made the schedule). She said,
“No problem!” and scheduled me to work the opening shift (6am – 10am) on
Mondays and Fridays.
Death.
So every Sunday and Thursday night, I would grudgingly try
to go to bed early. (Which was very difficult, considering that Thursday night
was Quarter Taps and everyone I knew was out at the bar drinking glasses of
Hamms for a quarter.) As a non-morning person, I never got used to getting up
early in order to be to work by 6. Especially during the winter. Trudging
through the snowy streets of Morris long before anyone else was up was not my
idea of a good time. But there was something peaceful about it – it was kind of
nice having an entire hour to myself in the Common Cup. It gave me time to take
care of all the opening stuff, and it gave me time to wake up enough to be
personable to the customers who would walk in the door when we opened at 7.
That wake-up time was very important.
In between opening and the end of my shift, I made coffee
beverages and breakfast foods for happy Morris residents on their way to work
or class. Rare was the occasion that I had a grumpy customer. Even better?
James came to visit me during each and every shift. What a guy.
When my shift ended each Monday and Friday, I would make
myself an iced chai and a breakfast sandwich to go. I’d hop on my bike (weather
permitting) and skedaddle to my 10:30 art history class. Don’t get me wrong: I
adored all three of my art history professors, and I loved my art history
classes. But when you’re sitting in the back of a huge classroom that is warm
and dark and you’ve already been up for five hours, it’s damn hard to pay
attention. I still have my notes from that class, and I can tell exactly where
I started to drift off. But I still got an A in the class, so there you have
it.
Before I knew it, I had graduated college and my year at the
Common Cup was over. It was the one and only food service job that I’ve ever
actually enjoyed, and easily one of my favorite part-time jobs. After all,
customers have a hard time being crabby with you when you’re handing them
coffee.
