This Coffeeshop Fuck
There’s this coffeeshop fuck.
He works at the place right next to my kids’ swim lessons. And in the building between swim lessons, and the coffeeshop, home to aforementioned fuck, there is a children’s fun zone type-of-place, which my youngest calls Coconut Island, for reasons unbeknownst to us all.
Swim lessons, Coconut Island, coffeeshop, three little businesses, all in a row, that are the setting of our Tuesday afternoon, every Tuesday afternoon.
Which is just so nice. If you have young children, you know how valuable that is. That routine. That consistency. Something fixed, amidst all chaos.
Sometimes parenting young kids can seem like this howling tempest, where every block of hours between breakfast and lunch, between nap time and dinner, is just you and your wife screaming what do we do with them for the next three hours?! while bats fly out of your mouths, and your eyes summersault in their sockets.
Unless you have a nanny, in which case good for you. Tell me, do you and your partner ever discuss divestment, or do you just drive your Rivian, and not think about anything at all?
But Tuesday, sweet Tuesday, you tiny pocket of calm, you port in the schedule storm. Tuesday is swim lessons, a few hours of play at Coconut Island, then home to make dinner while the boys watch a little boob tube. Tuesday afternoon, solid as the best guy you know. Tuesday is so nice, in fact, that oftentimes my wife and I will both go. Because if an experience is that easy with one parent, imagine what a cakewalk it is with two.
But then there’s coffeeshop fuck. He’s mucking up the whole vibe.
Because what should be the resplendent feather in Tuesday afternoon’s cap, a cup of joe to compliment the mental vacation, has turned into an ordeal, a slog for grog, doled out by this fuckwad behind the caffeinated ones and twos.
He’s Australian. Which threw me at first. That an Australian could be a dickhead. I had never met one in the wild. Typically, Aussies are chill, easy-going, nothing but white teeth, no worries, mate, perhaps a little Wallaby heft, should shit go down at the pub.
And not only was this guy a dick, he was tiny! Normally, Aussies are huge! But here in front of me was this tiny Australian dick. He truly broke the mold.
“Yeah?” he croaked at me with his sass-mouth, the very first time I walked into the coffeeshop.
I didn’t even know he worked there. Dude was seated on a stool around the U-shaped counter; not on the inside of the U, mind you, but the outside of the U, where customers sit.
Then he glanced up at me with that unmistakable barista fuck-you face, that this-is-the-Silverlake-Intelligentsia-in-2006-and-if-you’re-not-Miranda-July-asking-me-to-appear-in-a-tasteful-exhibit-of-polaroid-nudes-politely-kill-yourself face.
His barista Blue Steel was so strong I nearly fell over. I was not prepared for it; to encounter this level of pretentiousness in a strip-mall, in southeast Denver, next to a kids swim school, where they advertise a parent discount at the coffeeshop next store. Hardly Studio 54. (Is that a cool reference? I don’t know anymore. I’m just so tired). But there it was, nonetheless, a condescending smirk, weaponized by a diminutive Aussie with an attitude.
Now here’s the thing about Australians: as much as we all love them, we all know what they do with the letter R. I know this may render me persona non grata in certain Melbourne circles, but societal fallout be damned, the truth is more important. And the fact remains, Australians tend to add R’s in places that have zero business having R’s.
The simple phrase, “how are you,” set forth from the lips of an Aussie becomes a mangled hellscape of speech, an almost hostile, desperate spit-choke of syllables, capable of being heard up to three miles away. As the crow flies.
“Howr arerrr yourr?” they’ll ask cheerfully, never realizing that their murder of the language has so affected your mood, you no longer even know how to answer that question.
And my drink of choice is café au lait. With oat milk. Yes, I’m a fancy lad. Though it’s really not all that fancy. Regular coffee with some steamed oat milk atop. I find the perfect ratio to be ¾ coffee, ¼ steamed oat, but if you half and half my ass, what am I gonna kick you out of bed?
