The Latte Conundrum

There is a direct correlation between one’s mental availability and one’s ability to perform a task qualitatively and efficiently, I thought, while the handsome barista made me wait two full minutes to wrap up his conversation with his colleague before acknowledging my existence.

Of all the features which constituted the symphony that was his face, his deep blue eyes with their magnetic sway were the melody. Had he asked me to go fetch him something, anything, I would have obliged. Not that his ethereal curls, his elegant nose or his insulting jawline did not contribute. One would think that God drew this jawline on the 8th day and carved that faint dimple as an intentional dash of imperfection, but little did God know it was the touch that made his face wholesome.

Those top of the line surrounding traits seemed to exist for the sole, noble purpose of bringing out his eyes.

His benign body language, his false modesty, only amplified the fact that his mental availability had been compromised from the day he became aware of his own looks.

Compromised to the point of allowing himself not to shake the carton before pouring the oat milk, despite the all-caps instruction on it, visible even to me from a distance, that red ‘shake well before serving’, but more dramatically to lose himself in thought, to daydream about who knows what while frothing the watery milk all the way to burning it.

In barista land, those are the 6 to 8 extra seconds that turn milk to lava.

What are your shifts? I asked him while he handed me my cup, with a tone he must have interpreted as that of someone under his spell.

You have beautiful eyes, I continued, elevating him one notch higher while my own eyes moistened from the pain inflicted by the lava sip, but I’ll take a proper latte over them any day.