If you need to rage about a self-imposed mild inconvenience because the important things that actually matter to you are forever outside your ability to influence or change in any way, this one’s for you.
I’m going to tell you about how I am routinely prevented from giving myself a little treat in the form of a delicious beverage.
I stopped drinking caffeine for about 7-8 years. I stopped for two reasons:
1) I have been sensitive to migraine triggers since elementary school, and the caffeine put me on a migraine roller coaster
2) Caffeinated beverages also happened to be the primary way I consumed sugar, and it was such an easy way to get rid of a lot of sugar. Sugar is also a migraine trigger. Since I was drinking sugar, and not consuming it alongside fiber or protein, it went straight to my head.
I’m not a scientist. I know it didn’t go **straight** to my head. But it did give me a headache. The tirade I’m about to go on will be less enjoyable for you if you’re fact-checking.
So when I went on a trip to Seattle in the spring of 2018, there had not been any caffeine in my daily life for years. I like to experience the local culture, and part of the local culture in Seattle is coffee. We went to a different local coffee place every day, and it was all so good. But it wasn’t until I tried one specific cup of coffee that I decided to quit decaf forever and return to the world of migraines. And anxiety!
This part is going to be a little offensive considering I was in Seattle, and I live in Nashville – both cultural epicenters for coffee enthusiasts.
I had a nitro cold brew with sweet cream at Starbucks. My sister told me to order it exactly like that. “Hi, can I have a nitro cold brew with sweet cream?”
It was the most delicious, smooth, velvety cup of coffee. Since it was a cold brew, it wasn’t bitter. It didn’t get watered down by ice because it was cooled by the nitro. And the sweet cream only had 4g of sugar. For Starbucks – that is not a lot of sugar!
I was hooked. It was so good, I came out of caffeine retirement. I started ordering it exclusively whenever I went to Starbucks back in Nashville. I still like visiting local places, but sometimes I just want to drive through somewhere. I didn’t know it would become the bane of my existence.
There are a couple factors that make this a difficult drink order. Apparently.
1) The nitro machine breaks. Constantly. I can’t tell if the baristas are engaged in sabotage because they hate using it, or if the machine is poorly designed. But I am told regularly that it is out of order. This happens at least 40% of the time, but emotionally speaking it is 80% of the time. And it seems that there is only one person in Nashville who knows how to fix it. That mysterious person travels from store to store fixing the nitro machine. It takes a week or more every time it breaks. A few weeks ago, all three Starbucks in my range of driving had broken nitro machines. I know this because I went to all three locations. I call ahead sometimes to spare myself the drama. If I don’t call ahead, I end up ordering (“Can I have a nitro cold brew with sweet cream?”) and then quietly whispering “Please say yes” while bracing for the worst.
2) Cold brew is more difficult to make than regular coffee. With regular coffee, you throw it in the machine and it’s ready to go not too long after. Cold brew takes a few hours to make. It has to steep, like tea. These are the things I’m forced to research online when I am told, “We are out of cold brew today.” I’m not clear on how a business that primarily sells coffee can run out of coffee by 8am, so that’s when I start to feel like it’s sabotage.
The latest layer of difficulty is that my local baristas suddenly, after five years, don’t understand what I am ordering. Here is how the conversation goes.
Me: Can I have a grande nitro cold brew with sweet cream?
Barista: Okay, one vanilla sweet cream nitro cold brew
Me: No
Barista, Oh, you want a nitro cold brew with sweet cream?
Me: …yep….thanksssss……
I have to do this every time now. I never had to until a few weeks ago. You might wonder, what’s the difference? Well let me tell you. A vanilla sweet cream nitro cold brew comes with two pumps of vanilla syrup, for an additional 10g of sugar. The nitro cold brew doesn’t have any pumps of vanilla syrup or any pumps of anything.
