Photograph by Josh Libatique
Now that Starbucks has free wireless internet service (huzzah for Starbucks!), I'm thinking of making the local site my Friday workshifting spot.
For me, going to Starbucks requires a ten minute drive from my home to half-way across town (yeah, it's a small town), and that, of course, requires a car. We own three cars: my wife takes one to work, and my daughters take the other two. Which kind of hamstrings my ambitions of workshifting; mobility, after all, requires some sort of mode of transportation to become mobile.
Thus, most days I'm stuck working at home, with two cats that have just been recently introduced to one another. The first, our resident 18-year old seal point Siamese is a grouchy sort who's currently hissing at the newcomer, a long-haired gray tabby named Macy Gray. Suffice to say that I'm a virtual shut-in, home for about seven hours a day, alone except for two seething, caterwauling furballs.
So, by the time Friday rolls around, I'm just a bit starved for human contact. Not that I want to immediately rush out and engage everyone I happen to meet in spirited conversation, mind you; I just feel the urge to be in the company of bipedal creatures with opposable thumbs, large braincases, and that have an affinity for caffeinated beverages.
Did I mention that I used to be a barista? Yeah, back in the winter of 2006, while I was "in between jobs", I did the adult thing and "did what I had to do", taking a part-time gig at the very Starbucks that has become my new tradition. Our town is located within fifteen miles of a California Women's Correctional Facility, and evidently there's a whole shift of correctional workers that gets out of work and is looking for some caffeine at 5:00 a.m. in the morning, so this particular Starbucks opens really early. So, every day, I'd drive bleary-eyed and semiconscious to Starbucks just in time to pick up trash in the parking lot and drive-through, then take orders or make drinks for the morning "rush" of customers. It was brutal.
Actually, there was one good thing that came out of it: during my daily four hour shift, I was in near-constant motion, moving quickly from the bar to the coffee station to the iced drinks station and then back to the bar. You know how they say that, if you take at least 10,000 steps a day, you're guaranteed to lose wait? I was losing weight, baby.
It was while I was working at Starbucks that I learned to make several drinks that don't usually appear on the menu, one of which is the "Red Eye". This drink is so named, as the legend goes, for college students who were preparing to cram all night for a test the next day and needed a way to stay up for several hours at a time. The students initially drank lattes made with a single shot of espresso; this spiked their energy level for a short time, but was followed by the inevitable crash. Some student finally got the bright idea to mix espresso with coffee; the effect was that the student's energy level increased, but stayed at the elevated level longer, and made a much more gradual decline. The next logical step, of course, was to add a second shot of espresso, which was dubbed the "Black Eye". This is my absolute favorite latte: a venti Black Eye, with four pumps of sugar-free vanilla, two Splenda's, and about an inch and a half of steamed whole milk.
Which brings me, in tangential fashion, to my point; I should explain that, in the strictest sense, I don't feel that I'm really, truly a workshifter.
More precisely, I feel like I'm a second-rate workshifter. Oh, sure: my job as a programmer is definitely location independent. It allows me to work from wherever I want, with a flexible schedule, but my lifestyle design reality seems so pedestrian compared to other workshifters that I've heard of, the kind that conducts business while attending an entrepreneurial conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Or who takes a couple months to vacation and volunteer while traveling through South America.
I suppose those folks are more of the "digital nomad" variety. Now, those are the REAL workshifters, the Major Leaguers. Me, I'm playing Triple-A ball.
Actually, I really should consider myself fortunate, and count my blessings. I had been staying away from Starbucks in recent months, simply because it gets expensive to get a venti Black Eye AND pay for wireless access, but all that's changed. On Friday, I'll claim one of our cars as my own, drive down to the local Starbucks, order my venti Black Eye, pop open my laptop and earn my credibility as a workshifter.
Now if only they'd do something to make the chairs more comfortable.
No comments:
Post a Comment