Fired!
21 Jan
Here’s the set I’m working on for this week. I hope you enjoy. As always comments are appreciated.
I got fired last week.
Over the past 14 years or so, I’ve held some cool jobs. I’ve been a network engineer. I was the creative director of a media company. The job I got fired from was barista at a coffee bar. Which hurts, because at 32 I shouldn’t even really be working in a coffee shop. And that’s the job I failed at.
I got fired because a homeless man shit himself while standing in the middle of said coffee shop, which I guess in Pennsylvania is grounds for immediate termination.
This is what happened. We had this policy where if you bring in your own cup and you didn’t have the $1.29 for a small coffee, as long as you threw us something, fifty cents or sixty cents, we weren’t going to fuck with you. You could just have the coffee.
And we had a few homeless guys who would snag cups out of the garbage and we’d rinse the cups out for them and everyone was happy.
But if you try and do something nice for people, someone will fuck it up.
This morning a guy comes in. White, late thirties, twitchy in that crackhead way and he’s just gripping the shit out of a fistful of pennies. Immediately he starts arguing with me over the cost of a small coffee. Since I can see that he’s not holding a hundred and twenty nine pennies in his hand, I tell him that if he just goes and gets a cup, I’ll give him the coffee. I don’t want his disgusting change.
Of course this pisses him off and he starts yelling at me “Fuck you. This is bullshit. Fuck this place.” As he’s shouting in my face, my coworker Shannon is standing next to me muttering under her breath. She’s like 5’3” and 100 pounds soaking wet. And all I catch as she’s muttering is “motherfucker” which, of course, she says loud enough for it to cut through the shop like a gunshot. There were like seven or eight customers sitting around the tables and all of their heads pop up to see what’s happening, like a field of prairie dogs.
Shannon loses it. She storms around the counter, throws open the front door and grabs an empty cup off of a trashcan. And she gets right in this guy’s face saying, “take the cup. Just take the fucking cup.” When he finally recovers from his surprise he takes the cup and drops the fistful of sweaty pennies into her hand.
The look of disgust on her face was almost indescribable. She looked like he had just spit AIDS into her hand. She runs to the front door and whips the change into the street.
When she does this the guy just freezes and I can see the panic in his eyes. This has got to be like the Sophie’s choice of homelessness. He doesn’t know whether to go after the free money outside or to try and get his cup of coffee and hope that he’ll be able to find all his pennies.
Watching this it was clear to me that this gentleman was homeless for his inability to make high-pressure decisions in a timed environment. He just stood there frozen. His eyes darting between the front door and the coffee machines.
And as he stood there, I could see him start to crack. Sweat started to bead on his forehead. His hand was shaking and after about fifteen seconds it was too much. He lost it and his bowels let go.
As soon as it happened everyone knew what exactly what happened but none of us knew what to do about it. The three of us are standing there in this Mexican standoff when I hear the back door open and a moment later my boss walked up behind me.
There must be situations in life where you don’t care if there’s an explanation or not, you just want the situation to end. Like you come home early from work and find your eighteen-year-old daughter with a ball gag in her mouth getting nailed from behind from her boyfriend. You don’t really care if they’re in love, you just want them to stop so you never have to see that again.
Watching watery shit run down a homeless man’s leg must have been like that for my boss. He started to ask “what the hell is …” but stopped himself and just told the three of us to get the hell out of the store.
HILLARIOUS! Loved it.
good stuff, it had me laughing but I think it needs a more descriptive ending. Maybe a funny comment before leaving or something to make the story a bit more memorable.
Brilliant.
Awesome! Coffee shops are revolving doors. I used to work for one about 5 years ago and got fired after three weeks. Didn’t get much of an explanation from the owner. In the years past I’ve seen many others fired similarly. At least you’ve got a story behind it!
Amazing. Perfect as is.
These new shorts are great. It’s nice to see you start to find your way with this blog again. I am really looking forward to more of your stand up writing. Keep it up!
Thanks,
It’s nice to be this active again. And hopefully video of some of these shows will be coming soon.
I like the story a lot. “this gentleman was homeless for his inability to make high-pressure decisions in a timed environment” and “find your eighteen-year-old daughter with a ball gag in her mouth getting nailed from behind from her boyfriend” are great.
That said, if you’re doing this as stand up I would start the story at a revised version of the third paragraph. “I got fired from a coffee shop because a homeless man shit himself. I guess in Pennsylvania that’s grounds for immediate termination.”
Also, consider doing a voice and act out for Shannon instead of just describing what she’s doing. If you can make a part of the story seem like it’s happening now, the audience usually finds it more interesting.
Best,
Ben
This absolutely made my day. This really epitomizes one of my favorite saying: “you can’t just roll with the punches, you have to revel in them.”