Chapter 1 – Jesse Olson
“Jesse, are you coming down?”
I stopped what I was doing and looked at the clock. It was already seven and I was trying to figure out where the time had gone. I was going through my father’s room, and I guess I’d just gotten sidetracked. I’d forgotten that I had a job to do.
“Coming down now. Open the doors and I’ll be down there in just a minute.”
Melissa told me to take my time. She knew that it was a rough month for me, and I was thankful that she didn’t give me too much grief when I was having a day like today. It had only been two weeks since my father died from an aneurysm, and I was still trying to come to terms with it. When I’d woken up at two this morning, all I wanted to do was talk to him, so instead I’d started going through the closet that was jammed with his things.
Pushing the pile that I had in front of me back into the closet, I decided that I was going to come back after the bistro closed in the afternoon and finally go through it all. I wasn’t sure what was in there – I doubted that my father even knew what was all in there – but the things he left behind were all I had left of him. That and all of the memories that I would cherish forever were what was left of my dad, and it just didn’t seem like enough. The bistro was a part of both of us, and when I started down the stairs, it was my dad, Johnson, that I thought about.
The first customer came in and asked for the house blend. It was the most popular thing that we sold, and Melissa already had many to-go cups ready. It wasn’t long before there was a steady stream of customers filing through. Not all bought just the house blend coffee, but most people did. It was what we were known for, a recipe that my father had come up with five years ago when we opened the place. Now it was called Johnson’s Special Blend so that every time someone ordered it they would be reminded of who created it. Hearing his name all of the time seemed to comfort me as well. It was a win-win in my eyes.
By noon I was starting to get tired, but the line was out the door and had been since about thirty minutes after we opened. I don’t know why, but ever since my father had died, it seemed like everyone couldn’t get enough of the coffee. I don’t know what that meant, but I liked the idea of so many people getting to try something that my father had been passionate about. He loved coffee and he loved to cook. I hadn’t gotten the love for the dark drink that he had, but I did like to cook, and I was more than happy to be in the kitchen making food and pouring drinks. With Mellissa there, it was a two-person job that kept us rather busy from the start of the day until we closed the doors a little after three.
I was thinking about lots of things, mainly my father, when I heard a bit of a disturbance in the front area. I could hear the tone that my friend was taking, and it seemed like someone was causing a problem. When I got up there, I could see that several people were arguing. It had all stemmed from who was next in the queue.
“Are you two really fighting about this?” I know that they were customers, but in reality it was two grown men who couldn’t get along long enough to get through a line. I was sure that they had been waiting for some time, but I couldn’t let chaos rule. My father would have never let it happen, and that was part of the reason that I made sure to get involved. Johnson always figured out a way for everyone to walk away happy. I wasn’t sure how that was supposed to work with the likes of the two of them, but I knew I had to try.
After listening to the problem, I got both of their orders and gave them to them on the house. I had them promise that they would come back with better attitudes. As they left, Melissa told me that I was silly to have let them go the way I did.
“Why would you give them freebies because of the way they were acting?”
“Because it was just an honest mistake and sometimes it’s better to diffuse a situation than to make it worse. There wasn’t much I was going to do that wasn’t going to make it worse. Just seemed easier to get them calmed down and send them on their way.”
She kind of shook her head and warned me that I was going to start a precedent that I didn’t want.
“This isn’t the law we’re talking about, Melissa, it’s just a couple cups of coffee.”
“Okay, Jesse, but remember that I told you it was going to be this way. You’ll see. You know that I like to see the best in people, and even I know that giving out free drinks if they cause a ruckus isn’t going to be good.”
I agreed a little, but that was mostly because I didn’t know what to say. Was it really that bad to let it go just that once to make everyone happy?
***
As the week wore on and the lines got longer, Melissa was proven right. It was becoming a problem. I still didn’t know why in the world the place had gotten so popular, but I didn’t really have time to think about. It seemed like I spent half my day trying to corral and calm the people down. I had to figure something out, because we couldn’t make as much coffee as was needed and serving them in time was almost impossible.
“Are you ready for today?”
I looked up to Melissa and asked if the new girl had showed up. I knew that it was just her second day, but I was afraid the day before had been too much for her. It wasn’t every day that there was a fist fight in a bistro line over a cup of coffee, but it had happened yesterday.
“I haven’t seen her. She isn’t supposed to be here for a little while. Who knows, maybe she’s just running late?”
I looked about as dubious as I felt. I didn’t think that Amanda was coming back, and I didn’t blame her. The Ground Bean was getting out of hand, and it wasn’t the first time that I wished my dad was still around. He would know what to do about all of this.
“Well, I guess you can call that temp agency in a little while when they open. See if they will send me another couple of candidates over here. It isn’t going to get any better until we get some more help in here.”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks, Melissa, I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“You would be very busy, I suppose.”
I kind of laughed and went back to the paperwork that I was supposed to send to the accountant. The numbers didn’t add up, and though the man was magical, there wasn’t going to be any denying that the money just wasn’t there. While the bistro was doing well, it would seem that my father had had a lot of debt, and I was now strapped with it. Even with all of the business we were doing, it didn’t feel like it was ever going to be enough.