Greetings from San Diego!

I just thought I should write and let y'all know that the working girl has escaped for a little while. To the sunny beaches of California! It's my spring break from school, and I'm taking a few days off from Nasty as well. I'm actually staying at the apt. of two former Nasty workers. Giving them all the latest gossip from work because they don't get to read this blog. Okay I have to get back to drinking and flashing my honkers to that girls gone wild guy. See ya!

Yes, more MTV crap

They keep coming back, those psycho producers from MTV! I've gotten my head back on straight and done the right thing by giving them a definite no to being part of their little circus. That doesn't mean they've backed off. Just the other day, they were in the cafe with a random assortment of hipsters and beautiful kids they seemingly assembled from off the street to be in their show. They were loitering in and around the cafe, cameramen in tow, crowding the joint during our busiest hour of the day just to get shots that made it look like these random kids work for Nasty. They did this at the record store across the street as well. My boyfriend said that the producers went back there and demanded that the scruffy guys behind the counter shave off their nasty facial hair, wear some name-brand shirts and trucker hats (are those even cool anymore?) and basically just present themselves to be, well, different people while the cameras are rolling. Now, this place is not Empire Records. It's more like the shop in High Fidelity, if you wanna make that kind of comparison. There's no glam at this record store. The guys are aging, unhip, scraggly and withdrawn. I don't know if an Ashton Kutcher costume is really gonna do the trick. This may be why the producers suggested that they might bring in their own set of "workers" to be on duty while filming is taking place. In other words, MTV would hire sexy actors to play record shop employees in order to make their reality show more appealing. Should we at Nasty at least be flattered that they haven't suggested doing that to us?

Coffee Tasting

this is some valuable information about coffee tasting. I am not poetic enough to have written it. Someone else did. Enjoy!


tasting: terms and tools

Coffee tasters use four main categories to help describe and define a cup of coffee. These are acidity, body, bouquet or aromatic profile, and flavor.

* Acidity: this is probably the most important coffee-tasting term, and also the most easily misunderstood. Acidity in coffee tasting is a positive term that denotes a liveliness and vibrancy on the palette, bright taste sensations caused by sugars and other acidic compounds. Coffees are rated as high, medium, or low in acidity according to the overall presence of these qualities
* Body: body describes the texture of coffee and how it feels in your mouth. Density, surface tension, viscosity and other factors determine the perception of body, which is typically rated as heavy or full, medium, and light, depending on if it is thick and creamy or thinner and possibly watery.
* Bouquet: our sense of smell is very involved in the enjoyment and evaluation of coffee, before, during and after we actually taste it. Aromatic profile, or bouquet, is divided into four phases: fragrance, aroma, nose and aftertaste.

Fragrance is perceived in the gases arising from freshly ground coffee.
Aroma is in the gases from freshly brewed coffee.
Nose is perceived in the vapors arising as coffee is swallowed.
Aftertaste is in the vapors that remain after the coffee is swallowed.

* Flavor: flavor refers to the taster’s overall impression of body, acidity, and bouquet. In a general sense it refers to intensity and may also acknowledge particular characteristics such as spice, nut, fruit, or chocolate notes.

The physical tools of the taster are quite obvious: the nose and the mouth/tongue. Key flavors are perceived on different parts of the tongue. Acidity and sweetness are tasted primarily on the tip of the tongue, sourness and saltiness more on the sides, bitterness mostly in the back, and body registers over the whole surface. The nose is an equally important tool, capable of distinguishing between 2000-4000 different aromas. Much of coffee’s flavor is locked up in volatile, aromatic compounds, perceived both directly by sniffing in through the nose, and again during tasting as vapors rise up into the nasal cavity.

While some people are natural “palette people,” blessed with superb sensitivity, it is important to remember that with concentration and practice we all possess the skills to master coffee tasting.

cash register blues

yes, I'm blue. We got a new cash register in the cafe a couple days ago, and it's ruining my life. Our old machine was extremely, well, old. No computer screens, dirty buttons that you can hardly even read what they say. It was great. The new ones are big and clunky, every menu category has its own page in the system. You have to select stupid things like what type of milk or flavor the latte is made with and all that. Basically it's my worst nightmare. I like the simplicity of our old machine. Lots of our pastries didn't even have buttons, and we'd just kind of make up prices as we went along. Fortunately, we're sticking true to one of our guns at least by not taking credit cards. This is something people feel very passionate about. I do as well. At least as far as Cafe Nasty is concerned, I'm anti-plastic. There's something satisfying about denying someone his order at the last minute, just as the barista is pouring his cappuccino, because he thought he could pay with his card. We've wasted many a hot chocolate, etc. because of situations like these. Bad for business yes, but funny. I think the main reason bossy won't get a card swiper thingy is because the company has to pay a small amount for every transaction made with a credit card. And since most of our orders are under like $5, it just doesn't make sense to take plastic. Plus, the line can move a hell of a lot quicker when I don't gotta stand there like an idiot, waiting for the machine to process this asshole's card. What if his card is maxed out and I have to shred it? Oh, that would be satisfying.

Black Gold

I think this is the name of it. My boss recommended this documentary to me, and now I'm recommending it to you! Of course it will be depressing. It's about the corrupt coffee business in Africa, with workers who are practically enslaved by plantation owners they're paid so little. I guess it's sort of the real-life coffee equivalent of that DiCaprio movie "Blood Diamond." Perhaps you'll never take a sip of espresso again after watching it. Perhaps you'll quit your job. I haven't seen it yet, but it's on my Netflix list. que, queue?

No title

I'm in a bad mood. The worst is to be having a "fat" day, be ultra exhausted, kind of depressed, overloaded with school work, mad because the interview I did today didn't record properly and now I'm fucked, and bitter that no, at what should be the end of the day, I have to go begin a shift and train a newbie how to close. Times like these when it's hard, but I've got to remind myself that I love my job and I wouldn't want to be doing anything else for a living. I wouldn't make a good teacher, unlike ever yother girl I know. Will I even be a good mother? I might be completely void of all those maternal, coaching and nurturing instincts. I just lose patience when I train people. Not out loud, of course. My theatrical nature is what saves me, because I can fake a mood whenever life calls for it. I'll just silently suffer like a Jewish grandmother in her darkened living room, and no one will know. But on the inside, I'm screaming, "Is it so goddamn hard to figure out how to sweep a floor? Where did you come from you idiot!!" Cause it's not like they get taught how to make a perfect cap on their first day. That comes a couple months later, after they've proven they can show up on time, scrub toilets, and basically prove that they're worth the money we (not me, boss) pay them.
It's all the crap that comes before espresso training that's painful for me and surely for them as well. I wouldn't want to be trained by myself. No way. What could be more tedious than spending your evening watching closely over this stranger making sure she's putting the latte glasses back in the right spots, or putting broken glasses in the recycling instead of on top of the espresso machine. People have done that. I've seen it with my own two eyes.

Still Scared

Wow baby. It's five days since I wrote something here. I hope none of my fan swere worried about me. I've been really busy with school- with writing this one paper really. No excuses. I don't have a lot to say. One good thing about being so tied up in school, work, and freelancing is that I have like no time to sit and think about how much something or other may suck. So that's good I suppose. I'm still scared shitless about our upcoming cap-off. My caps haven't been looking that great lately. Maybe I'm psyching myself out.