The self-serve beverage station is one of my favorite food inventions of the modern era. I choose my restaurants based on the availability of endless cups of coffee without having to bug the staff for a warm-up. Some places will plop an insulated thermos of it on the table along with what they guess might be the appropriate number of creamers. That works for me too, but I love places with giant canisters of multiple flavor options, which allows me to mix and match the potency – half decaf, half flavored, dark roast or only decaf — whatever the correct combination of caffeination is for me at that particular time of day.
It’s not just a frugal thing, although I do love that the price is usually cheaper than a fancy coffee shop and the refills are unlimited during my visit. It’s also the joy of always having nice, hot coffee to sip while you talk with a friend or read a book or catch up on some things that need to get done because you can get up as often as you want to top off your cup.
As much as I love my offices at home and at work, there’s something about sitting at a slightly too small two-seater table in a noisy restaurant surrounded by people eating lunch and discussing the issues of the day that really gets me motivated to get my work done. Sure, a few snippets of the conversations around me might waft into my ears and tempt me to secretly eavesdrop for a few minutes, but after a sip or two of coffee, I get back to whatever I’m doing.
I have a drink club membership at one of the local restaurants and that may mean I’ll have to up my teeth-whitening game because now I can stop by every two hours and get a free beverage for one low price. It also means that I’m getting to know the staff pretty well, at least by sight, because I pop in there a couple of times a day for a drink.
This week as I was sitting there, one of the staff stopped by and said hello and explained that it was employee appreciation week and they were playing a game where they had to get to know the customers. She apologized for interrupting me and asked if I would mind answering a few questions for her. It looked a little like a bingo board where you had to find someone who was from another state, someone who lived in Arizona all their life, someone who was traveling for work, someone who thought cats were better than dogs, questions like that. I wasn’t being too helpful filling her bingo square but we started talking anyway and she asked me what I did for a living. I told her and she shared that one of her younger brothers had been on hospice when he was ten. That stopped me in my tracks.
As we talked, I learned that her mother adopts and cares for special-needs children, kids with physical and emotional challenges that most of us couldn’t imagine. She took out her phone and shared photos of her brother whose life had been changed when he was shaken as a baby. She told me a few wonderful stories about him and how much joy he brought to the family during his short life with his smile, even though he couldn’t speak, and how hard it was to lose him. She showed me pictures of the other kids they have cared for and told me a little about how they ended up as part of her family.
And then, because she was still on the clock at work, she said goodbye and I was left thinking about how a five-minute conversation can change not only what you know about the people you see around you each day but how you feel about them. She is no longer just a friendly face I enjoy saying hello to as I top off my coffee and dig into my to-do list. I now know she is also a woman who has lived a life much bigger and harder and more beautiful than I could even imagine by opening her heart up to caring for people who depend on her and her family in such an intense way.
Which left me thinking, what would we learn about each other if we could all take just five minutes to get to know each other a little better, beyond any political or other labels that we attach to each other? We all have such complicated and interesting lives. Sometimes it just takes a cup of coffee to find that out.