Coffee Break ☕

A memoir of donuts, coffee, the pandemic, and dating.

Taken from L.B. Lewis’s SMALL TALK WITH MYSELF, #1 New Release on Amazon in Humor + Entertainment Short Reads.

I love coffee. But it wasn’t always this way.

Here’s why: most people don’t know this but in high school I was in a training video for a large donut chain. My donut boss said I did a great job at the drive-through and that I spoke clearly. That’s how that happened but I never saw the video they filmed, even though I looked for it once and a while online.

I worked at that donut shop partly because my swim coach liked those donuts and partly because it was the new thing in town. But really it just made sense to me that I would work at some type of fast food place near my house when I turned sixteen. I had been working since I was eight and ready to get my first real job.

At this donut shop, they sold mainly donuts and coffee. My favorite part was making the prohibited “custom donuts” like double glazing the glazed donuts and mixing the custard and the jelly together for one plump sugar bomb. Once I really did eat a dozen donuts during break time. Of course I did this when no one was looking.

My least favorite part was making coffee — when everyone was looking.

After the training video, I made a huge mistake. It started with opening the bag of coffee for the giant coffee maker. Everything looked good to me as I loaded up coffee grounds into the basket. I lifted the basket back up to the top for the water to magically turn into coffee. In a short few minutes, I took a drive-through order and the next thing everyone waiting in line saw was a cascade of coffee and grounds flowing from the open spout of the coffee machine.

Honestly, that was by far a better moment capture for a training video. The waterfall of coffee and grounds mesmerized me until someone told me to turn the spout off. We all had to help clean up the mess and then my manager who cast me in the video showed me the basket had no filter. I secretly swore I would never drink coffee again.

As life went on, I stayed away from coffee. Oh, traveling I tried a cup or two, here or there. When I went to Italy a few years ago and tried Italian…