Coffee Novelist

What along strange Tripio its been

Coffee Novelist

September 15, 2021

“This can’t be happening.”

It was nearly dinner time when the realization struck me. There would be no coffee available tomorrow morning.

But, indeed it was true. You see, I was visiting my family in Ohio and the house I was spending the night in was being renovated. Not in a half ass sense either. The specific room in question being the kitchen. A kitchen was not there right now. All that remained of the old kitchen were four walls, a floor and electrical outlets. Outlets that could not be used to fire up a coffee maker the next day as the power was shut off. Luckily and conveniently, pizza was on the way for dinner.

Of course there was a Starbucks near the house. Perhaps I had forgotten it was there. Or I had been so accustomed to seeing them everywhere these days that one no longer made an impression. A Starbucks was just part of the backdrop of an everyday life in this country. No matter. I had remembered it was nearby and would still be there in the morning. So I ate my pizza when it arrived, relaxed to some football on TV and later drifted off to sleep in the arms of a siren.

A short trip that began a long trip

Since I posses a morning chronotype, I was up by 5 the next day. As soon as I woke, I checked my phone to confirm the location and hours of that nearby Starbucks. I wrote in my journal for about 20 minutes before heading for my ritual, emotionally comforting morning coffee. I arrived a few minutes after six, and was not the first customer. The three baristas had the coffee brewed, the music on and were ready to rock. Since I am old coffee guy from way back, I requested a Vente Italian and blueberry scone. You cannot beat the classics. I left a tip- Once a barista, always a barista- and headed for the door.

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But I stopped still right there. It had hit me. My cup and scone secured, I had let my self relax now. I was able to appreciate and recognize my surrounding again, now that I had a full coffee cup in hand. I breathed in that unique aroma of a just opened Starbucks location. In that instant I was standing in the vestibule of my Starbucks on Diversey in Chicago on a September morning in 1993.

They say that sense is the most powerful of all senses when it comes to triggering memory. A previous experience with scent memory took me back to the time when I was helping my second oldest son begin his freshman year at Purdue. He had been on campus several times over the years and even stayed in the dorms as part of a science camps. But this was different. Today he would begin living on campus. This meant being away from everything that was routine and comfortable.

As we finished up, my son was washing his hands in the dorm bathroom down the hall. I had washed mine just before him. As he took his turn, he said to himself more than to me, “The soap smells the same.” In those few words, I heard the realization in his voice that he was at Purdue now, on his own and living in this dorm. The scent memory from previous times at Purdue had activated in him the understanding that I would be driving back home without him.

Advice is cheap

Yes, I was a barista at one time. It was for four years at Starbucks in Chicago from 1990-1994. That includes a heck of a lot of mornings when I was there to open the store. I had not been back to a Starbucks at opening time until this very morning. It had about 25 years. Starbucks and I have each changed a great deal since we parted ways. Starbucks, the company, has become a world wide success in most every measurable way. If I had stayed employed there, the numbers tell me, I could be pretty well off financially now.

The scent induced memory paralysis kept me standing in the vestibule. I saw my younger self in place of one the three baristas behind the counter. I wanted to shout across the store and tell my younger self to stay in that green apron and one day you will be rich. Induced by scent memory, I had the chance to reclaim the one and only chance in my life I was ever going to have of having a lot of money to my name! I believed I had exorcised this euphorically recalled landscape of my life when I wrote Tripio. Not quite though. Or, I would not have been standing in the vestibule of one of the 25,000 Starbucks on the planet, thinking of yelling advice to my younger self.

Be where your coffee is

Like my son’s experience on college move in day, the scent memory made my years as a young man behind at Starbucks become real. I was back behind that counter tied into the green apron and perhaps checking to see if we had enough flat to-go lids. Just then the door opened behind me and the scent memory trance was broken. Damn, I was enjoyed the trip back in time. Couldn’t this customer have picked one of the other 24,999 Starbucks? Oh well, I stepped out of his way and back into the present moment.

I had enjoyed my scent memory journey back in time. Luckily, there was a better place for all that recall and it is entitled Tripio. The urge to communicate some of my wisdom to my younger self had passed. Just as well, knowing him, he would not have listened anyway. Which is also just as well. Wisdom can’t be absorbed by the ears. It has to earned by experience, processed by the mind and paid for my one’s emotions. So, my younger self will just have to buy book and see how it ends.

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May I help who’s next?

ACTE!

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August 24, 2021

Sure, the search engines will pester me about the title to this post. I know that they will because it is not ladled to their always open mouths to be poured in drip by drip. They want me to write for your expectations. They want me to create this blog based on what you have told them what you will read. Ah, hell no. Never fear though. Because if you have managed to find this post, it will be worth reading in spite of the self censoring web-crawlers. So, go ahead. You’ve earned it.

We humans have a heard time changing. We have spent most of our collective civilizations attempting to make things easier on ourselves. All in all, we have achieved truly amazing things over the centuries. And, I’m all for it. If not for the sweat equity of those before me I would not be able to brew the coffee I must have in the morning, fire up the laptop and in about half an hour climb into my car and drive to work.

