Safari Grandma

I work at coffee shops for the same reasons I smoke—it’s hard to quit, and it’s something to do with my hands. Thing is, once you realize you don’t have to pay for coffee anymore, there’s really no drive to job hunt.

To be clear, I’m not serious. I won’t work at coffee shops forever. But damn, free coffee is so nice and fuck—the under baked, definitely salmonella flavored cookies. I’m not giving those up without intervention.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this one customer, a regular, who we lovingly call “Safari Grandma.” She’s very sweet and she has a cute dog and she always gets a large breve latte. Usually, a cup of hot half n half is unforgivable—you’re asking to shit yourself—but Safari Grandma seems like she can handle it. Safari Grandma seems stronger than the others.

She wears a bucket hat and two, bright white pigtails. She’s cool. 

Working at a busy coffee shop is like, a constant reminder of the person I don’t want to be. People are rude, disrespectful, flippant, CREEPY—but then there’s the Safari Grandmas. See, the number of interactions I have with complete strangers in a day is overwhelming if I think about it for too long. It is also fucking fascinating to see the way people interact with someone they’ll (a lot of the time) never see again, but that they need something from.

People are tired and absent and irritable. They haven’t had coffee whatever whatever. But not always.

I think of all the coffee shops I’ve been to, in cities I’ve visited and weird small towns I’ve stopped in and airports I’ve been stuck in. I want to know what they call their regulars and what they talk about when it’s slow and if any of them cry or write essays or call someone on their break. 

Every single interaction we have is bananas, man. I’m in Nashville because I went from New York to a hospital in Denver, fell in love with Colorado, moved to Boulder to study poetry, published writing on the internet, and fell in love with someone who lives in Nashville after they found me through this writing. 

Our paths cross because of insane as hell, completely random circumstance, and it’s cool to confront interactions with that understanding—even and especially transactional ones. Like this wild fuckin game of odds that spat you both out right there. It’s how I make it through service industry jobs, and it’s  why I ask “how’s it going?” and like, actually wait for an answer. 

Whatever brought Safari grandma to Nashville circa 2023, it must’ve been good. She’s the fuckin coolest. 

I know this isn’t a hot take, or very interesting, but like. Human interaction isn’t ever just transactional. There’s always more to it. 

Something like that. Whatever. Gn.