What I Thought and What I Said

I worked at Starbucks for three and one-fourth days, and I can never undo that.

What I can do, however, is force my family to refer to Starbucks as "Insurance," so as not to mutter its name any more than we have to. Although, if you're like my husband, you won't remember that and have no idea what I'm talking about. 

What's worse is that I'd been actively avoiding Insurance for over a decade because my white hipster privilege allows me to go to my local coffee shop and work in a locally owned gourmet cheese store without realizing that people sometimes need real life.

The call for an interview came right after we decided that we were going to rent an RV with pretend money and travel around the country eating air until Jaime's work permission from the Department of Immigration went through; we just weren't finding jobs that inspired us and included a Googleesque work environment with full benefits and three months vacation.

I kid you not, my eyes welled up, as I agreed to an interview because we need health insurance no matter how much my socialist Spanish husband doesn't understand it and watched our dreams of bathing in rest stop sinks roll behind me like a giant hub cap.

But I feel like this story will be less painful for both of us if I present this in 

WHAT I THOUGHT vs. WHAT I SAID

form. So here goes...

The manager asked for an interview. 
What I thought: Oh my god. I have a master's degree. Why the hell do you think I want this job even though I applied for it!?
What I said: Yes, absolutely that works for me.

The manager asked why I think I would make a great Insurance employee.
What I thought: I wouldn't. I am your worst nightmare. You will regret this.
What I said: I'm great with people, and I would represent Insurance proudly.

The manager called to offer me the job.
What I thought: You're freaking joking. You couldn't see through that? This is the worst day of my life.
What I said: Oh my gosh! Thank you so much. I'm excited to start. 

A customer orders two white chocolate mochas whole milk with two extra pumps of syrup and FIVE packets of sugar stirred into the drink.  
What I thought: Oh, I get it. You want to die. You want to kill yourself, and I am going to help you do it. I watched a documentary, so I know about this.
What I said: Okay! Can I get your name? Your total is a bajillion dollars.

A drive-through customer orders a eioehtetnvrnglakrhaiohgirgrnlgakraghrkahgroiaetaigaigbiarhgklarglargh.
What I thought: I can't do this. I can't do this any more. I hate everything. I'm working a drive-though, and the worst part about it is that it's too hard. At least I'm not wearing a visor.
What I said: I'm sorry. Could you repeat that? It's my first day, and I'm having a hard time locating the buttons.

The drive through customers get angry with me because I ask them to repeat their order.
What I thought: I will come through this window. I will come through this window so fast. I will spit my hang nail into your drink. I will fling this boiling hot fake coffee on your face.
What I said: I'm so sorry about your wait. Enjoy it!

My manager says, "Don't say frap. Frap is the Insurance 'F' word. Don't say it," after I repeated a customer's "frap" order.
What I thought: You wanna know what my F word is? It's fuckstarbucks; that's what it is.
What I said: Really? Okay.

An incredibly rare customer orders a black coffee.
What I thought: Slow clap.
What I said: That's what I drink. 

A man lectures my co-worker on the evils of corporations, and tells her that Insurance doesn't pay her enough to put her above the poverty line. She makes fun of him.
What I thought: He's right. I'm leaving with this guy, and we're burning this place to the ground.
What I said: Nothing because she wasn't talking to me.

A group of teenage girls order the most ridiculous, diabetes inducing, prissified drinks possible, and I stumble through finding all their custom shit on the stupid screen.
What I thought: This is not coffee! You are NOT drinking coffee, but you are pretending to drink coffee, and that makes you horrible.
What I said: What's your name? That will be a bajillion dollars. 

I could go on and on, but I think you get the gist.

Have you ever felt too good for something, as you're realizing you're not capable of doing it? Guys, working at Insurance is hard. I have been the only adult in a room with 22 kindergartners in paint smocks, and that does not even begin to come close to the stress level I felt taking orders for caramel drizzle on white noise from a never ending line of cars.

I was shown how to make macchiatos, lattes, cappuccinos and cinnamon something somethings. I was shown twice. Can I make any of those things? No.

It made me feel awful. I felt fake, stupid and defeated. And how could I have abandoned my principles so easily? I mean, would I set foot in Hobby Lobby? God's name in vain no.  

But I also felt in awe of the women (only women worked there even though the regular men call them "his girls") who not only can make those complicated glorified cups of liquid death but genuinely smile while doing so. They're not stupid and fake. They're really good at the job that they enjoy.

So, the only thing I learned while there is that I'm absolutely not too good to work at Insurance. 

If you go to "Insurance", and that's okay if you do even though you'll never catch me dead in another one, please tip them well. That job suuuuuuucks, and they probably hate you.

I usually can't with this, but this is exactly it.

How Sting Ruined My Wedding

I didn't want to get married. Jaime didn't want to get married, either. And it's not that we didn't want to marry each other, we just didn't want to marry anyone. We're alternative like that.

But even though marriage is a separate thing from love, to continue loving each other in the same place (which we both did want), we had to prove it to government bureaucracy workers whom we do not know and be married.

So, here's the story of two people who whined their way into a happy marriage despite themselves.

Some people have asked how he proposed. Good one guys.

I technically proposed to Jaime in the parking lot of Wal-Mart when we were visiting my family in July. We were arguing about my creative visa status in Spain and the danger that put our relationship into. At one point, I yelled, "Well, let's just get freaking married then!" And he said, "Okay."

