As in, on top of my au-pair job.
All I did was find one of the coolest coffee shop I ever set my foot in, as in world wide, and get a coffee, and then ask if I please could work there, please. Actually I also sent a English and Non Grammatical Japanese cover letter of a whole five lines consisting of telling them I love their plants and the movie Coffee and Cigarettes. After two visits as a customer, I was in!
And even though my left wrist it painful as 'd'uck from doing so much washing up: I love it!!!
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| Natural Cafeina Staff |
Yes, I am the tallest one (as would also seem to suggest any pair of trousers I try here, as they all end up being the right size at the hip but somehow my legs are just 30% longer than the average japanese leg and my ankles and feet burst on the other side -duh - like having to order shoes specially wasn't humiliating enough).
My first coffee shop job was seven years ago and to say the least, it was not very nice. It was my very first job ever, it was off the books with absolutely no protection if I hurt myself, and to say it was underpaid would be a gigantic euphemism. It was in a basement with no natural light, underneath a mall hastily built in the 80s capable of making anybody insane and suicidal within ten minutes (ok maybe not, but it was spooky as).
I was paid less than all the other girls, for the simple reason that I was so naive and wanted to do well and scared shitless that I was the easiest target ever for the complete asshole that happenned to be the boss, so he decided he'd pay me two pound less an hour just to see if I'd find out. My good friend was working there too on different days, and one day I found out. After biting my nails for two weeks wandering what to do I went to see him, probably looking like a mouse taken out of her hole, and asked how come I was paid less. His answer was, and I am quoting here, literally ''you don't talk to me about money - if there's something to talk about moneywise, I come to you, not you to me''. My reaction now would be very different from what it was then, which was to shut up.
After that he took one hour off my salary that day, I guess as a punishment for asking the question. Years later I worked at a bar and a girl started one evening, somehow before it got busy we talked and she told me she had just left a job in a coffee shop because the boss kept (quoting again) 'touching her ass' and she threatened to tell his wife, and was underpaid, and surpriiiiise, it was the same place. At least I never got any of THAT treatment.
Anyways, Cafeina is about similar to the shithole mentionned above (I'm sorry for the swearwords but it feels good) as... actually I can't even find a metaphor. It's nothing like it.
To start with the bosses are nice. As in, they are just nice, I think. Friendly and letting you know openly and without an ounce of anger or blame when you don't do something or do it in a way they'd rather you did not.
Why does it suprise me? Maybe I was a bit scarred by my experience.
And they call me Fan-chan (which is used for kids or between friends), they did from day one, and it feels lovely.
Keitaro-san makes pictures in the coffee foam and has magazines about latte-art (as in images drawn in the coffee and milk foam), he's a bit like the geeks you find in apple shops, but with coffee instead. I get lunch for free (and they make it vegan for me and it's really, really really delicious and fresh and full of flavour and yummy), the customers are nice and keep wanting to take pictures of the staff and go 'WOUAAAAAA FURANSUJINNNN?!', nobody shouts at me, every single coffee is tasted before it goes onto a table (that's more coffee I drink in a day that I ever did in a week), I get little shot glasses of smoothie and vegan chocolate chip from the hot chocolate making slipped into my hand without even asking for it. Every single drink and plate they make is made with such attention to details and taste that it blows my mind - after a week I'd be slacking off, they have been doing it for seven years...
Ok you get the idea, I like it.
Hope I still will next week end!
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