Written by Steven Bridenbaugh   

My name's Steve. There's a lot of Steves in this world. There is even a Tao of Steve. I don't really have a Tao. I just am. I'm sixty four years old. I have worked for the same employer for thirteen years now. I'm a handyman. If someone breaks something, or does some kind of damage, such as bumping a flooring machine into a wall, they send me there to fix it. I change a lot of light bulbs. I do rather large painting jobs, but I don't use a spraying machine, I'm not that kind of painter. Just rollers for me. For the last year, though, my boss has been giving me less and less work. A few times, I actually forgot to do something that was assigned to me, and they made a big deal about that. They said I was losing my memory. The secretary was told to call me, to remind me to go to appointments. But when they haven't given you any work for several days, that makes anyone just a little absent minded. All in all, things have been going down hill, one senior moment at a time. Spoiler alert-- you might call this a loser story, if you are a corporate honcho. But if you haven't incorporated yourself yet, you might be able to stomach the details.

During these times, I frequently find work on my own, doing things like setting a door for a homeowner, or helping someone remodel a house. But my boss always seems to sense when I have other work, and he calls me, and demands that I drop everything, and do some errand for him. Like change a light bulb that has gone out, in a bank. As far as he is concerned, I'm always on call. More than once, a day that was worth several hundred dollars to me, was reduced to an errand that paid only fifteen dollars. Why do I keep working for this guy? As I said, I'm sixty four. And every day, my joints ache, and I find myself more exhausted, at the end of the day.

I think he has a much lower opinion of me, because several years ago, I was suffering a lot of pain in my arms, and asked him if he would OK a claim to get some physical therapy. He agreed, amiably enough, but it turned out to be arthritis in both of my shoulders, and the physicians racked up a CAT scan, and MRI, two rounds of physical therapy, and a surgical procedure. My boss started being curt with me occasionally, for no apparent reason, shortly after that.

Last Christmas, I was suddenly informed that I would attend a training for a new service that our company would be taking on. A trainer was coming in on Monday, and we would undergo a three day training, to learn how to fix Starbucks espresso machines. I had heard about the training, and I was initially not going to take part in it. The main supervisor of our company had been creating a lot of special opportunities for the fellows who did night inspections, which demanded extremely long hours, and often entailed doing work for employees who didn't show up for work. He gave them special shirts to wear, and gave each of them a tablet computer, to log into the company database. I was glad to get this news, even though it was too late to tell my dentist that I couldn't make it to my appointment Monday morning. I managed to contact them early that day, but as a result I lost permanently my hygienist, Linda, who has kept me with my natural teeth for the last seven years. They appointed someone else to take over my mouth, since I was a no show.

The training was a lot to learn all at once. I told people afterwards, it was like learning how to repair a Volkswagen, but they only give you three days to learn. We were tested afterwards. The answers to all the questions were available in the back of the book, but I alone didn't study these questions and answers. I was the last to finish. Astoundingly, I was the only one to pass the test. Actually, there were two others, but I am sure, from knowing them over the years, that both of them can barely read. I don't think either of them learned very much from this training. The end result of this was that my boss's opinion of me improved considerably, to learn that I could still learn something, at my advanced age, and very quickly I was actually repairing these machines. Not surprisingly, I was the only person which he could make available to work at Starbucks.

I have a confession to make. Before this time, I had only been in a Starbucks once. The main reason that I haven't gone to them is a long story. I will have to give you a brief synopsis of what has happened in my life for the last twenty or so years, instead. My wife was diagnosed with a bipolar condition in 1991, and several years passed before an internist discovered that she had an underlying condition, an overactive thyroid, which was contributing to her condition. We met in Ketchum, Idaho, and both of us occupied ourselves primarily with fitness activities-- I jogged constantly, I was a skier, and have skied since I was five; and she used to win tennis tournaments, ever since she was a teenager. But it was difficult for us, outsiders to the area, that is, ski bums, to try to make a living in that resort. Eventually, with two small children in our young family, I was forced to make the decision to move to the San Jose area, where I could find steady employment doing carpentry work. But my wife had much on her mind, and periodically, had relapses. Over the years, these relapses have taken a toll on me. My aspirations to jog a marathon and to participate in bicycling events were reduced to going to a health club. Both of us began having problems with our weight.

