I spent only a couple months as a barista at a hospital coffee shop this summer. I left because management expected me to stay available to them off-the-clock, which is a ‘no’ from me.
The only latte I’ll concern myself with on my own time is the one in my clammy post-ride hands.
But while I was there, not one day passed where I didn’t see hospital staff coming and going to do significantly more important work and feel trapped. White coats bought their nursing staff a treat while discussing subjects with complicated words I had no time to curiously Google search.
I was once a kid that sat alone on the school bus, staring out a frosty window thinking about why certain rules seemed fundamentally flawed and were inequitably applied instead of what I was excited to do that day. Simplicity still has me discontent.
The juxtaposition of getting the order on the screen correct while a pale, wheelchair-bound patient with their head shaved sat hollowed in the lobby was not ignorable.
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On my second day at my new job, I was in a room with a patient that shared with me all the places they had been in their life. They told me how they had been encouraged to write a book, and I agreed with them immediately before they said “It’s too late now,” in a voice that was either accepting and at peace, or stoic enough to fool me.
I did not tell them the kind of person they were talking to, or where I had heard that before.
And on the third day, I rose quickly from my desk chair as code blue was called. I watched resuscitation measures for the first time in my life as I stood directly by where physicians were talking to the family on the phone for decisions to be made.
I don’t know how it ended.
That is going to be normal for me now, on the other side of the bar.
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All of my more ambitious work is gnawing at me from the inside as I both over-scrutizine and underestimate myself.
There is no longer a place where it’s silent.
And there are at least two people I know now that might advise me to step it up.
‘Good Morning, Vietnam‘ has to be next.
I will the machine. 