Boxing Day Madness

There once was a time when Boxing Day was a day of lethargic family festivities. It was a time when our overstuffed digestive systems would attempt to cope with the barrage of gluttony that we indulged in the day before. A time when we would lounge around our houses with our family and play with the gifts we had been given for Christmas or watch movie marathons on TV. It was a time when we didn’t have to worry about the approaching January sales because they were a week away.
But not anymore.

The quiet slumber of Boxing Day has now become a hectic rush of sales shopping in which hundreds of thousands descend upon the high street like a pilgrimage to appease the God of consumerism. Almost all major stores opened their doors today to frantic, manic, wild eyes bargain hunters. Only M&S, Morrisons and Waitros maintained some dignity in abiding by the Yule time Calendar. The other stores were packed with maniacs all fighting with zealous abandonment, desperate to find the best bargains around. It was like 28 Days Later with a discount sign.

However, what is strange about all this is that the items in the sales are the poor quality crap that stores couldn’t get rid of before Christmas at full price so now need to be flogged off with massive discounts. It reminded me of the classic joke in the Simpsons when Apu tries to appease Homer’s complaints with five pounds of fish in a bucket. “This shrimp isn't frozen! And it smells funny!” Homer observes. “Ok, ten pounds!” Apu says pulling out another bucket. “Wahoo!”
It’s exactly the same in the “January” sales. The poor quality stuff that couldn’t be sold at Christmas is sold at half the price and everyone acts as if it’s the last days of Rome and the Coliseum is 50% off. The clothing giant Next was open at 7am today to appease these idiots. As I locked up my bike near my local Next store I saw two employees standing at the entrance handing out bin bags to entering shoppers so that they could carry all the items they need. The worst thing was that some of the shoppers looked slightly disappointed with their bin bag, realizing its 40 liter capacity wasn’t going to be enough to hold the small mountain of clothes they were intending to buy. I was saddened to see more than one person return for a second bag.

Now, all this post Christmas madness had a depressingly significant effect on our little coffeeshop: It filled us with even more enraged shoppers that usual.

But that wasn’t even the worst part.

As I have already stated, Boxing Day is traditionally a time for families. And it still is. Except now they have been torn from the warm bosom of the living room and are plunged into cold town centers and shopping districts. This means the age range of our customers today raised from about 15 – 40 years old, to everyone between the ages of 1 and 100. Yes, the youngest son and the oldest grandparents were pulled along to “enjoy” family time, (although I’m sure neither had a bloody clue what was going on or where they were, instead they choice to crumple in their chair in a semi-sentient daze drooling on themselves).

This also meant that instead of customers buying coffee for themselves and maybe one other person, they were buying for their entire extended family. One member of the family would try and painfully recite an order of sixteen coffees, often forgetting halfway through who was having what and have to start all over again. It had to sit through these forgetful litanies over and over again. It was like having Peaches Geldof attempting to recite the alphabet to you.
After this was over the kids would necklarge hot chocolates from mugs that were three times the size of their upper bodies and then go charging around the store like lobotomized monkeys trying to escape a testing lab. The parents, trapped under the mountain of shopping bags would be powerless to stop the buggers from causing havoc. Gradually anarchy spread through the store as children from different families started interacting with each other without laws, restraint of supervision. It made Lord of the Flies look like a weekend retreat.

Eventually the madness came to an end as the afternoon turned to evening and everyone realized what a horrible, stressful, expensive and pointless day it had been meandering between clustered groups of assholes and generally acting like a bellend. Perhaps next year they will think better and just stay at home with a game of Boggle and The Great Escape on TV. However, because the collective IQ of these bargain hunters seems to be only slightly above that of a toaster, they’ll probably all do it again next year, completely forgetting the misery it caused themselves this year.

Espionage and a Girl (or how I became the worst James Bond on the planet).