Then, we ordered our get married stuff, drove through and picked it up at the window. It was that easy! I'm kidding!

After months of dealing with the fresh hell called immigration, we finally got to ask our families how soon they could get to New York.

Why did we get married in New York?

1. It is much easier and cheaper for his parents and brother to get to NYC than St. Joseph, MO.

2. Missouri is not rainbow colored yet, and I have a big fucking problem with that.

3. I love that city so much, and when my boyfriend posted "Full lap run at Central Park. 2 raccoons (first time I've ever seen them), fireflies, drum and bass without the bass with a bagpipe, super parents running and carrying their kids in a pram, cool people on their pimped bikes listening to rap, beautiful people, hip hop dancers, and yes, the rest of the views to Manhattan and the park. Want it to be my new casa," on Facebook, I knew that I wanted to make him my husband there because he doesn't usually write that kind of sap.

4. I didn't want to plan anything, and Jaime literally didn't know what a wedding was...conveniently.

Why did we only ask immediate family?

1. Our irresponsible lifestyles mean that our family and friends are littered all over the world, and if we couldn't have all of our most importants there, we would only have our very most importants.

2. We can't afford to feed that many people.

So, on 1.23, a date that is cool in the United States and significantly less cool (23.1) in Europe, I woke up thinking, "Shit. This is supposed to be the best day of my life, but there's no way it will be." It was also on this date that my mother, sister, best friend and I figured out that we can't do hair...or makeup. We did the best we could and four hours after everyone else was ready, I put on a green dress before my mom helped me into the most bridey thing I could muster, a lovely, perfect tulle skirt she had made for me.

Our entourage burst out of the hotel clipping along while taking photos because our goal was to piss off every native New Yorker we passed, as we tried to beat the lunchtime rush at the marriage bureau.

I love the marriage bureau because everyone there is either picking up their marriage license or attending a wedding. You take your number, sit on one of the green sofas along the long hall and wait with the stockbrokers, the coke heads, the pregnants, the Asians, the young ones, the old ones, the weirdos and the perfectly normals who all found someone stupid enough to marry them.

Our number, C719, was quickly called, and I made sure that my new last name wasn't "NO CHANGE" on our marriage certificate because I had to specify earlier that my name wouldn't be changing. We signed and asked my sister and his mother to sign as witnesses. My sister knew this would be her job and had been referring to herself as "witness-of-honour" I assume in opposition to my robbing her of her birth rite.

Before we could sit down again, we were called to the Ugly Room (thankfully we weren't in the Uglier Room) for our fifteen minutes of fame, which was really only about two minutes.

We were married by an Angel...

whose last name was Lopez, as the people we love and who love us the most stood in spots too awkward for a decent picture. 

Everyone was starving, so we stopped at a pizzeria that hand to Jesus had the best pizza in the world on the border between Chinatown and Little Italy before taking the subway to Central Park.

It was freezing cold, but I was not about to let my ten-year-old coat ruin my wedding photographs. Everyone else figured their bulky coats were good enough, so thanks for that, guys. We didn't stay long because we cared more about actual warmth than the warmth of memories, however, my mom insisted we stop by Strawberry Fields before going back to the hotel, and I'm so glad we did. 

We came up on the John Lennon memorial after it had been covered in flowers by what Jaime calls, as you know, beggars. It was beautiful, but having come from Barcelona, we were reluctant to trust anything that was "free," while one of the men thrust a yellow rose at me. I finally relented, and he didn't ask me for money. Instead, he asked if he could give us some marriage advice.

"Never, ever let anyone or anything come between the two of you because what you have is very special," is how I'm choosing to paraphrase his nonsense. It was one of those rare, urban, human connection moments I love so much, and no one took a picture of it. Damn it.

After changing our clothes, we all went to dinner in Times Square. As we sat around the table, Jaime and I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed and flabbergasted that our families were in the same place at the same time while I tried really hard not to think about how few times that would happen again. It was awesome.

Later, after we had been interrupted for the fourth time on the only night we would get to sleep in a room alone while away for our wedding, we agreed that it was somehow impossibly one if not the best day of our lives. That's neat.

But the point of this post is to explain how Sting ruined my wedding. Okay, so my mother is in love with Sting for obvious reasons. My sister's got it pretty bad, too, while I can bandwagon myself on the Sting train if the time is appropriate.

The closing night of his Broadway show The Last Ship was the 24th, the day after my wedding, so we absolutely had to go, right? Right. We're there, and the show is great, and he gives this heartfelt adieu at the end, and all I can think about is my mom meeting Sting because that would just be everything to her. We're still on the high of our great wedding day, so we are really channelling all the powers of The Police and Roxanne and that guy who plays the udu on Desert Rose as we wait outside the stage door. I'd even written to The Last Ship beforehand asking if there was any possibility of her meeting him...they hadn't said no, but they hadn't said yes...

He comes out. It's Sting. It's definitely him, and my tiny, little momma is being pushed roughly to the front by us, but then he makes a beeline for his car, breezing past us, really, really close to us and is driven away.

What the hell, Sting!? Screw you, man. 

My mom and sister have forgiven you, were never even that mad at you, but I never will, and I still am.

I can't wait for Sting to read this.