Overheard conversation out the back

Man One : "So what are you going to get your girlfriend for Christmas?"

Man Two : "Some fluffy pink slippers and a dildo."

our special place

At our cafe we have a box full of pencils but no sharpener. We use the pencils till they get blunt, then put them back with all the others.

Now we just have a box full of blunt pencils.

skinny fat fat

Today I actually used skinny milk to make skinny lattes, instead of using fat milk for everything and just pretending.

I must be in love.

SEX

While we're making your lattes we're not standing behind the coffee machine talking about how unfortunate it is that skinny milk doesn't froth well. No. We're talking about sex. From beginning to end.

Positions. Cocks. Blow jobs. Contraception. Threesomes. Anal. How he could go down on you better. Sex with strangers. Sex with flatmates. Sex with enemies. Sex on cocaine. And most importantly - orgasms.

Everything is open to discussion and nothing is sacred. We make 16 year old boys look like virginal nuns. We are whores and we are proud.

But all of you general public, you're the ones who should be ashamed. The only reason our cafe is so busy is because you all come in and sit as close as you can to the coffee machine to inconspicuously eavesdrop on our lascivious conversations. You've got no interest in how creamy your latte is, or the economics section of The Age that's in front of you. All you want to know is did she or didn't she sleep with her flatmate again and have they been caught out by the girlfriend next door.

The typical early start.

Today I got to work at 7am and spent the first 10 minutes ignoring customers while picking dried up bird shit out of Georgia's hair.

Life's hard when you're just so rock and roll.

overheard conversation on table 101

"So how did you hurt your hip?"

"I was in a wheelie bin and it fell down a flight of stairs."

Music history.

We're listening to Beach House while making lattes.

Ravi: "Is this Kate Bush?"

Two day later. We're still making lattes. Postal Service is playing.

Ravi: "Is this Rod Stewart?"

Annabel: "No Ravi. This is another band."

In Ravi's universe, music consists of only two bands, in the same way that in Ravi's concept of history Hitler and the Jews were good mates who would play ping-pong while eating big fat slices of lemon tart.

Drunk Old Man.

This morning an old man who was already slightly inebriated, came in, sat on Table 5 and requested 'morning tea', which by his definition was a glass of wine, a sandwich, another glass of wine, and a coffee.

I've never really known what morning tea is, but I don't think it's supposed to be that.

Anyway, it made me think about what I'll be like when I get old. And I decided that all I want to be is an alcoholic who ploughs through a pouch of dirty old Drum tobacco in 24 hours and who spits on the pavement and swears at passers by. Such big aspirations for such a little waitress.

At my work...

At my work, my boss is crazy and spends hours decorating cakes with chocolate swirls and glitter and toy boats.

At my work we write down orders on a whiteboard. We also use the board to draw pictures of our goals and ambitions.

This is a picture of Dad teaching guitar Eric Clapton style.

Sometimes we just aim too high.

"I don't know why, but I really feel like mushrooms today."

Some people are so profound. I hope that I can do them justice in this blog.

The Wheezer.

A regular customer of ours wheezes so hard that you would think she's just run a marathon. But no - she's just walked the whole 5 metres from her car to our cafe where she sits on Table 2 and drinks and eats whatever she can manage to order between deep emphysema-inspired inhalations. Today I couldn't help but think that the real motto for our cafe should be

Babka - Promoting diabetes nationally.

affectionate vacuous packing ... tender or superfluous?

One of my best friends just finished up working at the cafe and has moved to Cambodia. My boss clearly misses her because she's planning on posting her a vacuum-packed chocolate cake. Of course that's the only natural way of displaying affection - by sending vacuum-sealed baked goods across the ocean.

When the lemon tart meets the Holocaust

We were in the midst of discussing all things German - Berlin, krautrock, the divide of the nation into East and West, those khaki-coloured military jackets with the German flag on the arm, and of course, the Holocaust. Ravi, the maker of cakes and tarts and the bearer of all stupid comments, was listening in on our conversation. We only realised this when we heard his whiny voice pitch in, "So, what do you mean by the Holocaust?"

