4 hey Siri, how can I get someone to stop talking?
4
hey Siri, how can I get someone to stop talking?
Ava
‘What a beautiful day!’ a chirpy voice with far too much spirit for seven forty-three on a Wednesday morning says, interrupting my quiet restocking of the drinks fridge.
An unfortunate consequence of working in a coffee shop is that any time a customer walks through the door, I am overcome by a wave of potent rage. How dare they, a customer, approach me, an employee, requesting the service I am paid to provide?
The villain in question this morning is one of the three men who came into the shop late on Friday; the one with the unidentified accent.
‘Morning,’ I reply, trying in vain to summon even an iota of the energy he’s exuding. He looks infinitely more alive than I feel – bright eyes behind his glasses, mustard-yellow shirt, a singular curl dropping so perfectly across his forehead I assume he must’ve styled it to fall that way. ‘What can I get you?’ The fake smile I’ve plastered on my face probably looks more like a grimace, but it doesn’t seem to deter him.
‘Three flat whites to take away, please.’ He’s practically bouncing already. I get the impression his enthusiasm levels constantly hover somewhere around those of a golden retriever. ‘Did you have a good weekend?’
Finn. His name comes to me out of nowhere and it feels like I’ve scratched an itch.
‘It was pretty uneventful. What about you?’ I take this moment to pull three paper cups from a stack next to the coffee machine, while he replies to my question with a story I actually don’t care enough to pay attention to. Customers love using me as a small-talk scratching post and I frankly do not have the energy to reciprocate with anything more than a few well-placed ah, reallys and that sounds funs .
‘—So it makes sense I’m pretty wired already this morning,’ he finishes, intently watching me steam the milk for his drinks. He spots the various snacks on display and analyses them one by one, finally holding up a pack of vanilla wafer biscuits. ‘Have you tried these?’
‘Yeah,’ I reply. ‘But go for the hazelnut. Unless you’re allergic, in which case, uh, don’t, I guess.’
He catches my eye and grins at me like I’ve said something funny, grabbing three of the hazelnut flavour instead.
I’ve learnt from my previous mistake of presenting suggestive steamed-milk-heart lattes to men, so I pour the milk into an innocuous leaf pattern this time. I can feel his eyes on me as I twist my wrist slightly to form the shape.
He smiles at his phone’s facial recognition when he uses Apple Pay again this morning, and it’s still just as unnecessary as it was the first time.
He tentatively reads my name badge. ‘Thanks, uh, Monroe?’
The City Roast higher-ups decided our surnames should be on our name tags instead of our first names, because this makes us cool and trendy. Apparently it’s a great way for people to take us at face value and not judge based on our first name .
But Finn doesn’t need to know all this, so I simply say, ‘Monroe’s my surname. I’m Ava.’
‘Hi Ava Monroe. I’m Finn.’ The corners of his eyes wrinkle even when he’s not smiling and I get the feeling he’s the kind of person who’s about a millisecond away from laughing at any given moment. He sips his flat white and keeps it close to his nose to inhale the smell. ‘I’ve genuinely been dreaming of this. It reminds me of the coffee I used to get when I lived in Australia.’ With a sigh, he adds, ‘I think you’ll be seeing a lot more of me, so sorry about that, I guess.’
He leaves the counter with his drinks tray, humming quietly and holding the door open for another customer he crosses paths with as he exits.
Mateo and I are taking a minute to breathe and rest our vocal cords after hours of non-stop customer servicing when Carl finally remembers we exist, and his voice carries across the shop. ‘If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.’
I can’t look at him for fear of what he might see in my eyes and instead start tidying the mess on the counter. I suggest Mateo goes to the back to ‘tidy the stockroom’, because the expression on his usually-patient face could curdle milk and I think he might be about to hit something.
Then, at two fifteen, like clockwork, a woman approaches the till. Like she does every day, she drops her reusable cup on the counter with a scowl and holds her card up to the reader in anticipation, without saying a word or looking at me at all. I ring up her regular order of a black Americano and start to prepare the drink.
Something about her sends my blood boiling. Maybe it’s the fact she doesn’t say please or thank you. Maybe it’s because she always looks like she’s just smelled something rancid. Or maybe it’s her kitten heels. Whatever the reason, I stew over her behaviour almost every time I see her.
She wordlessly takes her drink and I give a pointed, ‘You’re welcome.’
She shuffles towards the sugar and napkin station, never fully lifting her feet from the ground. Without looking her way, I know she’ll take two sugar packets, head to a table by the window, pour one sugar in, and leave the second packet on the table when she leaves. I know this, because she is a creature of habit, much like most of our customers.