I could roll up to the window and order a grande cold brew with one pump of hazelnut, one scoop of vanilla bean powder, a splash of half & half, and a pack of stevia, or a small campout cold brew with sugar free chocolate macademia nut and sugar free vanilla with only sugar free syrup and no chocolate milk, just regular half & half, and please make it half sweet
And they wouldn’t miss a beat.
But “grande nitro cold brew with sweet cream” throws them for a loop.
I used to order a “grande nitro cold brew with a light splash of sweet cream” but it created so many problems, I stopped. Just give me a gallon of sweet cream. It’s fine.
I drive away from Starbucks asking myself, why is this so hard?
I have a simple order. I am the ideal customer. It is not complicated. I don’t hold the line up. I say please and thank you. If it takes a long time, I say, no problem. I can wait. I try to give the benefit of the doubt. The baristas are doing their best. Sometimes things take a long time. Sometimes they run out of ingredients. Sometimes they’ve had a hard day, and they’re tired.
But after a while, I start to think – is this consideration a two way street? I am also tired. I just want a nitro cold brew with sweet cream.
People say you never know what the person next to you is going through. So I don’t leave bad reviews on google or anywhere else. (A blog essay about their customer service failures is obviously a totally different thing). I don’t want anyone to lose their job over it. I literally just want a nitro cold brew with sweet cream.
This is what my prayers have sounded like lately.
“I have asked You for a bunch of things that You have said No to. Repeatedly, for years, No, No, No. I get it. My requests require too many miracles. You can’t intervene in the housing market, so I don’t get to own a home. Real shame about the developers and flippers, but that’s capitalism, baby. I get it. You designed female bodies to only carry pregnancies in a very specific and limited window, and it’s just too late. The eggs are basically gone at this point. It’s just science. You can’t give me a husband, or even a date, because You would have to travel back in time and make sure christian men of my generation (oh yes, it’s the christian men) are not socialized to believe that Skinny Women Are Best. Time travel is out of the question, and there are too many points of entry for this mindset. I understand. So, can I just have this? Can I just have a nitro cold brew with sweet cream? I have seen what You’ve done for other people, and I feel like I’m being generous in pretending like my requests are too impossible. I have eyes. I’ve seen the 23 year olds buying homes right out of college. Miracles are impossible, wink wink. But a nitro cold brew with sweet cream doesn’t require a miracle. It requires four things: a cup, coffee, cream, and the nitro machine. Why are You saying no?”
Maybe I am pushing the boundaries of what it means to wrestle with God. Maybe it borders on disrespect and ungratefulness. But I have been praying for other people my whole life. Back in elementary school, when I was having CT scans and vomiting at school because of migraines, I started praying for unknown strangers every time I heard a siren. “Jesus, please help whoever is in trouble to be okay.” I still do that. I’m almost 40 years old, and I can’t let a siren go by without a prayer. If strangers online ask for prayer, I literally pray with my brain for them. I pray for homeless people when it rains or snows. I bought a blanket from a company that says they donate blankets to homeless people with the proceeds, and sometimes I pray for my “blanket twin” – which is not even a thing. I pray for a figment of my imagination. Sometimes I drive by a hospital and pray that everyone, every single last patient inside, feels better today. I have been praying nonsense prayers for most of my life, for everyone except me.
I made a deal with Jesus, recently. Well, I have to assume that He accepted the terms. He agreed **glares heavenward** that I get to be insane when I pray. Everyone else can think I am crazy and negative and petulant, but He will not. I keep saying, “I’m not crazy, remember? We agreed.” I’ve made no promises in return. He gets nothing out of the deal. I just get a mental refuge. A place where I don’t have to perform thankfulness when perfectly reasonable requests go unanswered. And none of that, “well sometimes the answer is No or Wait” B.S. If it’s not a yes, it’s unanswered. We all know this. I can tell the truth about that, I can be mad about coffee, I can cry when my packages aren’t delivered, I can be anxious when things are hard at work. And I can ask for perfectly reasonable things without pretending they’re impossible, and I don’t have to smile when I don’t get them.
I’m not crazy, we agreed.
sayingthingsoutloud 