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.