I had two jobs for a while. One was working late nights at an adult bookstore- it was so awesome! For a while, I took a second job at a corporate coffeehouse to make ends meet.
It was winter and I took public transit then, so I would wait for the bus at like 4 AM on about 4 hours of sleep to get to work. My main memory of the winter I worked there was being freezing and exhausted just, like, all the time, and trying to catch a few minutes of sleep on the bus during my commute. I think being sleep-deprived thins your blood or something, because when I don’t sleep enough I always feel colder. No matter how many layers I wore, I just couldn’t get warm that winter.
The customers were snobby, rude, stressed out professional types. The place kept the staff numbers to the bare minimum at all times to cut costs, and there were lines of customers constantly backed out the door. We ran around like scared rabbits trying to keep up. Customers having meltdowns were, like, an hourly occurrence.
The manager used to come over to me and use his fingers to turn up the corners of his mouth, and tell me to “turn that frown upside down!” One day when it was slow he had us use toothbrushes to clean the grout between the floor tiles. The cleaning chemical had fumes that made everyone dizzy, even though we had gloves and safety masks. It was just AAAAARGH. One day my alarm kept going off, and I was like too exhausted to even hit the snooze button. It was just like, “fuck it,” and I rolled over and slept all the way through my shift. It was GLORIOUS. I never went back.
I’ve worked in other coffee places before, and loved it! This one was just a corporate hellhole.