Today I went against the system. I snuck and I snaked and I deceived. I played the double agent and sent information to the other side. It’s getting too much. The regime is relentless and I seek greener pastures. I sent my CV to another place.
But treachery comes at a high price in the totalitarian state that is the coffeeshop. If the higher ups found out there’d be hell to pay. They’d sit me down with a manager and explain in full length the wealth of “glorious opportunities” that would arise if I stuck with them. They’d show me the career ladder graph (yes it actually exists) and pinpoint where I could be on it in only a few short months. It would be a punishment worse than the gulags.
So I had to be covert with my espionage and told no one of my plans to defect. But secrecy breeds paranoia and all through the day I felt burning eyes on the back of my neck. My co-workers shot me quick glances or distrust, their noses sniffing, as if smelling out the traitor. I started to feel like I was scribbling away in my diary just out of sight of the telescreens. I was at once more liberated and more fearful than I had been in my life.
And this lead me to realize that I’m just like Winston Smith but even more pathetic. At least he scored some hot, nonconformist poontang before being lobotomized by the machine. I can’t even do that, I thought to myself.

As I poured coffee into the souls of the twittery pions that comprise our clientele and thought about how maybe I had missed the point of Nineteen Eighty-four (There is more to it than having sex with anti-establishment rebels, right?) I was blindsided by a pair of intoxicating brown eyes. They belonged to a cute girl who I couldn’t help but keep feverish eye contact with.
However my mind was soon torn back to the memory of another girl that I have previously mentioned. (See: I totally Fell in Love Today). The girl from that story had come in the store a second time and had looked at me like I had asked if I could remove one of her kidneys with a hatchet. I think the looks we had been exchanging, which I had interpreted as shy, romantic gestures she must have thought were creepy, stalker stares from a potential sex offender.
So, with this memory fresh in my mind, I finished serving the brown eyed girl and ignored her as best I could while she drank her drink. I did pretty well considering she had perched herself on a table right in front of my eye line.
I continued with my duties.
A few moments later the brown eyed girl approached the counter, her empty mug in hand and handed it to me personally. Usually we clear the tables ourselves but sometimes customers bring them back to us. It’s either a polite way of removing some of our work load or a demeaning criticism suggesting that they think us too incompetent to clean some empty mugs from tables without tripping over our shoelaces and drooling on ourselves. It really depends on the customer.
So the empty mug was exchanged from her hands to mine when I notice something beside the mug. She smiles at me brightly and then leaves the store. I look down at the little bit of paper she has given me. I unfold it and inside it had her name, her number and “Nice hot chocolate” accompanied by a smiling face.
Holy shit! I think. This can’t be. Someone is interested in me. God has dealt me a favourable hand for once. The cosmic balance of the universe is unnaturally swinging ever so slightly in my favour. I phoned her up on my lunch break and we arranged a date later this week. If this good luck keeps up, I thought, I wont have enough cruel misery to plot down in this blog.
I left work feeling upbeat and positive for the first time in a long while. However when I walked in the door of my house I was greeted with the news that my grandmother had just died.
The depressing cosmic equilibrium of my life restored itself to its neutral setting.

Here's a transcript of a convo I had today with a girl I work with

Firstly I'll transcribe what I said. Then I'll tell you what I was thinking.

Her: Hi.

Me: Hey. How's it going?

Her: Not great.

Me: How come?

Her: Well my ex girlfriend phoned me up last night and we had a pretty nasty
conversation.

Me: Oh right. Sorry. What was it about?

Her: Nothing really. You know, just break up shit.

Me: Yeah, I know what you mean. How long we you together?

Her: About 6 months.

Me: Oh right.

Her: Yeah we met a uni and kidda knew we had feelings for each other. But we decided not to be together then because we were both pretty stressed and she had just come out of a relationship with a guy..

Me: Uh huh.

Her: And I'd just come out of a relationship with another girl and we both had lots of work to do all the time. But we started dating after that.

Me: Yeah, Uni can be stressful.

Her: Anyway, thanks for listening. And if I'm grumpy or anything to you today don't take it personally.

Me: No problem.


Anyway, that's what I said. Here's what I was thinking.

Her: Hi.

Me: Damn I wish I was fragging n00bs at MW 2 instead of at work talking to people.

Her: Not great.

Me: Ah man, I don't want to hear about your problems. I wish I'd never asked.

Her: Well my ex girlfriend phoned me up last night and we had a pretty nasty conversation.

