Quitting+Ham

So, I wanted to tell you about my new job, which I am quitting, but first, some other musings about the bus. 

Seriously, so much goes on on the bus that I almost feel like I should have a second bus-oriented blog. 

Anyway, the other afternoon I was coming home from work and this junkie was on the bus. He didn't look like a nutter though, I mean he wasn't muttering to himself or carrying on or nodding out, it was just obvious to me that he was a person who did a lot of drugs, but he was pretty lucid. He was sitting in the front in the old or handicapped people seats, and I was next to the back door, so I couldn't hear what he was saying, I could only see that he was talking to the girl sitting across with him and that she didn't seem too thrilled about that. He had a paper bag in his hand, like a lunch sack, and he kept shaking it around. 

A couple stops later, he made his way toward the back of the bus. I was really hoping he wasn't going to approach me, but of course he did. He sat in the seat ahead of me and turned around to face me and held the paper bag up, shaking it in my face.

"You wanna buy some ham for three dollars?" he asked?

"No," I said.

He shrugged his shoulders like, "oh well, I tried," and got off the bus at the next stop. So I wondered what was really in that bag. Was it really ham? Why the arbitrary amount of $3? Or is "ham" some kind of drug slang I'm not aware of, like the time that big tranny came up to me at Motor City and asked if I wanted to see Tina and I thought she was just referring to herself in the third person, but then later I realized she was asking me if I was interested in purchasing some crystal meth. But what kind of drugs could I get for $3? And the guy seemed intent on getting the $3 so that he could buy drugs, so why, if he already had some drugs would he be trying to sell them off? So maybe it really was ham in that bag. 

This and my many other tales of the bus make me concerned about one of my dad's new job ventures. He has applied to be a busdriver for the VTA and I just don't think it's the best idea in the world. I mean, my dad is no codger, but he does not need to be spending his days physically removing racists from and telling junkies not to sell ham on his bus. I just think that if he could find anything else to do, it would be better than being a busdriver. Maybe people on the bus are more civilized up north, I don't know. I just don't like it. 

Anyway, on to my job that I'm quitting. 

I've been working at this coffee shop for a couple weeks, and when I got hired, it was with the understanding that eventually, should my skills prove sufficient, I would be made assisstant manager. That sounded good to me and figured that then I could eventually phase out waitressing altogether. 

The problem is that they do all this stuff that I find appalling. They make cappuccinos with the big, frothy, Starbucksian foam, which, for some reason, I have a really hard time creating now that I'm used to texturizing rather than frothing. When I sent my resume, I said I made a good cappuccino, which, if you like your capp with bubbly, airy milk, turned out to be a lie, so that makes me look bad. Also, they only use nonfat milk for cappuccinos because "it's easier to foam." Also, their large sized espresso drinks have three shots in them. Do you know how they get the third shot? By pushing the single shot button on the espresso machine after the first two shots have been pulled through that same filter. If you order an iced espresso drink there, the shots will be measured out from a reserve of chilled espresso that has been brewed ahead of time, so it's almost always at least an hour old. They prep it at night so it's already chilled in the morning, so if you come in for your morning iced latte, the espresso in it will not even have been brewed that same day. When I come in in the morning, the machine is still covered with coffee splashes and grinds from the day before. I never work at night, so I don't know how the closing ritual goes, but the condition of the espresso machine in the morning leads me to believe that it is not cleaned at night, not even wiped down, much less taken apart and treated to an application of Puro-caf once in a while. I've been dying to tell you about this, because no one else I try to explain it to really understands the horrified feeling that it fills me with. 

Recently, it has come to my attention that there will be more shifts available at The Cafe where I am a waitress, so I think that what I'm going to do is just take 4 shifts there and quit the coffee shop. I mean, I can get up at 5:30 in the morning, but it just doesn't seem worth it to go to a place that has "expresso" written on the awning and make crap coffee on a dirty machine. The tips aren't very good, and the job also requires things like making deliveries to the various loft buildings downtown, cooking eggs in the microwave, and taking extensive phone orders from difficult people, all of which I hate. So I think, after Wednesday, I'll quit. 

If you're keeping track, this will be the third job I have quit in as many months. I am amazing. 

*Puerco*