The Latte Manifesto

Many years ago, one of the more entertaining aspects of my job involved sorting email submitted by visitors to a company’s website. Here’s a gem that starts out as a request for project financing, but quickly becomes the best resume, ever:

The project I am working on would establish a one square kilometer “Tequila Park” in Tequila, Jalisco, Mexico that would process as many as two thousand Guest Worker applicants per day, five days per week.

I probably know more about Guest Worker programs than everyone in Washington put together…as I myself, over fifteen years, have been one…as a merchant seaman in four merchant navies, a film crewman in Australia, a bush ranger in old Rhodesia, where I supervised 20 African riflemen & another dozen support staff…as a tally clerk in Cape Town, as a newspaper editor & piano mover in Switzerland, warehouseman in Berlin, longshoreman in Hamburg, teacher of English & piano mover in Sweden (I moved ABBA’s pianos) a front-loader driver in London & oil refinery worker in Antwep. I would be happy to send more details if [your company] would be interested in handling the direct deposit accounts of some millions of Guest Workers in the US. Hoping to hear from you, I am, Yours sincerely, ————- ps. If you Google “The Shakespeare-Cervantes Code” by Yours truly, you may find two, Five Star reviews.

SO. After months of visualization I decided that today will be the day I put on something other than pajamas. I will go run an errand. Outside. Around people. I grabbed a large bulletin board and bag of books that needed to go live in Portland. I tromped off to the Mailboxes Etc. across the street. Which apparently no longer exists. But I was all excited about Being! Outside! (it’s gorgeous out again) and I gamely decided to hike me, my ass, a 2×3 foot chunk of particleboard and 25 lbs. of oversized reading material to the UPS Store. You may be wondering why I would walk all the way the UPS Store when, on the way, I passed several other suitable shipping outlets. Let me tell you. This particular UPS Store has a unusual and quite wonderful hiring procedure. The job application consists of only one question: Are you a 20-year-old male uberhottie with bedroom eyes, a certain Goth/Glam sensibility, snarky sense of humor, and insatiable desire to flirt with dorky, married female customers in their late 30’s? Answer: Yes. You’re HIRED! However, there is the trek there and back, through clouds of cig smoke and dodging trails of my god I hope it’s not human poop and Berkeley High brats and street kids dealing drugs and crazy, sad, crazy homeless people and the obligatory crappy street performers. Ugh. I also stopped at Planet Smoothie for a True Blueberry with a Mood Boost (apparently has yet to take effect). Delicious. Insanely. Leaving the house = good. But. It took two people 10 minutes to get their trip together enough to spend the 30 seconds required to actually MAKE the smoothie, because the other 9 minutes and 30 seconds were spent discussing what to do about being out of peanut butter. (Answer: Pretend that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are, and always have been, identical to peanut butter.) It went something like this:

Smoothie Moron #1: (takes Other Customer’s order and begins to assemble ingredients) Smoothie Moron #2: (takes my order and begins to assemble ingredients) Smoothie Morons #1 and #2: (engage in 7 minutes of barely audible conversation about ingredients for Other Customer’s smoothie.) Smoothie Moron #1: (hauls out a giant bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups) Smoothie Moron #2: (stands there holding blender full of my not-yet-smoothified items) Other Customer: Oh, I don’t want Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in my smoothie. Don’t you have peanut butter? Smoothie Moron #1: These are exactly the same as peanut butter. Smoothie Moron #2: (totally incapacitated by this rapture-inducing debate) Other Customer: No, I don’t want those. If you don’t have peanut butter I’ll just order something else. It’s no problem. Smoothie Moron #1: These are what we always put in that smoothie. Smoothie Moron #2: (immobilized) Other Customer: I’ll just order something else. Smoothie Moron #1: These taste exactly the same as peanut butter. Other Customer: No, that’s OK. I’ll just order something else. Smoothie Moron #2: (slips into coma) Smoothie Moron #1: Ok, what would you like instead? Other Customer I’ll have the Chocolate Peanut Butter smoothie instead. Me: (brain melts)

OK, at this point in my trip, the leaving the house question is a wash. UPS Store = 1 point for; travel to/from the UPS Store = 1 point against. Planet Smoothie product = 1 point for; Planet Smoothie employees = 1 point against. And then. A little backstory on the tie breaking event. I am among the many fans of Overheard in New York. Over the weekend, my friend Eve and I decided that if a similar site existed for Berkeley, every overheard conversation would be about weed. “You could put your weed in that!” “Hey, where’d you get the weed?” “Where ya going? Oh, to get some weed.” We found this notion hilarious. And so, I’m now walking back toward home, sucking down the life-affirmingly good smoothie, being asked “Spare some change?” every five seconds, and I pass a group of exceptionally grimy looking white-with-dreadlocks pseudo-homeless kids slouched against the wall of a bookstore. Without missing a beat, one of the kids looks me right in the eye and says: “Spare a bowl?” I leave it to you, gentle reader, to decide which side scored the final point.

We are searching for manicure scissors at Long’s. After a few minutes B. announces that he’s going to wait by the checkstand. As we part ways, I pass a woman in the hair dye aisle. She doesn’t look up, we don’t make eye contact or acknowledge each other in any way. The following exchange ensues:

B: Hurry up. Me (smartass): I will NOT hurry up. Hair dye: You take your time, girl. Me: You know it. Hair dye: Men should always be kept waiting. Me: That’s right. Me: (took my time)

When you’re in Palm Springs having brunch at Manhattan in the Desert, there are some things you can safely assume. Such as the sexual orientation of a bunch of men in uniform: tight tank top, camo shorts, huge muscles, deep tan, impeccable manscaping. It’s also safe to assume that sighting this Uniformed posse was not even remotely remarkable. We were all just ogling the oversized dessert display; I was also probably thinking wistfully about not having a gay boyfriend and wondering who among my straight friends would be a halfway decent date to the Justin Timberlake concert. I didn’t realize we were in a hilarious movie until a spectacularly tall and wide member of the aforementioned crew gasped, pointed at an enormous pastry, and exclaimed: “HEY LOOK, A GIANT CREAM PUFF!” Hilarity ensued.