Me: OMFGWTFBBQ?! You're a lesbian?! Way to be casual about it, bitch! Oh shit. Don't look surprised or anything or she'll think you're a homophobe and never let you watch. Act natural dammit.

Her: Nothing really. You know, just break up shit.

Me: No I don't know what a lesbian break up is like. Explain it to me. Did you have hot lesbian break up sex? Shit, am I getting a boner?

Her: About 6 months.

Me: Yep, definitely got a semi.

Her: Yeah we met a uni and kidda knew we had feelings for each other. But we decided not to be together then because we were both pretty stressed and she had just come out of a relationship with a guy..

Me: Fucking hell. I didn't want your life story. Damn you lesbians can be boring. Get to the part where you eat each others pussies like in those videos I watch.

Her: And I'd just come out of a relationship with another girl and we both had lots of work to do all the time

Me: Damn, I wonder if she's eaten more pussy than me.

Her: Anyway, thanks for listening. And if I'm grumpy or anything to you today don't take it personally.

Me: Don't take it personally if I wank to the thought of you muff diving tonight.

A chance encounter with celebrity

Ah ha! After the hours upon hours of relentless boredom, after the hundreds of bland faced automatons all blending into one another, after the wail of impatient children and, often, fully grown adults, we’ve finally had a celebrity come into our humble and overpriced coffeeshop.
Joe Thomas (aka Simon from The Inbetweeners) made a spectacularly low key entry at around 2 O’clock this afternoon. He shuffled up to the counter, mumbled his order and then quietly left. Only half way through serving did I clock on to why I recognized his face. But by this time it was too late and he was half way up the stairs to our first floor seating area.
“Well fuck that,” I thought. (I’m a fan of The Inbetweeners, if not religiously so. I think it’s a witty and sometimes painfully accurate and awkward slice of probably one of the most uncomfortable times of any mans life, the ages of 16 to 18) I’m not going to let someone of minor celebrity status slip through my hands like I’ve let the rest life’s opportunities. I’m not going sit by and watch as a small slice of show business escapes my day, which, up to that point, had been as stimulating as chewing on a doorknob. I’m going to grab the bull by the horns and take charge of this situation.
So I went upstairs to clean some tables. I was quite nervous as I picked up the empty cups on his table as I’d never talked to someone of the TV before, although I had once held open the cinema door for Rory McGrath (but that’s another, entirely uninteresting, story all together). But it was now or never. I was going to do it. I had built up the courage and I let rip.
“Hey man,” I said, my voice reasonably casual and controlled. “Are you in the Inbetweeners?” He said he was. I said I liked the show. He said thanks. There was a long, awkward silence in which I suspect both of us wished I had never started this conversation. After a while I asked him if they were making anymore. He said there was a new series in March. I said that I was looking forward to it. He said thanks again. We stopped talking.
And that was it. As I walked down the stairs back to my post I realized that celebrities really weren’t that interesting and talking to one is sort of like trying to chat up an attractive girl who you’ve relentlessly facebook stalked but barely understands that you exist. All the praise if one way and they just looked confused and uncomfortable.
Next time someone famous comes in I’m just going to mess up their order and avoid making eye contact with them, just like I do for everyone else.

My Fellow Comrades.

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet is the people I work with. This is because, on the whole, I quite enjoy the people I work with. We share the same mutual contempt for the general public and use it as a bonding experience. While some companies lavish their employees with leisurely team building exercises - spending a cold, muddy weekend in Thetford forest getting bruised by paintballs from that asshole from IT who stole your girlfriend instead of spending your day off having a lie in and watching TV – our work force bonds over devising fictitious, violent torture devises for people that order soya milk. It’s kind of like the Saw films but all the victims are lactose intolerant.
Yes, amazing as it is, there is one thing I like about my work and that’s my fellow employees. We’re an odd bunch; comprised of post graduates with liberal arts degrees (courses in Photography, Philosophy or Film may as well teach you how to make Mochas or flip burgers because that’s all it’s going to get you in life), a Pole and a Czech over here practicing their English and praying a favourable exchange rate will return, a couple of “How in the hell did I end up here” cases and a Cage Fighter. Together we shoot the shit so as to avoid shooting the customers.
However even though I get on with them all it’s almost impossible to get a chance to get to know any of them. Conversations last the briefest of time before they are swept up in another wave of customers getting itchy fingers from caffeine deprivation. The company makes sure the barest minimum of baristas are working for each particular time of day so that we will always be slightly overwhelmed by our duties. If at any time there seems to be a moment in the day, perhaps a lull of customers, and we have time to relax and catch our breaths, then the company will reassess the rota and try and work out where hours can be removed so as to prevent its employees from reaching eupnea. Breathing takes time and time is money.
This is how we’re kept in line. We’re pummeled to edge of exhaustion and punished if can handle it with time to spare. Oh well, could be worse. I could be in Thetford.