Makes me wonder

But I wonder from time to time if things are too easy, for me at least. I think this thought and type the words fully realizing how “problematic” such a proposition can be. I am lucky enough to have a life which allows the time to think such things. Two things to say now: I’ve already paid my respects to those before me in the paragraph above. Second, it seems to me that in this day and age, it would be problematic to someone somewhere if I announced on my blog that it was time for me to clip my toenails. So, on we go.

I think what I am getting at is that in the search for ease and convenience we may be losing the ability to appreciate. We can buy anything from our phone on our buttocks and have it sent to us, still on our buttocks some time later. It literally makes me wonder if something is being lost…

(A moment or two or thoughtful contemplation is now taking place)

Time’s up! I don’t personally think “easier is better” creates a frame of mind that can sustain appreciation for said gain. It just ain’t how humans work.

Don’t let me ruin your day. Instead, I have a simple solution to apply. It will help one to appreciate the endeavor, purchase or activity to be undertaken. Here goes. The endeavor purchase or activity will be appreciated more deeply, if it costs you your attention, concentration, time and effort. One must ACTE in order to appreciate. The “e” is pronounced at the whim of the reader. I’m not forcing the issue.

ACTE before you act

I will illustrate, clarify and enhance ACTE by using my own life as an example. My youngest son is now off to a Big Ten university to undertake his college education. He is following in the footsteps of his three older siblings, who all worked hard to graduate from college. My contribution in helping them along the way required a hell of a lot of each letter.

A – Attention- reading to them, reading to them, reading to them.

C – Concentration- mostly in the form of listening, observing and engaging.

T – Time- Spending the time with them that I had, but more importantly spending time with them that I didn’t have.

E – Effort- Spending energy in ever changing forms with, on and for them.

In my example the reward and appreciation was a long time in coming. However, the brilliant utility inherent in ACTE can take any form. Use it at the grocery store, car wash or peep show. It will enhance or even create your appreciation of what you’ve bought experienced or created because anything too easy simply won’t, because it can’t. It’s the human condition, people.

Nothing worthwhile ever, ever, ever comes easy. If it does, or seems to, then you maintain the option not to ACTE before you act, while pronouncing the “e” or not.

ACTE before you act, or post

Commodity me?

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August 17, 2021

Commodity me?

This is nothing more than a hobby, a pastime, a vitally absorbing creative interest. That is what it was when I started and what I need it be, what it must be. That is all. I am free to do anything with this post, with anything I write in a longer format because the end, the goal is the process. The vitally absorbing creative interest appears out here but the true destination is the mind. Going outward to find the inward, in other wards. Words, I mean.

My mind is clear, energized and productive at 7:01 on this Sunday morning. I moved my laptop out onto my porch in order to channel the wisdom of the breeze and the trees. I am managing my mental energy now, not the clock, not what I have to do later. The morning breeze and swaying trees don’t care what’s next. That is what I am trying to capture here. Can you feel it?

The Great “We”

Is there a value for anyone else in this post but me? In a way, I hope not. Because, I am writing this for me. If writing a post keeps my mind, body and soul calm, clear and energized then I have done my share. I have done my part for the great “we”, contributed to the world of interbeing. In writing this I am working to contribute to that connecting web we all share. It is the only sustainable way to make this world a better place anyway. Will it sell books and generate clicks and comments. I hope so, if they are coming from the breeze and the trees.

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Chasing the external

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August 10, 2021

“O seeker, know that the path to Truth is within you” -Sufi Sheikh Badrutdin

The chase is on

I don’t get is sometimes. All this chasing the external. Chasing clicks, likes, sales, external validation. I just don’t. There isn’t anything of true lasting value out there. It distracts me more than anything else. It demotivates me, it annoys me, it takes the desire and pure fun out of it all. I simply don’t want any part of it. The real reward is found inward and is pursued and practiced in anonymity.

So why bother posting at all? I like to post. I enjoy watching my thoughts assume the shape of words, paragraphs and posts. It is fun and a good practice for a early rising person such as myself. What better way to spend the hours before the worlds gets started than to contemplate, read or write in the time when the new day is being created? Now is the time for this day will never come again. It is a time of renewal. A time to take the unlimited possibility the new day offers and add ones’ own energy.

Trying to catch something that never moves

It is not that I am being selfish or self-righteous about any of this. I just don’t see the point of chasing the external, of taking my place in line in the “consensus trance” of fleeting external validation. Simply and incorrectly stated: that don’t motivate me. I am finding that when I don’t blog, a spark is missing from my being. So I hit these keys.

I feel better now after hacking these words out than I did fifteen minutes ago. That is my motivation here. I suppose that I am being selfish here, but what do I care? It works for me.

If my internal journey, whose true worth is not measured in clicks or likes, is any real value then only I will know. Hey, I didn’t make the rules.

