Terence and the Mocha of the Beast
◊ When we ring up drink orders at the caf�, we're supposed to take down customers' names. I guess it's supposed to be more "friendly" than yelling out an order number or the name of a drink. Whatever. You know how Corporate is. They demand stuff, we obey without question. If all of a sudden Jews and gypsies and queers and artists stop coming back out of the caf� after going in for coffee, remember: we were all under orders.
A woman came in today and I rang up her iced blended caramel mocha as I joked about her cell phone earpiece ("First time I saw someone with one of those, it was a businessman. He was talking really loudly to what looked like nobody and I thought 'Who the hell is the loony in the thousand-dollar suit?'"). I asked for her name.
"Terence," she said.
Now, I thought for sure she was either fucking with me or that the boys'-names-for-girls trend had finally gone too far. I gave her a look and asked her how to spell "Terence."
She spelled it out, then said "It's actually not my name."
"I had a friend who passed away last year, and he never used to give out his name," she said. "So now all of his friends say 'Terence' whenever someone asks us for a name. It's our way of remembering him."
"I like that," I said.
Everyone has their rituals, though not all of them are that deep. For example: at work, when we decorate the clear plastic cups with chocolate syrup, each of us has our own way of doing it and we do it the same way every time. One person does zebra stripes. Another traces long, looping lines around the cup's interior and scores them with a straw.
The swirls that I drizzle on the insides of the cups look an awful lot like "666" before I pour in the coffee.