The underlying anger in us all rears its ugly head.

It was a Tuesday afternoon. I was working, doing my simplistic job that could be done by any creature with vertebra: Take order. Make order. Dispense order to customer. Take money. Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
It was much like any other Tuesday afternoon without a hint of discomfort in the air (apart from the usual nagging feeling that everyone who has worked for a major coffee franchise has on a regular basis that your life is being whittled away minute by minute). Due to my general apathy for my job, a line was building up steady, at least seven or eight people long. The line was the usual mix of customers. There were students, with their gentile chit chat about seminars and exams. There were radically obsessive tourists who needed to document the most trivial examples of “Englishness” with their overly expensive cameras. The usually post-work white collar workers, eager to get their latte’s before having to return home and complete all the paperwork that inevitably eluded them during their 9-5 shift. Basically the usual slack jawed faces I’ve come to despise.
The incident took place as one of the office slaves approached the front of the queue. He was proceeded by a tender old lady and a young, blonde student. As our balding office anti-hero took a look around the shop, the student in front took off her jumper and revealed another, different coloured t-shirt.
Our balding, uptight office anti-hero did not see this action and, seeing a different coloured top in front of him, assumed that someone had jumped the queue.
“Excuse me,” he said to the girl, “But I believe you jumped the queue.” There was no hint of menace of malice in his voice. It was balanced and under control.
The girl turned around in surprise and politely told him that she had been here all the time.
His left eye began to twitch. “No. You weren’t.” He turned to me. “Excuse me, but this girl just pushed in front of me.”
In my politest, if-my-boss-didn’t-force-me-to-wear-this-smile-i-would-have-spat-in-your-face smile, I said, “No sir. She’s next in the queue.”
The twitch turned into a tremor, the tectonic plates of his skull started to grind up against each other. His voice started to rise. “I’ve been waiting here for fifteen minutes and I don’t expect someone to jump in front of me.”
The girl was clearly not used to this sort of confrontation. Her voice and demeanor suggested that she was raised somewhere in which violent conflict did not generally take place unless it was a gang of hounds tearing apart a fox. Human violence was as strange and foreign to this girl as shopping at Asda. However, impressively, she stood her ground and refused to budge.
Once again, sensing some sort of human carnival was about to unfold, I said that she had not jumped the queue and he would have to wait to be served.
It was the final straw. The pressure had built up too much. The tremors turned into a full blown earthquake and the epicenter was his mouth.
“THAT’S PATHETICS. THAT’S JUST FUCKING TYPICALLY PATHETIC.” The anger was directed at the girl not myself. “YOU’RE A FUCKING PATHETIC JOKE.”
Everyone in the coffee shop stared at him, mouths gaping in disbelief. The girl was positively broken. Hunched and scared, tears started to run down her face.
I had had a feeling something was coming but I had never anticipated that the final quake was going to be of such a high magnitude. I was taken a back just like everyone else. The thought process was probably the same for everyone: “Isn’t this is pleasant Britain, where everyone is quietly polite?” Perhaps you expect this level of verbal abuse of a Saturday night in a city centre, with pissed up revelers voicing their opinions before smashing pint glasses over each others heads, but a Tuesday afternoon in a high street coffee shop? How very inappropriate.
I finally composed myself and managed the rather feeble, “I think it’s best if you leave, sir.” (notice how it is not a command but a suggestion and I still use the formal address of sir. God, I’m pathetically British). The man stormed out leaving in his wake stunned customers and a sobbing girl. I gave the girl her coffee for free and later, when the queue had died down, went up to check on her. The tears had stopped but she was still visibly shaken. There was not much else I could do but justify that the guy was probably a mentalist.
This is just one example of the unhealthy suppression of feelings that we bottle up for too long as we are swept along in uncomfortable masses, doing jobs we hate for people we despise. People have a breaking point. It seems that British people’s breaking point harder than most peoples to reach. But when they do it’s a spectacularly horrific. It’s a good thing we don’t all have guns.

