When you can snatch this coffee bean from my...hey grasshopper, give that back!

I just wanted to share a small moment of joy from the world of someone with a title like "Chief Espresso Evangelist." I train a lot of people to make espresso in independent coffee shops all over. The average American barista seems to be a 16 year old girl named "Tammy", whose t-shirt has given up on it's lost relationship with the top of her jeans and who uses the world "like" in a similar fashion to a speed junkie with Turrets Syndrome using the word...well...bad words. (This is a family blog, is it not?) Suffice to say, training "Tammy" can be hard, given she has an attention span roughly equivalent to the duration of the new Green Day video.

Now, a client of mine is a Great Books college called Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, CA. They have a quaint little multipurpose room with a coffee shop complex known as the "Dumb Ox", after the nickname of St. Thomas Aquinas. Every year they lose roughly half their staff and a handful of new kids come in, some of which have never been in a coffeehouse. This year was worse than normal, in that half the staff and the manager were changed out. So, we had the training. I showed them the videos, starring the enigmatic blend of Obie Wan Kenobi and Willy Wonka that is David Schomer of Espresso Vivace and then did a walk through of the techniques for about 45 minutes. We penciled in when I would work one on one with each barista and went our merry way. Here's where it get's good.

A few days later a young girl named "Paula" asked if she could make me a cappuccino to see if she had got it. She went on to pour a perfect double ristretto espresso, steam the creamy milk chiffon we do perfectly, and pour me a beautiful rosette presentation pour. What? No one does this this easily! It takes most baristas months to get that pour down. I was, suffice to say, "stoked"- in the parlance of our times. So, there you go. A beautiful victory, be it small, in the world of Coffeeboy. Just for the record, Paula is a pretty young girl, but she is very bright, her t-shirt is closely aquainted with the top of her jeans, and I have only heard her use the word "like" correctly and in context. I just wanted to get that straight lest I claim to work miracles.

The moral of the story? Plato and Schomer go well together. If you want kids that will make good baristas, go to TAC, have a lot of kids, and educate them in the classics. Would it-like...kill you to- like... not- like...use the word "like"...so- like much? Maybe one of the political parties should add the reconciliation of the t-shirt and the waistband to there agenda. Keep your eyes open for those little victories. And finally, a perfect cappuccino can change the world. ( At least the world of a jaded Coffeeboy)

Oh, and just for the record, the whole staff is coming along ahead of the curve and the new manager Brigid- like- rocks too.