One of the best parts of my job is the humour I see in the every day. Yes, the mundane can be funny if you look at it from the perspective of  ”material”.  Some times I fail to see the humour in the moment but eventually it all seems too funny and in that I can find Grace to smile the next time mundane happens.

I heard a rumour the other day that Tim’s actually has a manual on “how to order” and I thought this is a brilliant idea given that some folks just don’t seem to know what to do once the door closes behind them. As you read through this please keep in mind that I would not trade my job for any other, I do indeed love where I work and even the most irritating can be funny, in time.

RULES:

1) Approach the counter with as much confidence you can muster but don’t be cocky or push in front of someone who is already standing there. We bite but we are given very handsome bonuses for every customer that we don’t bite.

2) When you are asked “how may I help you” don’t allow your jaw muscles to slacken to the point where we can see your molars. Please refrain from trying this as the perfect time to practice your deer-in-the-headlights look. We may just hit you for fun. Do not put your hand on your hip, drop your chin and eyelids and say “I dunno, what are you offering. I had a guy try that with me last week, he was 5′8′, roughly 310 and dressed in a spandex unitard. The best I could do was tell him I was not his type, ie, blow up. No, I didn’t share “blow up” with him. I should have ’cause he keeps coming back.

3) Please have the following info already downloaded from your brain to your mouth:

    -size and quantity of coffee ie, SAY the words 3 medium or you’ll only get one. Do not wait for your server to give you one cup before you order another. After the 3rd trip back to the coffee station you may get more than just coffee or one of your cups might be a little on the “not so full” side. 

  -what you want in your coffee. Try as we might we cannot read every mind and guessing 3 cream 4 sugar might be a shock for black coffee drinkers. Once you have decided on a size ask for your liquids (aka dairy product) then the sweetener. We carry 18% cream and 2% milk. No we don not keep a special little bag of  goat milk, lactose friendly cream, or any other critter cream. Nor do we have hidden caches of whole, skim or 1% milk. Rule of thumb: if you don’t see it we don’t have it.

  -If you want your medium sized coffee in a large cup tell us right away, don’t wait until we’ve put a lid on the medium cup to relay that little nugget you’ll run the risk of us not quite getting all your coffee into the large cup. No we’re not uncoordinated, just miffed.

4) When ordering a muffin please take the time to ensure for yourself that we even have the muffin you want. Do not stand in front of the muffin case with your wild eyed stare and ask me what muffins I have. I will one day say “dunno, you’re standing there, you tell me”. Also, when looking at an empty muffin tray do not ask me if we have anymore out back. The truth is……yes. I do have more out back. “Out back” is the dumpster in the alley and there should be some of what you want in there from last night. Oops, don’t forget the step ladder, you’ll need that to get into the dumpster. What you’re looking for is behind the door marked “compost”, happy shopping.

5) When perusing the donut selection please reconsider asking if we have any “low fat” donuts. Your server will proabaly choke and may even tell you that the only “low fat” donut is the hole. Not the Robins Egg but the part in the middle of the donut that is no longer there. While we’re mentioning Robins Egss….they are “Robins Eggs” not “Tim Bits” or “rocks”. One day when someone asks for”Tim Bits” I’m going to send them to Tims, I might lose them as a customer but I’ll send them on the off chance they’ll bring me back a muffin.

6) Don’ stand staring at the “cash only” sign asking if we do debit. Take a moment or two to focus and the sign should pop right into view. Geesh!

7) We carry 6 different kinds of beverages in our pop fridge, 6. Please don’t point at the fridge, grunt and say Pepsi unless you really want a Pepsi. Do not ask for Pepsi, wait for me to put in on the counter and say “um I really wanted a Diet Pepsi” then when I give you the diet ask for a bottle of juice. On your second brain cramp I am actually trying harder to read your mind but all I keep hearing is “nice butt, no boobs but nice butt”.

Conversly do not keep changing your mind about what muffin you want just so you can play a game of a “peek a boob” with the girls. Or change your mind about the donut you want to see the girl stretch. We are not payed enough to amuse you in that way.

And finally (for now anyway) try to say “thank you”. All my staff put in extra effort to try to make your day better for you, don’t ruin in by trying to be the biggest idot possible.