During one of my wife's worst mental breakdowns, she made a lot of irrational telephone calls, several of which were to my boss. This had a profound effect on me. I felt I must reach out to people, and I started doing this by hanging around a coffee shop near work. I had always kept very close to my family, but now I learned the art of making new friends. Many of the people who I got to know were musicians, and my skills in playing the guitar increased remarkably. I kept a guitar in my pickup, and I liked to stop by the coffee shop, and find people who could play the blues, and we could have an informal jam, right in front of the store. For the first time in my life, I had people skills. There were many types of people that I met there. They weren't all bohemians or hippies. I met lawyers, dentists, businessmen, old ladies-- from homeless people all the way up to the District Attorney, who went there every day. It was a classless society. There were a number of people who smoked marijuana, and were very open about it. I don't-- whenever I was offered some, I declined, saying that the last time I tried, I just got lost. To which they would say, don't give up so easily. Just keep trying!

This coffee shop is no more. They had a hard time paying their employees, and many of them had to quit. Finally, the owner didn't pay the power bill on time, and the newly installed smart meter automatically turned off the power, right in the middle of the day. The shop was remodeled, and the owner of the building tried to find a new tenant, but the building is still vacant. To open a new business there would require a lot of building code upgrades, I suspect. But I am grateful to this place, in that I made for myself a community of friends there, and to this day have a support group, you might say, in times which often have been trying. They say that sometimes a stranger can be the person who makes you have a good day, just by having a short conversation, a kind word, or some other show of good will. I know from experience that this is true, and I try to use this knowledge whenever I can, to make all the isolated people in this world realize that they are not really so alone, in my own small way.
I am also a lot more civic minded, and from my associations at this place, I am now the Secretary at the local ACLU, and a member of the County Behavioral Health Board.

Back to Starbucks. The very first service calls that I made, after a few initial trainings, were not at all pleasant. For one thing, my mother had just died, and the family wanted me to go to Denver, to help console Dad. But, I was told that I was the only one that could do the work. And so I complied, without revealing my personal grief to anyone. In addition to that, my earnings had been so dismal in the months before the training, that I had to use credit cards to pay for groceries, gas-- everything, during the Christmas holiday. I didn't have the money to fly to Colorado.

One of the local Starbucks had a problem with the steaming module on one of their two espresso machines. Because of the holiday, the supervisors in my company didn't get the message to me until the next day. When I finally arrived, the people there were furious. I apologized, but the situation soon became much worse-- the Starbucks employees had left the machine on, and steam had escaped continuously into the case, causing the electronic components to fail. As soon as we (the tech support people and I) were able to determine this, a technician from Sacramento had to be summoned to do the work. They didn't feel I was ready to do this, and the parts couldn't be reliably shipped during the holidays, anyway. The second Mastrena machine also had problems. It seemed to be unable to keep shots calibrated for long. I spent a lot of time on the phone with the technical support people trying to understand why this was happening. One of the Shift Supervisors was particularly irate, and started to insist that we install a new pump. Every day, they would call me to the shop, and ask me to calibrate the machine, and every day, it would occasionally oscillate into long or short shots. Every time, they would ask me why I didn't replace the pump. I didn't have one, I explained. As soon as I receive this part, I will do so. I spent a few afternoons at the shop, off the clock, just trying to keep them happy. Weeks later, they did send a pump. I replaced it, but nothing really changed. Finally, I asked why she thought it needed a new pump. It doesn't pour out water as fast as the other one, the store manager explained. I decided to turn up the pressure in the pump. I also thoroughly cleaned the mechanical unit, for good measure, and checked to see if something had been done amiss the last time it was serviced. Soon after that, the machine became more reliable. I made one mistake though. I was in the habit of putting on the coffee hose a bit carelessly, and one day it fell off. They made a big scene about it, and even made me come back several times, by deliberately putting a kink in the hose, just to give me a hard time.

I had several other very difficult challenges in my work. In this area, all the water is extremely hard. Even with high quality filtration systems, there is an inordinate amount of minerals in the water supplied to these machines. Several times, steamers failed, and I would discover a tank filled with crystals. I learned to completely renovate these modules, by putting in a new tank. All this work did not make me popular with the management at Starbucks. I got the feeling that they suspected I was making extra work for myself. I think that to prevent this type of thing from happening, it would be necessary to have a reverse osmosis filtration in place. However, I have heard that this type of system is extremely noisy, and very expensive, if they have to supply a lot of water. It would be necessary to install a large tank on top of the building. Also, after many of these incidents, I came to understand that the mechanism which refreshes the water in the tank may have failed. There are no error messages for this. Perhaps there should be. If I still worked for Starbucks, I would suggest that the people servicing the equipment check the intake and refresh valves, where all the water comes in to the tank. The tank is supposed to rinse itself out. But it can't do this, if there is a dirty solenoid in there.