City Roast is where people’s routines converge. Favourite tables, Friday-afternoon treats, early-morning espressos; the tributaries of their daily habits trickle into the delta of our shop. Routines and structure and unbreakable habits where I know what to expect and when to expect it. For years, I’ve relished this consistency, but while I used to wrap the mundanity of my days around myself like a blanket, familiar and warm, I can’t help but notice that the wool’s not as soft as it once was.
I’m on the customer side of the counter organising the snacks when the front door opens. I glance behind me out of instinct and immediately regret it. It’s Finn again and his colleague from that first evening – Julien, the one with the cheekbones. After a busy day, the last thing I want is to handle Mr Chatty, but I reluctantly head back to the till.
‘Hey, Ava Monroe,’ Finn says brightly as he holds the door for his colleague. His voice carries across the shop and other customers lift their heads from their tables to look at him, but he doesn’t pay them any attention. The pair saunters towards me with the kind of insouciant confidence that only comes with being tall, attractive men.
‘I’ve decided this is my new spot,’ Finn says to Julien. They’re finally at the counter, both leaning their hips against it like its sole purpose is to support their weight. Julien quirks one corner of his mouth and looks at me with come-hither eyes. I am, once again, unperturbed.
‘Finn’s been going on and on about this coffee,’ he says in a lazy drawl. ‘He’s looking for a new job, so if you’ve got any openings, I’m pretty sure he’d pay you to hire him.’
‘I haven’t been going on and on. Although,’ Finn stops to think, eyes widening as an idea comes to him, ‘do you and Mateo get free drinks?’
‘We do,’ I reply smoothly. ‘One of the many perks of the job.’
‘What are the others?’ Finn asks, eagerly leaning forward, somehow defying the laws of physics and getting impossibly close to me even with a whole counter between us.
‘Well,’ I say, racking my brain for a polite answer that doesn’t come. ‘I do really like that I don’t work weekends.’
‘The customers aren’t a perk?’ He looks carefully at me, like he’s trying to gauge whether I’ll play along.
Julien joins in too. ‘I bet it’s especially fun when they come in and interrupt your day by asking pointless questions you feel inclined to answer diplomatically rather than truthfully.’
‘Oh, definitely,’ I say with a sharp nod. ‘I also love asking people how their day’s been eighty-seven times in the space of an hour. Small talk is my passion.’
‘Okay.’ Finn raises both hands in surrender, a short, bright chuckle bursting out of him, and my stomach dips at the sound. ‘No small talk. How about big talk instead? What are your goals, Ava? Mine are eternal glory and to learn how to make balloon animals.’
‘Could we get two flat whites please?’ Julien interrupts, earning him an eye-roll from Finn. ‘Before he starts telling you about his greatest fears.’
‘Abandonment and death, in that order.’
Julien puffs up his cheeks and blows the air out abruptly. ‘He does grow on you, I promise. It’s taken me almost twenty years, but I think I’m finally warming to him.’
‘Please, it took you eight at most,’ Finn says. He looks back at me, lowering his voice conspiratorially to add, ‘He acts like he’s too cool, but he forgets I was there the day he opened a limited-edition Hot Wheels set when we were ten and was so excited he cried. Then cried every day that week at school whenever he remembered he had it.’
‘I’m going to sit down so that I don’t have to listen to you torching my reputation any more. And Ava,’ Julien says my name as a question, not quite sure if he remembered it correctly, ‘I wouldn’t dream of telling you what to do, but I vehemently recommend you don’t let him get started on dinosaurs. He genuinely will not shut up.’
He walks away, but Finn is undeterred. ‘Would you consider me a regular?’ he asks.
‘Not yet,’ I respond. By the decisive way he nods, I’m concerned he’s taking that as a challenge.
I focus on listening to the milk aerate, and when the metal of the jug is too hot for me to touch, I start the process of swirling the liquid into latte art. Finn watches closely, just like last time.
‘I’m adding that to my list,’ he says with a dose of finality. He elaborates, unprompted, ‘I have a London bucket list to complete before I leave at the end of the summer, and learning how to make latte art is going on there.’
I finish the first drink and he pulls it towards him to take a photo of it from above, his full lips pursing as he concentrates.
‘When I think of London, I do always think of latte art,’ I say flatly, finishing the second cup.
He glances up from his phone to meet my eyes with a smile. ‘Do you think you could teach me?’ My brain zooms through professional, not-awkward ways to say absolutely the fuck not , but he saves me from answering by continuing, ‘Maybe Julien will come to a class with me.’
After he’s picked up the cups and thanked me, he goes to find his friend, who’s chosen the table next to the grumpy customer from earlier. Unfortunately, Finn reaches the table at the precise moment she stands up, and when she bumps into him, it’s only his fast reflexes that prevent him from spilling both drinks all over her. It was definitely her fault, and I expect her to snap a rude remark or shoot him a withering glare. But to my utter consternation, after a few moments of Finn saying something I can’t hear, she beams at him.