Truth be told I am a liar. I have lied and most likely will continue to lie with the full knowledge that what is about to come out of my mouth IS in fact a lie. Am I powerless to stop it?  The answer is no. Are there circumstances where a lie is acceptable? Again, no. Why do I do it you ask? Is lying really much easier than being honest? No I don’t think so. Lying is less confrontational, it is easier to lie than it is to be honest but trying to keep track of the lies is near impossible and eventually the truth will come out.

There have been times when the phone has rung and rather than simply answer it I check the caller ID. No I don’t call this “screening my calls” I call it “am I really in the mood to talk to X”. If it’s someone that I have to be mentally ready to talk to there’s a good chance that the call will go unanswered at least 50% of the time. Then 40% of the time I’ll either “just be on my way out the door” or “just getting in”. The remaining 10% will be the calls that I actually take. Basically 90% of the time I’ll lie to those folks that I need to be ready to talk  listen to not because it’s easier for me but because it’s easier for them, or so I thought.

I recently put someone’s calls on ignore for a few days and when they asked me where in Sam Hill I had been for so long I caved. I told them the bare truth, that I have been really busy lately with precious time to myself and have not been in the mood to take their calls. Needless to say the next 5 minutes were quite tense as they insisted that what I had just said was mean spirited. When I asked them to pick between a lie and the truth they oddly enough, chose the truth but suggested that the next time they call and I’m not “up” to talking listening to them I should just say so and they’ll call me another time. Ya, right, like that will work!

Folks would call those types of lies “little white lies” and say they are harmless really but do they not harm someone. Are we not harming ourselves by not setting up barriers for the folks who call and suck the brains out of our heads. Are we not enabling their boundary free behavior by simply “being out” when they call rather than telling them that they can be draining to talk to?

Currently I am walking a road with someone who is seeing their own life unraveling as the lies are catching up to them. These are not the little white lies that hurt no one but rather the type of lies that leave everyone wondering just what is real and what is a lie. These lies will destroy not only the person’s life but also the lives of those who they hold near and dear. I am losing a friend and they are losing credibility because for them, it’s just easier to lie than to be honest. What a waste of a life, a love and a marriage.

I wonder….did they start with the line “ya, sorry I missed your call I must have been out”?

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 My entire life my father fought against the lure of alcohol and 98% of the time the alcohol won. Alcohol or any addiction can and usually does tear a family to pieces leaving the addicted alone and separated from family and friends Sadly not seeking treatment for an addiction is, to an outsider, a choice that does have very real consequences and the wounded outsiders are willing to let the chips fall where they may. Over time everyone grows tired of the abuse and slowly people just drift away disconnecting from the addicted leaving them alone to sleep in the bed they’ve made for themselves.

Yesterday I came face to face with that cliche as I literally saw the bed my father had made and died in 4 days earlier. I had spent the morning getting mentally prepared for what I would see when I walked through the door of what had been his home for the past 8 months. I was very prepared to break down at the sight of the first familiar thing, his coat, a hat, a picture or something that either he or my mother held dear. What I was not prepared for was the lack of empathy I felt and still feel that he had been dead for 4 days and no one knew it. Could be that I’m not supposed to feel anything at all. After all, when you accept the choices that someone else makes you also have to accept the consequences of those choices and I guess over time I had reconciled both.

As I looked around his tiny apartment I felt next to nothing, there was no remorse, no sadness, no empathy only a small amount of anger. Anger that he had not kept more things that belonged to my mother. I was annoyed that her touch was missing and was sickened by the smell.

The plan yesterday for Steve and I was to get into his apartment, locate his will (Steve has the dubious task as executor), financial papers, life insurance papers and access what was there. Today the plan is to go back and begin removing the contents from his apartment all the while sorting out what is good and what is garbage. There will be no big estate sale, my brother wants nothing from the apartment and well, neither do I. We are the only remaining relatives from my parents and if cousins want to fly here to pick through his stuff they are more than welcome to  but there is nothing left of value.

Today and the days ahead we had to find out how many more credit companies he owed 10s of thousands of dollars to and if there is any money left to fulfill my father’s promise to my brother. It’s somewhat tragically funny how a life can change from something so familiar to something so strange in just a few short months.

Well here it is December 20th and the only decorations I have up are the ones that Steve has put up. He put the outside lights up a while ago and this evening he brought the tree out of it’s hiding place and put it up. Sadly it’s been sitting up, naked,  for about 2 hours now and I could really care less.

