162 - When your coworkers shift all their duties on to you

I've been bartending for over a week now, and I've been doing exceptionally well at it. I come in every morning, pour myself a glass of orange juice, and for the following twelve hours, I do my job as if I love it, because I truly do.

I can see the same passion and work ethic in the eyes and behavior of the man that hired me. He owns four restaurants, and in order to fully respect my Boss, I must adopt his internal devotion to providing customers with high-quality service.

The thing is, though, I can't say the same about some of my coworkers, especially this one guy, who I will give the alias, Gaston, for now.

As people in the food and drink industry, us waiters, waitresses and barmen, all have our preferences as to who we want to serve. My Boss likes to serve the big tables, keeping track of what twelve different people are eating and drinking at the same time, while I like to cater specially to the customers who seem to be a little wealthier. My logic is that my extra bit of effort put into serving these diners will generate more tips, and therefore more profit for the business, and more wages for the entire staff, including me, of course.

Now, Gaston is an assistant manager. Gaston enjoys what he does, and is good at what he does -but that's only if he's focused enough. What I mean is, he likes to talk to the ladies.

It ticks me off. Because he then gets too distracted with his lady-friends to actually do his job. He tells me to clean this, pour this into that, hand this over to that person over there, while he gets to entertain beautiful women sitting at the bar.

He shouldn't even be behind the bar. And I hate how every evening, he orders me to clean the beer taps, and the coffee machine. They're really annoying to clean, to tell you the truth. So shouldn't we take turns cleaning it, as it's such an undesirable job?

I guess not. Just because he's my superior, wearing the black shirt that demonstrates so, then I, wearing the white shirt that signifies my inferiority, must always perform these difficult and tedious duties.

158 - The cup sizes in coffeehouses

Say I wanted a large cappuccino to go.

The barista will then ask me, "Do you mean a venti?"

No, I mean a large, because venti is Italian for 'twenty'. Tall is a synonym of large, and grande is Spanish for large. It's actually quite amusing, because, in fact, venti is the only one that doesn't mean large, and it's the only one in Italian.

And when I say I want large, I am speaking in American English, implying that I want the biggest of all the cups, the cups available being small, medium and large.

I find it quite ridiculous that if I wanted the smallest cup, I would have to request a tall.

To them, tall means small.

I seriously, don't get it. So, to you, your smalls are talls? What?

You call smalls, 'talls'?

Seriously, why don't you just call your small, 'small', afterall, from what I can recall, small does not mean tall, small means small, 'cause tall is taller than a small, and small is smaller than a tall.

Is this some sort of joke? Is this an attempt to make us feel like we're getting a lot of coffee for the same price? To make us feel like we have tall cups, and grande amounts of coffee in our cups? Is this Starbucks trying to give us the sense of "we can be like sophisticated Italian coffee consumers, 'cause we've got venti-ounce cups."

It probably is a marketing ploy. But, dude, it doesn't make any sense.

I refuse to play this game with the coffeehouse people. I want 'the big one' and that's final.

No, not a venti, not a grande, the big one. If you give me anything smaller, I'll only ask you to supersize me.