We reiterated. He still didn't understand. We looked at him, and then at each other, and then at him again.

Yes my friends, there are people who are completely ignorant of such quintessential historical world events and who are happy to go about living their lives making lemon tarts by the dozen without passing a thought for the genocide of six million people.

I don't know how I feel about this.

Mystified. Stupefied. Intrigued. Embarrassed.

Where to from here? I am currently browsing Ebay for a suitable educational DVD.

My boss talking about her dog's balls

"You know what I did with Flea's nuts after we got them cut off? I dropped them in a jar of formalin and put them on top of the fridge."

Some workplace moments are truly precious.

The shut down.

Today there was a giggling group of girls on Table 7. They were loud and rude and one of them clicked her fingers at me to get my attention and I really wanted to kick her in the cunt.

Be a good waitress. Be a good waitress. Be a good waitress.

I refrained.

Then my boss came downstairs and asked where all the racket was coming from. I rolled my eyes and pointed to the source of it all. She walked straight up to their table and told them to cram it and to have more respect for those around them. I felt something very much akin to the pride you would feel if you sprung your mother working for a charitable organisation on the sly.

Warhol lips.

Today your family came in to the cafe and sat themselves down on table 5. Your mother was wearing red lipstick that she'd been saving since the German invasion of Poland and she was even kind enough to leave you a memento on a serviette of the pout that she's still sporting.

Luckily none of us have any standards of hygiene or dignity so we just man handled that serviette until we created the appropriate Andy Warhol-esk art-form. It's so beautiful.

Valium

Stoner-eyed waitress: "Having a valium before work is amazing."

Jealous-eyed waitress: "Yeah."

conversations between two waitresses

"So I sold the last loaf of casalinga to this man today and from the corner of my eye I could see a woman in the queue watching what I was doing. When I served her next and she asked me 'Have you got any more loaves of casalinga?' and I answered 'No' in the most deadpan way I could. I felt so satisfied when I could see how disappointed she was."

"Girlfriend. That's the best story I've heard all day."

chocolate sauce.

Today we used the chocolate sauce to write obscenities on the bench.

sour dough

"Is the sourdough baguette made from sourdough?"

Some days all I want is a BB gun.

Crotch - Face

Our cafe is so small that sometimes you have to put your crotch in people's faces when you're weasling past them to clear a nearby table.

Photo not available.

Carnal

The word 'carnal' got said a lot today. It all started when Claire showed us a poem that a boy had written for her. I'm not allowed to put the poem in the blog, because it's a bit too X-rated, but all you really need to know is that the last word was 'carnal'. Boys are so silly. If a boy wrote me a poem with that word in it I think I would projectile vomit over him and then go into a mild coma as a coping mechanism.

Weird little man.

Today the weird little man came into our cafe. He sat on Table 10 drinking his flat white in his weird little way. He looks something like this:
As you can see, he has short man syndrome and his head is too big for his body and he is sexually frustrated. His eyes don't look anything like that though. They're beady and squirmy looking.

The boy.

I have recently been dating a boy who works in a shop next door to our cafe.

He comes in all the time and this concerns me ... Is he coming in because he wants to see me, or because he wants free baked goods?

Neuroses.

Today I realised that every single person who works at our cafe is neurotic as fuck. Every single one of us. First it made me laugh. Then it made me cry. Then I laughed again as I watched Frewenee point a dirty spatula in a fit of rage at one of the chefs for not stacking the dirty utensils correctly.

Me : "Don't you think this is funny Chrystle?? I mean, our lives here are like one epic Seinfeld episode."

Pregnant Chrystle (while arranging trays of glasses so they are at right angles to each other) : "I can't believe it's taken you this long to notice."

Tart.

And then Shirley put her hand through the lemon tart.

It was a good day.

Ross' pumpkins

Some days I really like my workplace.

