You want to work in a coffee shop, or in a restaurant, because you think it will allow you to focus on your art more. It’s that old dream of being in Hollywood, serving up meals by night, while cutting your acting chops by day. It’s merely your day job. It won’t interfere with your art. In fact, it will help you network. “What do you do?” “Well, fine sir, I’m really an actor.”

I had the same delusion once.

My first office job was probably the most stressful job a person could ever get. But since it was in a law firm, I got paid more than I’ve ever gotten paid since. Having been there, (stressful, nerve-wracking, irritable bowel syndrome triggering hell) I knew what it was to work hard. And get paid for my tortured existence I did: I got bonuses, commission, health insurance.

But then I started trying to wrap up my education, the degree I’d put aside to pursue work and immediate gratification, finding I was miserable working in a tiny former closet on the 33^rd floor of a building in downtown San Francisco, dealing with secretaries and paralegals and dispatchers and office managers and court documents that needed to be urgently sent special rush asap as fast as possible, last-minute, all day.

My interest in better things sparked again and I decided to quit, cashing out the vacation and sick days I hadn’t used for a whopping $6000.

In school, (San Francisco State) of course, I thrived. And I worked part-time on piano rebuilding for my dad, in a semi-rural suburban area, to make about $800 bucks a month.

Then I finished my degree, working for my parents didn’t pan out and it was time to find a real job. I went through a slew of them, about the time I started this blog. Nothing fit. They all sucked. And when I finally found a job in publishing after doing a paid internship, I figured my ship had come in.

Not so. I was laid off, and spent a year on unemployment. We had to move into my grandparent’s house, which was mildewed, with leaky plumbing, though we didn’t realize how bad it was at the time—we were desperate.

I got the idea in my head that a coffee shop job would solve my blues.

It was a similar sentiment to the time when I thought working in a restaurant would get me away from working for my parents. I had gone to interview at a hip vegan/meat restaurant in Berkeley. The interview itself was odd. The owner questioned me on my taste in music, putting down Siouxie from Siouxie and the Banshees, calling her a wannabe. Even though I wasn’t a huge fan of them, I wondered why he even cared.  He drilled me for an hour on pop culture, and finally hired me as a hostess. Hoping to someday be promoted to tip-making waitress, I went along.

One day, a patron took a chair from a two-seater and added it to their group table. The group was a little noisy, and for some reason I cannot recall, intimidated the owner and the waitress with their banter.

When he discovered that they had taken the chair from the two-seater table, the owner freaked out. He railed in the back room about the group, said they were hostile, that they could not commandeer that chair, the chair that rightfully belonged with the two-seater table, for their own  selfish purposes.

Yet, he couldn’t face them. And neither could the waitress who was serving them. She wanted a good tip.

He looked at me. “They’re rowdy. They’re hostile. I don’t know what to do.”

I looked at him and said, “I’ll take care of it.”

I walked calmly to the table and asked one of the guys if I could please take that chair back, because it belonged at the two-seater table. “Sure,” he said, and went back to eating.

One day, the owner came out of the backroom with a giant white booger hanging out of his nose. I was about to say something, but didn’t want to embarrass him. He went to the table and sat with his girlfriend, freaking out about something, with his bald head in his hands.

Outside, where we were all smoking, I asked my coworkers what was up with the white booger.

“Oh, that?” said one of the waitresses, who at 22 looked about 40.

“You didn’t know…?” said the other waiter, a guy who couldn’t have been more than 18.

“He’s a cokehead?” I asked.

They both nodded. “Why do  you put up with him,” I asked. “Because,” said the chick in a raspy waitress voice, “If we put up with him, we can pretty much do whatever we want, and we get good tips.”

It was a restaurant and a coffee bar, and sometimes, I got the privilege of also working in the coffee bar. Not often though. Making the perfect Americano was a privilege you had to earn through doing your time, just like any office job. And at the end of each day, I was simply too exhausted to do anything other than face plant on the bed.

I didn’t last long there. One day, I just didn’t go back.

In spite of this and many other failed attempts at food service, from the Barnes and Noble coffee shop when I was 19 to a very brief stint at Hungry Hunter, where, when a guy came in and asked me what a smart girl like I was doing being a hostess, I thought about it for a night and then quit immediately, the fantasy of a coffee shop job solving my woes persisted. If I could simply work with my artistic friends at a hub of culture, life would be alright. I would get tips, I would have fun.

Might as well be having fun, I thought to myself.

I tried for a year to get a job at this one uber hip coffee shop in town. But I couldn’t. I never got through the second mafia like barrage of interview questions aimed at me from the owner’s son. They had opened this boutique coffee shop together, and took the hiring of every single employee, at $8.50 a hour, very seriously.

But one day, I was outside with a friend, drinking their coffee (which I’m sure is laced with coca leaf derivatives aside from merely a lot of caffeine, because I would literally see things when I drank it, determining that the world was out to get me, and then I would crash, hard). I was sitting there, in the early more feel-good moments of this particular cup of coffee, which was named after a drug called ether, when the manager asked if I would be able to work for them super part-time. “We had to fire someone,” she said, “we need immediate help.” She looked frazzled, in her ’50s housewife apron, short brown hair akimbo.

Hip, local coffee. What's not to like? A lot, apparently.

“Sure,” I said. Why not, I thought. Super part-time wouldn’t interfere with the freelance writing I did that wasn’t quite paying the bills.

First, I had to sign about twenty papers, with non-compete clauses and legalese. It took about an hour and a half just to get through them. Then, I had to do a week of training. “You must stir the coffee in a volcano motion,” said the supervisor, while the manager stood nearby. “And when you scoop the spoon in a sideways motion,  it’s like a paddle…oh my god, we should totally patent that. It’s the paddle motion,” she said, giggling, and her manager laughed, too, with empty eyes as I stood there trying, unsuccessfully, to do the correct volcano and paddling motion to get the perfect cup of coffee ready for the customers, “who are like our family,” the manager had said threateningly.

Suffice it to say, with the free coffee all day long, I spent a lot of the next month tweaking out, thinking that everyone was out to get me. The coffee shop was more like a corporate gig right out of office space, except everyone went to the bar afterwards, together. Everyone was so afraid of even being NEAR a person who was not hip that if you fumbled once, you were out. The group of baristas would do that thing where they would totally exclude you from a conversation, acting as if you did not exist, because you were hurting their fragile worldview.

One day, a guy who worked there asked me how old I was. “29,” I said, and he audibly gasped. “Wow,” he said. “I’m finally doing all the things I said I would do when I was younger,” I told him, “like recording my music, getting my writing published.”

“Wow,” he said again. “So life doesn’t stop when you get older. I’ll try and remember that.”

Ouch.

One day, the first day I had been sent to the register for my entire shift, the cash didn’t total out at the end. My supervisor, who had been joking with me a second ago, got very serious. It was a matter of ten dollars. A national emergency. She called her superior, who called her superior. They counted my drawer again and again.

There was an elaborate points system. This tragic error of neglect on my part would mean that I would be docked a significant portion of my points. Never mind that a couple of other staff had manned my register, too, without me logging out.

The coffee shop was beginning to remind me of reform school. Military. Something onerous.

From the dreadful day of the register on, they decided I was not one of them. There were little things. First, the register seemed to say that I wasn’t dedicated enough. This was serious business. How could I make a mistake on my first day on their crazy register?

And then there was the fact that I didn’t wear canvas shoes or skinny jeans, something they noticed pretty quickly.

It was high school all over again. Pretty soon, within a month or two, the whole thing unraveled. When I got a job at the local library, I accepted it immediately, and fled.