Grumpy & The Dreaded One's Little Cafe Of Awesome, Review

Holy fuck. So much positive feedback from customers about the food today that I'm thinking about having the food drug tested. The Dreaded One is obviously seasoning everything with some properly wicked shit, man.

Also, here is our first review of the year. Not a bad one either.

Happy Friday, mofos.

Why I Hate My Best Friends

Dear All Best Friends From The Future,

Can we not meet please? Kind of breaks my heart a little bit when you go away. Will love you anyway because I know you're out there, somewhere. It just makes me sad when we actually meet. Because you always go.

Much love always,

Lee.

Conversations With Our Customers: The Complaint

So we got a complaint in the cafe today. Apparently a customer didn't really like our Mexican tacos very much because of the rich, smoky flavour (that would be the chipotle in amongst all the other ingredients). She also found the soft tacos wraps to be a bit too... (struggles with what she is trying to say)... a bit too authentic. Apparently she was expecting - from our Mexican soft tacos - something "a bit more Australian."

Some complaints, you can live with. Like the time in our catering years when someone complained that our blue cheese had a bit of mold in it.

Love humans sometimes. They can be hilarious.

The Happy And The Sad

The happy and the sad... it's all part of the thing. Happy that they are here, will be sad when they have gone away. And they always go away.

This is the dialogue that goes with the clip: " Do you want to see the most beautiful thing I've ever filmed? It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing, and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was just, dancing with me, like a little kid beggin' me to play with it - for fifteen minutes. And that's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know that there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember - I need to remember. Sometimes, there's so much beauty in the world - I feel like I can't take it, like my heart is just going to cave in."

Maximum Spank

Last week our banged up little cafe was the busiest it has been. Record week. Would like to be doing it every week. With the right team, we can do it.

At one point, stuck on coffees, exhausted and almost overwhelmed, I closed my eyes and said thank you to the cosmos. Not because we might be looking at a record week, but because of the help we had been given. A random traveler had left her resume, as so many of them do, and sensing we were going to be spanked this week, having had a good impression of said random traveler, I asked her to come in and help out.

These things can go either way. Some trial-shifters have done my head in after 10 minutes. But this one, she was a good one. There was zip. There was bang. There was energy and intelligence and that thing that happens when you know what they're doing and why they are doing it, and they know the same about you. You feel like two parts of a unit. It's a good feeling.

And that's why at one point, maybe more, I closed my eyes and said thank you to the cosmos.

The Health Inspectors - A Black Comedy Farce.

If I ever write again, I think I'll write a savage black comedy about the life of the average (and they are very average humans) council health inspector. They swan into your place of work dressed like they're going to the opening night of the opera, even though in reality they should be wearing overalls or other similar mundane attire, and find their special area of annoyance and begin to tell you - as you try to keep up with the busy, service-time influx of customers - that you must make this change or that change. They look so smugly chuffed that they get to tell you this as they consult their snappy electronic device as if to say "See? See? There it is. There's the rule in the regulations that stipulates why you have to change this thing, and aren't you impressed with my vast knowledge of the myriad rules and regulations that rule and regulate my world?"

They never know the actual, practical arguments for these rules and regulations (it's never anything major in a reasonably run place; just niggly changes that must be made because surely you want them to smile and pat you on the back on their next irritating visit). They don't consult the previous inspection report (common sense? Fuck common sense!) to realise they are directly contradicting previous sage recommendations. They clip-clop about on their teetering heels and mneh mneh mneh as if they are doing something meaningful like... anything remotely meaningful. Which they are not.

Ever worked in a commercial kitchen, Miss Poindexter? Ever run a business? What, exactly, qualifies you to even think you have a fucking clue?

This is what you think as you nod and say sure, we'll move the thing over there that the last council numpty made us move to where it is now, as we try to focus on the job of serving our customers.

This is probably what I will write about if I ever write again.