But I knew what this rare Oceanic cockbag would do to the pronunciation of café au lait. So I dumbed it down.
“Could I have a cup of coffee with some steamed oat milk?” I asked, sparing him any attempt at pronunciation.
But he insisted. Because, as you may recall, he was a dick.
“Oh. You mean a café au-RRRRRRR laiRRRRT?!” he hate-speeched.
Yes, I know it’s a café au lait, you Aussie aberration. It’s my drink, don’t you think I know that? But you see, unlike you, I’m not an asshat, so I was trying to spare this entire coffeeshop the indignation of hearing you curbstomp a language.
I paid, got a straight black coffee for my wife – she’s a trucker, I’m a princess – and went back to swim lessons, fuming. And I proceeded to tell her all about this coffeeshop fuck.
We chalked it up to a one-time thing; bad day for a tiny Aussie, just move on from it. Don’t dwell in the unpleasant present. For after all it was Tuesday, Tuesday afternoon, in fact; these were supposed to be the good times.
Except the next Tuesday he was a dickhead again! Then again, the following week. Still with the same butchered pronunciation, still with the superfluous, garbled R’s. It was clear this guy was just an asshole, an asshole ruining my Tuesday afternoons.
And he’d find new, inventive ways to do it!
Once I bought a bag of coffee beans, because we were out at home. Like many coffeeshops, this establishment gives you a free cup of coffee when you do that. Typically, a cheap cup of regular coffee, not a fancy café au lait, but every time I’ve bought a bag of beans from another shop offering a similar deal, they’ve always just looked the other way.
What’s the difference between a black coffee, and a black coffee with a little steamed oat milk, after all? Certainly not enough to raise a stink. Just give the customer their very similar drink in that situation. They’ll appreciate the kindness, and you’ll keep them coming back.
But not this dude. Raise a stink, he did. Sorry, mate and all that. He had the actual audacity to call me mate when mates we were decidedly not. That’s NOT how mates treat one another. I had to pay for that café au lait that day, never mind the $17 bag of beans.
Mates. Pshaw.
The final straw was when I ordered a Bhakti chai for my wife, because she was feeling like a straight up freak that afternoon. It’s a pretty standard order, the Bhakti chai. Bhakti is the name of a company that sells chai concentrate. But it’s so ubiquitous in coffeeshops it’s just become synonymous with chai, the way you ask for a Kleenex when you want a tissue, or a Post-It-Note when you’re a secretary from the 1980’s. I’d ordered that drink for her verbatim in a half dozen other coffeeshops, no one ever batted an eye. They just asked me how many shots I wanted. Not this dude.
“I don’t know what that is,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t know what a Bhakti chai is,” he said again. It was a showdown between he and I, a line of customers bearing witness.
“Well, I don’t know either. It’s not for me,” I said. “But that’s what they ordered. So, a Bhakti chai, please.”
“I’ve never heard that word in my life,” he doubled down, like I was some loser alien at a new high school, sent across galaxies to his specific cafeteria to be lame.
“You know what?” I said. “Make whatever type of chai you have back there.”
He rolled his eyes, shuffled off, and in that moment, a piece of me broke.
“Actually,” I spoke up, the eyes of the entire coffeeshop on a man drawing a line in the sand. “I’m good. I don’t need anything.”
And then I left. With no drinks. I sprinted back to swim lessons, sobbing, where my wife, and several of the swim coaches consoled me, rubbing my back, telling me that whatever kind of chai I wanted was fine.
After I’d calmed down a bit, excused myself to the bathroom to wipe my mascara and what not, my wife pulled out her phone.
“Let’s see if there’s another coffeeshop around here,” she said. “So we don’t have to deal with that jerk anymore.”
I had never heard her use language like that, but she was pretty worked up. She’s loyal like that. Sure enough, there was another coffeeshop nearby. Not one city block away! We had been so blinded by the convenience of the shop next door, we never even noticed it. But everything was different now. We were mad as hell, and we weren’t going to take it anymore.