Obituaries Man

The man who steals the 'Obituaries' section on the newspaper came in today.

When he came up to pay he caught me sneaking a peak at the folded up section of newspaper under his arm.

"I'm taking the 'Obituaries' section of your paper."

"How morbid of you."

We shared an amazing smile for half a second. I really wanted to read that today.

Those pregnant ladies

Two pregnant women at Table 7.

They're drinking chai and eating a slice of cake, sitting opposite each other to leave more room for their ridiculously protruding bellies. They look so pregnant right now that I have to peel my eyes away because I'm worried I'll be up the duff just by looking at them.

As I pass by the table I overhear one of them saying, "Goddam it Pam, it's just arse-fuckery."

Tea for Two

The other day two quaint women came into the cafe for a cup of tea. They asked all kinds of questions about the tea that we had -- their flavour, strength, origin, blah, blah. I made up some answers while wondering how it was possible that people can end up becoming such wankers over a pile of dried up tea leaves. They seemed satisfied with what I said though and chose a pot of Fancy Oh la la Tea for two.

It was the end of the day so they were the only ones in the cafe and they just sat there talking about beige things for the best part of an hour while we pottered around in our self-important waitress way. I would write down some of the conversation but it was so vacuous it went in one ear and out the other.

Finally they came up to the counter to pay.

"That'll be $9.80 thanks."

* rustle rustle coinage rustle*

"Thanks a lot, it was lovely."

"Bye."

A normal exchange. But later when I was clearing their table I realised that the cups were still half-filled with water. As in water, rather than tea. I flipped open the lid of the teapot and realised that we'd forgotten to put the tea leaves in. These two ladies had been sitting there for an hour drinking hot water and hadn't said a thing.

Were they too polite to complain? Or had they thought that they were actually drinking tea, despite all their wanky comments and tea-snob remarks??

People are so strange.

Express posting crusties

Today my boss posted some croissants to her friends inter-state. She put them in an express post bag and said they'd get there the next day. If only I had a photo of that express post bag stuffed full with croissants. She told me if I cared about our products more than maybe I would consider posting some baked-goods to friends as well. Maybe.

Today I also over-stocked the oranges. We're living in exciting times.

Corn Crackers

"Yeah part of my extended family were in a cult. They lived in Brisbane at the time and it was all really weird. But then they ended up getting out of it and since then they've become millionaires by inventing corn crackers."

The Second Till

"Chrystle, I've turned the second till off for you."

"That's a nice story Nomes."

Introducing the Weasel

So my original reason for starting this blog was to have a space to keep track of all the awe-inspiring (and particularly the abhorrently mundane) conversations that I overhear at the cafe I work at. The number of times I've said "Now that's a story for the blog" is ridiculous and it only seems fair to be true to at least part of the b.s. that comes out of my mouth.

Having said that, I'm not great at sticking to my intended plans so this blog will probably just end up being one of those self-indulgent "check out my latest arty photos and listen to this band that I'm currently obsessing over" type of blogs that seem to consume the lives of all the Gen Y's in the inner-city of Melbourne. I've avoided using Facebook and Twitter for so long, but now that I've fallen for the allure of the pop culture spin on autobiographies I'm very afraid. It's a slippery slope. Before you know it I'll be parading around in skinny jeans and baggy t-shirts and my fringe will be so long I won't be able to see anything except for the fine print of the copy of 'The Catcher in the Rye' that I'm holding in front of my nose, hoping that someone will see me with it and we'll strike up a conversation about the claim to fame of adolescent rebellion.

Yes. Mummy and Daddy are proud of all you hipsters. I hope your honours year of Arts at Melbourne Uni is fruitful as punch.

I'm really not always this cynical. Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that I re-watched the entire first season of Daria last week. Pretty stoned for most of it, but the message must have still weaselled its way in there somehow.

Anyway next time I visit I promise to have some good stories of over-heard conversations. If not I'll make-up something and try to make it sound realistic.