So I totally fell in love today

I was at work when this really amazing look girl came in. She wasn't boner inducing, super model hawt with big boobs, flowing blond hair and a cleavage that would slam your head through your ball sack.
Instead she was quietly attractive, with dark brown hair in a pony tail and a slightly bookish looking face with large brown eyes and the most comforting and relaxing smile in the world.

You know the sort of girl I'm talking about.

The sort of girl that you could totally imagine spending lazy summer days with, lying on a picnic blanket on a meadow down by the river, just content with the sounds of the birds in the air and the security of each others company. The sort of girl that you would take you to art galleries and try to make you reach your full potential because she recognizes that you're slightly under achieving in life and not motivated enough. And you go to the art galleries because you love her and respect her opinions but your act bored and above it all (but you're still secretly impressed with the painting and shit even if you don't appreciate it on the same level as her). Then, to repay her, you watch Godfather 1 & 2 together on a dark, winters night, huddled up on the sofa together in front of a nice warm fire, and she watches them because she loves you and she respects your opinions but she acts all bored and above it all (but you know she secretly is impressed even if she doesn't appreciate it on the same level as you). Then you have a playful argument in which you discuss who has had more cultural significance on the world, Rembrandt or Francis Ford Coppola, and the argument ends in you both in the bed room where you proceed to have intimate, loving and comfortable sex that doesn't need to be outrageous or dangerous for it to be magical. And then after you're both spent you cuddle, basking in the pleasurable feedback from each others bodies. However after a while she lets go because she understands you need your space to be able to sleep comfortably and you proceed to fall into a deep slumber, content in the knowledge that you have someone that truly loves you.

You know the sort of girl I'm talking about.

Anyway, this girl came into the shop and I served her and fell in love with her. She sat down and while she was sipping on her Latte every now and again I glanced over at her and sometimes she would be looking at me and we would make momentary eye contact before one of us got embarrassed and turned away.
Then, when she was leaving, I smiled at her and said goodbye but she didn't look at me nor respond and instead kept on walking like she had blinkers on.
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That's when I realised how desperately alone I am.

tl/dr: I'm a sad sack of shit with an over active imagination and a pathetically romantic disposition.

Welcome to Coffeeshop Blues

Ah. Coffeeshops. Inhabited by the terminally wired, the gawkingly stupid, the perpetually impatient and the remorselessly picky. Run by the compulsively underachieving. Owned by the morally vacuous.

Yes, the Coffeeshop truly is the bane of human achievement. The sort of place that people believe is a cosy little hideaway from the real world, where they can relax and revel with their follow compatriates as if they were the cast of a popular 90s sitcom. But the reality of this quaint ideal is no match for the often brutal and despicable reality that lies behind the charade. And I'm here to blow the lid of the whole affair. I’m like Deepthroat without the silly, pornographic name.

Because, sad as it is, I work in one.

I'm the guy that gets called up at 6 in the morning on his day off because someone has been called in sick but is too spineless to mount any sort of argument and comes in tired and grumpy. I'm that guy that addresses you in a sleep deprived daze, glaring loathingly at you as you order your Soya Latte, and handing you one made with semi skimmed milk, not entirely sure himself if it was because he deliberately wants to annoy you or if he's just too damn stupid to remember an order placed two minutes previously. I'm the guy that is well educated enough to get a job much better than what he has but is so under ambitious that he stumbled into the first apron he came across and never bothered moving on, no matter how many friends, relatives or chimpanzees started to move up the career ladder. I have no girlfriend, no social life, no where to go and this is my story. I promise it wont be too emo.

Please Note: I won’t mention which coffee shop I work for but I can assure you it is one of the major chains. All the names and locations will also be changed as to protect the innocent and the simple minded.