So I traipsed across the parking lot, then across the street, to the new coffeeshop.
It was cozier than the first, less sleek design, more couches and funky artwork. It felt like a place where high school drama nerds hang out, a place where you can sell a used guitar by pinning a piece of paper to a bulletin board.
It felt like a neighborhood, like community.
“How’s it going?” the cheerful barista asked me before I had even approached the counter.
I told him it was going well. Great, in fact. The best it had gone in a long while.
Then the moment of truth. The order. I decided I would test this kid. I would give him the full me, in all my preciousness. Because if you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best. That’s what the faux-weathered piece of wood in my kitchen says, anyway.
“I’ll have a café au lait with oat milk,” I said, handing him my to-go cup.
He just nodded his head, understanding.
“What else will you have today?” he asked, oozing kindness, empathy, not a single superfluous R.
“I’ll have a Bhakti chai!” I shrieked, loud and proud enough for for the whole café to hear. I was no longer going to be ashamed. I was tired of living in the shadows.
No one really noticed. A lot of them were wearing ear-buds.
“How many shots?” he asked with a smile.
Then before I could even answer he said, “How about two? Feels like a two-shot afternoon.”
Yes, I thought. It does. It does feel like a two-shot afternoon. Give my wife two shots of espresso in this Bhakti chai, my good man. Rock her fucking world.
Then he rang me up, and I swear on everything I hold sacred I am not making this next part up, not embellishing for the sake of the tale. What follows is the legitimate, unvarnished truth. My dude starts punching buttons on the register, then just stops, looks up at me, and says, “You know what? I’m only going to charge you for one drink.”
“Really?” I asked him, lip aquiver.
“Sure,” he said. “Why not? It’s your first time in, right? Give you a reason to come back.”
I held it together just long enough to whisper my sincere gratitude, then collapsed into a puddle of tears on the coffeeshop floor.
“Appreciate you,” he said, then turned to make my drinks.
Appreciate you. Imagine that, you Aussie sack of fucking dogshit. He appreciated me, and I him. For he had saved not only that Tuesday afternoon, he had saved all Tuesday afternoons. For ever and ever more. Or until they switch my kids’ swim lessons to a different day or whatever.
But the point remains, in this highly relatable tale of privileged woe, and the point is this: take back your Tuesday. If some Australian chode is salting your stride, pivot. Don’t just endure it for five months, like I did. Find a place that treats you the way you want, nay deserve, to be treated.
Life is so hard most of the time, when you find yourself a sweet little pocket that allows you an escape, don’t let anyone take that from you. Find a way to make it easy on yourself. Easy like a Tuesday afternoon.
July Shows!
Denverardo! You’re up first! The only headlining show I have anytime soon in town is this one! At the Denver Comedy Underground, a jewel of a venue in a church basement. I got all sorts of new stuff, and am trying to hone this new hour, so come on out on a Thursday and join me! Gonna be a lot of fun.
July 11 - Denver - Denver Comedy Underground - Tix
Then it’s on to sweet Chicago! Man I love Chicago. I try to make it there at least once a year for shows, and I’m pumped to say I’m pulling it off this July! July 19th, to be specific. At the Lincoln Lodge. I’ve played the old Lincoln Lodge, but not the new one, and I hear incredible things. So come on out! And if you have any friends in the area who might be into it, let ‘em know! Chicago! Second City! Cubs! Hot dogs! Wilco! The Bear on FX/Hulu! And now me. And this show. All part of the storied tradition of this titan of a US city.
July 19 - Chicago, IL - Lincoln Lodge - Tix
Then of course, as always, winding down the month at the Grawlix, at the Bug Theater, on July 27th! Ticket link should be up soon (check my website), but we snagged headliner Joe Mande this month! Gonna be a killer show!
The Monthly Clip
God damn, great joke, Adam. Way to go.
Before you go, follow on the socials!
And that’s a wrap for July! Send me any recs for Chicago and hope to see ya at a show!