She was just old enough to drink, but no one, any age, deserves to experience that kind of torture. The flashbulbs that go off immortalize the memory and she lives it over and over again. Coming to the end of the reel, it rewinds, and shows again. Forever she is trapped in the cinema of his malevolence.

The Supervisor had a mysterious appeal. There was nothing upstanding or special about her. She would not stick out of a crowd. Tourist season was approaching and management needed someone with a strong tolerance to stupidity to manage the summer help. New England only peaked its head into the sun for a few months of the year to bask in the good weather, and all of the coffee shops and bakeries that barely scraped by in the winter had a short amount of time to make enough revenue for the year. They asked the Supervisor, who at the time wasn’t a supervisor at all, if she could handle that kind of power. She took all of this in stride without so much as a smile, which is why They liked her to begin with. And so it was that the Supervisor came to power.

( The Cashier despised her, although the Supervisor could never figure out exactly why. )

The Supervisor had a mysterious appeal. There was nothing or upstanding or special about her. She would not stick out of a crowd.

She was nothing at all like the Cashier, who fancied herself a charcoal sketch on a very pale canvas. The Cashier was talented with eyeliner, a skill she had perfected in three hours on a rainy weeknight, and she adored the way it gave her eyes a dark, seductive, smoky emergence. The Cashier liked to think she had molded her personality into a type of fashion. She loved thin, clingy-cotton shirts that made loud statements and pants with legs so wide they could be considered skirts: the more zippers, straps, pockets, and chains the better. A most recent purchase was her favorite: a pair of dangling black earrings with shiny ebony beads at the bottoms of black chains that clinked and jingled when she shook her long, dyed locks. She was certain that she was unique, dark, and poetic.

( Not that They would let her wear anything like that at work. )

More ideas...


Nalayka- A love story. She had a wonderful Jamaican boyfriend... he loved her so much and was very handsome. Then when she came to America, she got pregnant with someone else's baby. She wanted to go back to Jamaica, to her Jamaican boyfriend... he loved her, he even bought her presents for the baby. For a while she toyed with the idea of staying with him. But it was not his baby, and she could not force him to be the father of the baby. So she went back to America and got married to the father. But she's still in love with her Jamaican boyfriend.


Emo kid- A depressing story. She works and all throughout the day she imagines her own death... for instance, slipping on ice and smashing her face against the corner of the counter... or slitting her wrists with the bagel knife.

Cigarette - She keeps a pack of cigarettes for just such an occassion, although she doesn't smoke. He asks if he can bum one, but he doesn't smoke either.

Rape victim- Every customer that comes in looks like the man who took it from her.

Old People- Mary Anne - she comes in five or six times a day. When you're that old, what else is there to do? The 96-year-old with a debit card and an inside out shirt. Regulars in the morning.

Different kinds of drinks:
-Hot Coffee
-Iced Coffee
-Latte/Cappaccino
-Iced Latte
-Mocha/Macchiato/Mochaccino
-Iced Tea
-Specialty Drinks "Milky Way" "Funky Monkey" "Peaches n Cream"

A love story
A work story
A single mother story
A depressing story
A happy story (old people)
More loves stories (love and loss, unrequited love, fantasy love, imagined love, real love)

Some more ideas I wrote down at work...

-When people talk to you on drive through, you really only hear "mmmmmmcoffeemmmmm" and you have to fill in the rest. You ask them a question and they say yes, but they actually mean no, even though they say yes when you repeat it back to them.
-Your spoken English deteriorates over time "What have you today?"
-What would Mr. Rodgers get? Jesus?
-Large orders through drive through
-YELLING
-Mean old lady and her milk/cream coffee
-The many kinds of "REGULAR"
-State stereotypes
-Drive by the GIANT SIGN
-What happens when you run out of donuts?

Ideas:

-Nalayka
-Kay-Lee
-Police Officer Stereotype
-Ignorance (Why not?)
-Coffee Names
-Love stories
-Cigarette break
-Rape Victim

More to come...