Splatterings from Across the Coffee Bar

You might say "Ew." You might say "Oooh!" Whatever hot milk blisters evoke in your mind, it doesn't matter. Because this is my bitchfest slash playground, inspired by the dubiously distinctive experience of working as a barista at a coffee bar in a county hospital. (Yeah, sounds weird to me, too.) Props to my homegirl (foamgirl?) Trixie, who loves alliteration. Any alliteration here--intended or otherwise--is a shoutout to Trixie, commiserator in crime.

Despite my tough exterior, I'll be pleased to no end if you find common experiences or interesting tidbits here that engage you for all of 30 seconds. 20 seconds even.

So, let's get things started with the stamp...

Day: Monday
Brew: Mexican Altura
Mood: Good

It feels good to finally be starting this blog, considering that I've been, well, considering it for many months. I'm sure my boyfriend, Slow Rain, feels good about it, too: I finally will cease a) bitching to him nightly about my shift, and b) asking him what to call this blog. Theoretically, 1) he can read my musings on this site (or not, more likely), and 2) I will continue to ask him what to call this blog, because--for a highly opinionated person--I'm woefully indecisive. And self-important, I guess, because I think that it matters what this blog is called. But I suppose there must be a fair amount of overlap between the opinionated and the self-important. (movingon...movingon...)

Until a moment ago, I didn't have a story for today. That's all changed. I will relay to you Pet Peeve #1 of my job: Being expected by a customer to speak something other than English. Usually, the something is Spanish because I a) live in Texas, b) work in a county hospital with lots of Mexican immigrant patients who are Spanish-speaking-only, and c) am brown. Specifically, I am Indian American (dots, not feathers), and I get mistaken for everything from Filipina to Hawaiian to Indonesian. I often get mistaken for Mexican (this even happened IN Mexico), and this happens a lot here at the hospital.

What doesn't happen a lot is my being mistaken for Pakistani, which is what happened today, and which actually is far closer to the mark. In this case, a middle-aged Pakistani gentleman was hoping--nay, expecting--that I speak Urdu. I do not. I told him I'm from Bengal (meaning that my parents are, but that's the short version), and he asked me a few more times in disbelief whether I spoke Urdu. I still didn't. Amazed and wide-eyed, he said "Pakistan and Bangladesh are equal countries..." Well, that may be, but my family's from West Bengal (the part in India). He asked if I speak Hindi, which wouldn't be out of the question. But I don't--I just speak Bengali, and poorly. I would have felt bad for the guy except that his English was actually just fine, and except for his insistence that I must speak Urdu, which pissed me off. Doesn't anybody remember that, before India was partitioned, there was a Bengal that is larger than present-day Bangladesh? And not all Bengalis or Bengali-speakers live in Bangladesh? I would at least expect a South Asian to know this. And do most Bangladeshis even speak Urdu? I thought they spoke Bengali, and with a pronounced accent!

Here's the part more of you might relate to. Now, I'm not against speaking multiple languages: As I said, I speak some Bengali and a little French, enough to kind of get by on a couple of visits to France. And I can understand a few words of Spanish and Italian and would love to learn more languages. But in situations similar to the one today (or usually when people are openly disapproving when I reveal I can't speak Spanish) I start to feel quite the Ronnie Dobbs: "Speak English, motherfucker!" When I was in Mexico or Buenos Aires, I didn't just walk up to people and start speaking English to them. I'd ask them, in Spanish, whether they spoke English. And depending on the answer, I'd proceed accordingly. Sometimes, I wouldn't even ask if they spoke English...I'd try to use my 8 or 10 Spanish words and the service person would take pity on me or be so offended by my Spanish (or some combo thereof) that they'd take the helm in darn good English. But at least I tried to speak the language of the country. And what gets me, too, is that most of these folks who expect to conduct business with me in Spanish are not tourists, as I was in Mexico or Argentina. They live here! Many, illegally and newly arrived. Now, doesn't it seem like it would behoove them to learn English, and fast?