Would you like butter and mayo with that?

Big news over here: I have accomplished my #1 lifetime career goal!! No, I haven't been given an honorary Ph.D. or anything, don't get too excited. But I started a job this week in a real, proper cafe, and I am a bona fide barista! Anyone who knows what it's like to work fast food for SIX YEARS will understand that I am absolutely not exaggerating my enthusiasm here. It seems almost too good to be true.

I'll back up a little bit. I'd dropped off some CV's earlier in the spring without any results, and just last week I started the process again after handing in my essays. I was beginning to despair after the little cafes and bars on Queens Road and in Clifton Village didn't seem interested. So, last Friday, I was sitting in the library reading Seneca and feeling a little depressed when my stomach started growling, and I decided to go to Somerfield and buy some Mars Planets (best candy ever, even above Sainsbury's Fizzy Fangs) to cheer myself up. On the way, I walked past Toby's Deli Cafe, and I noticed a sign in the window advertising for counter help. I went in and asked about it, and the girl at the counter told me to wait for a minute to talk to the manager. The place was really cute and funky, with the walls of the dining room covered in photographs of customers and Christmas lights hung all around. Pretty soon the manager came up, offered me a cup of tea, and sat down to chat. He looked at my CV, joked around with me about American politics, and asked me to start on Tuesday. So that was that!

In a way I regret that I find it nearly impossible to describe my new job without comparing it to Sonic, because Sonic was about as good as it could be to me, but so it goes. Anyway, instead of a dorky logo polo shirt and visor and regulation length shorts, I now get to wear any sort of black shirt I want, and that's as much as they care about. And, instead of making cherry limeades until the acid eats the skin on my fingers away, I make...real espresso coffee!!! It was surprisingly easy to learn to use the machine, froth milk, etc. I do not mind admitting that I feel extremely, smugly cool as I do so. The other, bigger part of my job is making sandwiches, which is most of our business, and a charmingly British affair. That is, mayonnaise and butter are the leading ingredients in just about everything we make. Most popular fillings: chicken mayonnaise, tuna mayonnaise, coronation chicken, chicken tikka - basically, all equal parts of meat/fish + mayo. And it goes without saying that you slather the bread with mayo or butter, and very often both. But we have plenty of yummy healthy things, too, for those who fancy them, like roasted veggies, goat's cheese, sun dried tomatoes, pesto, hummus, etc.

The best part (besides the coffee thing) is the great people I work with. Toby's is run by Toby (duh) and his father, and they're both very laid back, fun and jokey. They either call me "babes" or "gorgeous" in a completely un-creepy, almost fatherly way (Toby actually calls pretty much everyone "babes", male and female). All the other employees are great, and the customers, mostly students who are posh enough to be able to afford an $8 sandwich or a $10 baked potato for lunch, are all really friendly.

So, if you can't tell, I'm pretty stoked about my new gig. Academia, I'm warning you, you're up against some serious competition.