There was a time when I would begin to get excited about Christmas in September and the closer December 25th got the more excited I was. Family dynamics, excessive stress and broken promises of sobriety year after year seems to have completely killed my Christmas joy or have I finally grown up?

As I sit here and stare at the bare tree I remember what Christmas was like when I was a kid. My dad would rant and rave as my mom, my brother and I loaded up the car and began a journey that lasted all of two hours back to where we came from. Every Christmas we would all gather back at my aunt’s house which was just down the street from where we lived when we lived in Quebec. It would be crowded, very energetic, loud and fueled with the excitement that kids always bring to Christmas. Always there was a current of tension that I didn’t understand as a child but it always took the edge off happiness as all the adults tip toed around the white elephant in the house.

There were a few occasionswhen I was either too young to pick up on the animosity or I found a way to escape from it that made Christmas blissful but they were very few. In the last 15 years the tension was brought to our house and both Steve and I began to resent the Christmas season. We made “rules of conduct” for my parents that no child should have to make just so we could keep the peace for a few days. What started out as a 4 day stay at our house got whittled down through the years into a few hours and in the last year we tried to avoid a visit all together.

Last year was the first Christmas without my mom and Christmas was exactly what we expected it to be, somber, reflective and somewhat empty. We went to bed on  Christmas Day complete with the obligatory drunken phone call from my father and that’s how Christmas has been in recent years.

This year  Christmas will be a little different as it seems the glue that held my immediate and extended family together was my mom and it is now crystal clear that the family Christmas will continue without me. This leaves me feeling neither sad, nor lonely or even slightly hurt, this year I feel much like the Christmas tree in the living room, up but not decorated.

On any given day, come the cold weather you can find him sleeping, on the floor, of a building entrance way. When the weather is warmer he sleeps in the gazebo at the park or somewhere outdoors, out of the way of onlookers, gawkers and the cruelest of people who live among us.

He is a slight man in stature, very polite, quiet spoken but his very presence causes people to look away, cross the street and some are so rude as to spit on him. He has no mailing address, no dresser full of clothes, no fridge filled with food or even a washroom that he can call his own.

Several times I have caught him in the dumpster  grabbing whatever we have thrown out, food that is still fit for human consumption but not fit for all save but the dumpster divers. He pees in the alley ways of buildings or in the few public washrooms that still allow him in. Never have I seen him leave a mess in the washroom as he always tidies up after himself and yet several places no longer allow him access to a basic human necessity.

I have bought him food and spent time talking with him simply because he is, a human being. He has a story, he had a life that I’m sure looked nothing like the one he presently has. Although I find it incredibly hard to believe that he comes from several generations of single child families, he has told me that he has no family, I can’t help but wonder why he is where he is. Alone, living on the street and seemingly unwanted by almost everyone he encounters. His only claim to fame is his aroma. No one knows where he came from, how he came to be out on the street or why he chooses to stay there.

To the mass public he is a shadow man, someone best gone unseen, yet everyone downtown knows exactly who he is but no one actually knows him. I know only his name, his claim of having no family and I wonder if there is someone who right now is wondering where he is, worried about how he is doing, wishing he’d come home.

My hope is that one day I will earn his trust enough to betray him and let someone who still cares about him know that he is still here, slipping through the streets of downtown, alive.

When you come across someone who lives on the street don’t ask yourself “why would someone live like that” rather ask yourself “what can I do to help”. Not every hand that stretches out is looking for money to feed a habit, some of them are simply reaching out to affirm that they still are part of the human race. Worthy of everything that we, who live indoors, declare that we are entitled to.

We are nearing the “Holiday Season” and I find myself getting frustrated by the whole falicy of the season. People seem to pull out all the stops to be a bit kinder to one another, there is an abundance (outside of the shopping malls) of patience and the “entitled” scramble to bestow all the Christmas trimmings on a “deserving family”. Pity Christmas, well commercialized Christmas, comes but once a year as the shadow people get pushed back into the dark corners for the remainding 11 months of the year.

Until they change Christmas to Gift-mas I will continue to rant for patience, kindness and equality for the other 11 months. To Rick aka “stinky” I pray this is the Christmas that you are welcomed back into the world that has to date shunned you not because it’s the right thing to do given the season but rather because you are one of us, a human being.