Iced, X, venti, 3P, SFV, S, L

It's dark in Santa Fe. Today was kind of a tough day at work... Well, relatively it wasn't bad. Relative to what other people may have to go though at their work. I don't have to do much manual labor. Well, besides cleaning the drains today. I don't have to use my brain that much. I have to remember some coffee shorthand. That isn't really hard. Except I was yelled at the other day for marking a green tea latte "GTL" when it was supposed to be marked "GRTL". "GTL" is the marking for green tea lemonade. People at Starbucks love to shout at me. I guess I'm the type of person that can take the yellings. I'm mostly silent about my grievances about the Bucks. I hate, hate, hate when I'm explaining something to a customer about tea or coffee when someone decides that I probably don't know the answer to their question and butts in and explains it them self. That bothers me. But then I stop and think for a second... My degree is in economics, not coffee. They can have their expert opinion on coffee. But still, I'm making coffee. I'm not even making coffee. I'm putting scoops of already ground coffee into a machine that heats up water and makes the coffee for me. I'm only a pawn. Working at Starbucks isn't all bad though. Some people actually want to know about me. Some people actually give me some credit for having a brain and let me explain what the tea is made up of, and how long it should be left in the hot water for before you take the tea bag out. They're cool. There are some people who actually take the time to let me know I'm doing a good job... Whatever. I want to look at statistics of weather and population and road maps all day. That sounds like fun! I'm serious. If I could tell where the weather is going to be good for coffee growing and how many farmers in the area where going to be producing and what their average incomes were for the previous year and what their expected crops were for the new season... (That sentence made no sense.) That sounds like fun. I want to life on a beach in Panama and talk to actual coffee farmers. I want to sleep next to the ocean, and I don't want someone yelling at me for marking a cup wrong. Most of the customers are cool. I think I can find a million different ways their 5 + dollars could go to that would actually benefit the world, but at least some of them can smile at me. I think I'm pretty lucky for the customers that come into my store. We have mostly tourists, so people aren't mean about their drinks, they're mostly just on vacation being leasurly. But we get tons of Europeans, and if you can get past the language barrier then they are real easy customers to satisfy. They don't want gigantic super complicated drinks like Americans. They just want espresso, with a little but of milk. The most common European drink is a short latte, or a solo espresso. Easy enough. Or a hot chocolate. They love the hot chocolates. They hate americanos and American coffee for the most part. I can't generalize all together, cause there is the occasional French group that wants venti frappucinos. It's really cool serving people from all over the world though. It's reminding me that I want to travel on a consistent basis. In a way I'm taken out of Santa Fe for a few seconds when I talk to these people. I especially like it when they dump all of their change on the counter and ask me to find the correct change. It seems like they don't know what coin is worth what... I'm certain that's what it is. I don't think they would do that at their local coffee shop. Good times though. I hope it snows soon, I can't wait til winter.