I was asked to take several weeks off, while they trained another person to back me up. I had been criticized by a number of the supervisors in the stores where I worked. They didn't like my attire. I was told to start wearing suspenders, because occasionally, I had to hike my pants up, and they felt this was offensive. They didn't mention any of the mistakes I made. I did make a few small mistakes, but I guess they knew that was part of the learning process. I give them the credit for that.

What happened in the end is, I was asked to service the drive by machine again, the same one that had been so unreliable before. It had a leak coming from underneath the puck drawer, a bin that stores the used up coffee, which has been ground and compressed automatically by the machine. When I arrived at the store, I opened up the machine, turned the water supply back on, and noticed water dripping out of a supply valve to the mechanical unit, in the back of the machine case. I called tech support, and they agreed that I should have a new part sent.

The next two days went by, and two shipments were sent. Wrong parts. The second shipment, I cleaned the mechanical unit, since there wasn't anything else to do. It was so dirty, that a heavy crust of coffee was clinging to the piston that compresses the coffee pucks formed to make espresso. It had been a very long time since they had called either of us to the store. They were letting it go to pot.

Finally, I was told to go to a neighboring town, where the Starbucks store had three machines, and borrow the necessary part. I got up at five in the morning, and was given permission to borrow one of their parts. The store manager there still wrote a complaint because I went to the drive by window to see if they were open. She probably didn't like having to wait on me, by coming to the window. I wasn't actually a Starbucks employee. Just a contract laborer.

I made it to the other store at six o'clock, and hope that everything would immediately work. No cigar. There was another leak, coming from the tank on the hydraulic unit. I removed the tank, a complex job, and found highly decomposed O rings, which had to be replaced. Luckily, I had made an order the month before for numerous small O rings, in case we should lose one of these tiny parts. When we are doing preventative maintenance, we are given only the exact number of parts. If one is lost, the consequences are not good. The tank was repaired, but now there were error messages, when I attempted to start the machine. I called the tech support guy, and he asked me to take photographs of the hydraulic module, and send it to him. I did this with my smart phone, and waited. After no response for thirty minutes, and after sending him several emails, I went back to work. I had been reading the manual while waiting, and found that loose wires were probably the cause. I solved one error message by reinserting the module into the coffee machine with a harder push. The other error message mentioned a part called the Flow meter-- I checked all the connections going to and away from this component. After three tries, the machine started.

I went to the shift supervisor, and told her that the machine was going to be ready soon. She insisted that I calibrate the shots before I leave, and I complied with this request. But it was too late to please her. She stood by me, at the drive by window, and began haranguing me, with numerous rather irrational complaints, for about thirty minutes, until I was able to finish the calibration. There had been longer lines than usual, since it was Father's Day weekend, and she completely lost it. I managed to keep my temper, but this infuriated her even more. If I can't serve coffee faster, my customers will eat me alive! she wailed. I looked around. Not a good thing to say, to all these nice people. She accused me of laughing at her, and at the other employees there, and threatened to eject me from the store. I told her that I too felt self-conscious, to work when people were waiting.

I didn't reveal to her that I am secretly a world dominator, and one of the foremost supervillains on the planet.

A few days later, I walked into another Starbucks, to redeem a gift card, and the same lady was working there. She seemed to be completely over it, and even smiled at me. Perhaps things weren't as bad as I thought. I could move on to another victim. Maybe my cohorts and I could develop a microscopic drone cam. It would be amusing to destroy Karl Rove's privacy. A 24/7 online webcam, with running commentary...

But the next day, the boss told me that the Starbucks management had decided that I should not be allowed to work in their stores any more. No reason given. They acknowledged that I had been a competent technician.

When I think back on everything, all I can see is the District manager, who came by several times, but wouldn't say hello. A Stephen Covey clone. I see people like that everywhere, in management positions. They actually try to look like Stephen Covey. I wasn't working for him, so he didn't bother to get to know me. And I see myself, an aging hippy type, hair long and starting to gray, wearing a baseball cap as a toupee. Body no longer athletic. Got a gut now. Not the type of person that makes a good advertisement for Starbucks. I suppose I should also worry about my own boss, now. He's a Stephen Covey clone too, most likely.