It really does work for me

Shakespeare’s Sonnets wake my mind

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July 27, 2021

Tomorrow night I am planning on seeing A Midsummers Night’s Dream. The production is to be out doors in a park on a mid-summers’ night and starts at 8 p.m. That may still be considered evening, not night. I am not too worked up about it as the event is free. I am excited to Shakespeare performed live on a stage whether it is evening or night. It will be change for me since I usually start my day reading a Shakespeare sonnet.

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For the past few months, I have been reading a Shakespeare sonnet nearly every morning. It makes for nice five minute mind focusing exercise to start the day. It’s not the Shakespeare so much as the duration of the exercise that works for me. I access No Sweat Shakespeare to read the sonnet in the original. I kick my mind into gear trying to figure it out. This is the part of the routine that does my mind the most good. Next, I read the modern interpretation. At times, I get it, and other times not so much. As a reward, I watch and listen to Patrick Stewart read said sonnet, which then sends me off to the next part of my morning in good frame of mind.

And so I am more than half way finished with the 154 of these enjoyable enigmas. So I thought it would be a good time to list my favorite verse or line from them so far. I may add my own clarification for the heck of it. Here you go.

“The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell”
“Thy eyes are constant stars”
“And many maiden gardens, yet unset, with virtuous wish would bear you living flowers.”- I garden so I liked this one. I have no idea what it means.
“Like old men of less truth than tongue”-Old men, young men, young women, old women, most all of us, anyone on Twitter.
“Whatever star that guides my moving”
“I all alone beweep my outcast state.”- you and everyone else who’s ever taken a breath.
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought-” see above
Sonnet 32 simply for the word “equipage“
“I in thy abundance am sufficed” Many parents will relate to this line
“When I most wink, then do my eyes best see”- And he lived before television, phones, the internet. This is as true then as now. Your subconscious mind doesn’t want anything from you but your attention.

Well, hell. I only make it to the mid-40’s. I had a blast. Hope you did too!

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Reading for fun again

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July 13, 2021

I have been reading a lot recently. However, I was not reading for fun or relaxation. I’ve been reading page after page devoted to helping me understand my mind and the path I allowed it to take. That path led to mental, spiritual and physical delusion. It was an incredibly bad choice. However, I did learn that in order to

move on I must forgive myself. I have to use some of that grace and forgiveness I usually reserve for others and take it for myself.

It was a cooler day on my porch yesterday when I picked up a book I had started a couple months ago and read just for the fun of it. I began reading for reading’s sake again. It felt great.

Reading for fun again reminded me how much fun reading is

The book really isn’t the point here. Yes, it was a good choice as it was a fun escape and I was half way through it already. That was part of the value in picking it up again as I was remembering characters and plot twists as I went along. Clearly, this isn’t unusual in and off itself as one reads a novel. yesterday on my porch whenever I said to myself “Oh, yeah, he’s the crazy guy with the mechanical hand stalking the main character“. As a result, could feel myself connecting to the “Golden Buddha” inside myself. The one we all have in common, yet is too easily covered up.

I ended up finishing “Squeeze Me” while not having set out to finish yesterday on my porch. Yet, I was having such a grand time reading for fun again that I just kept going. The grace that I was able to give myself a little grace. I felt good enough about myself again to just enjoy the present moment.

It is fair to concede that Carl Hiaasen did not have me in his thoughts when he was writing his book about Burmese Pythons over running south Florida. In the end, he wrote a enjoyable book and it felt good to simply enjoy reading it.

Writing about reading to write

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May 25, 2021

**The fault lies not with the mob, who demands nonsense, but with those who do not know how to produce anything else**

I have picked out Don Quixote as the centerpiece for my summer reading. I have been constructing my own summer reading program for years now. My recent life has permitted time to design my front porch to accommodate a summer spent there reading to my heart’s content. In the last few years of I’ve added a mosquito net, a wheeled table, and a small circular fan for hot ass summer afternoons.

During the depths of my Midwest winter I begin to imagine myself out on my porch on a sunny Sunday afternoon with a book, my mind and me. I will chose a book to read that has been calling to me for years. A list of those books includes Moby Dick, Tristam Shandy, Huckelberry Finn, Oscar Wilde’s plays, Hamlet. This year will be Don Quixote which I have already bought and it ready and waiting for the weather to begin to warm up. But this year, something troubling has been happening. I’ve already wondered how I can post about my reading Don Quixote. And when I do, how many likes will it get? How will my SEO program react to it? How do I work Sancho Panza into my meta-description?

A trip to the library

Let me compare my front porch to a library, like the one I grew up going to on Dayton’s near north side. I went there to read books on lots of subjects. At that time in my tween years I loved books on WWII. It was exciting to go to the library. I headed straight for the history section within which lived the WWII books. Sometimes it was hard to chose among the titles. But part of the fun was choosing among the books, and then picking a couple you took an interest in at that moment. There was an element of suspense in those days in doing so without a phone in your hand providing as much information on the book as you could find.

I had to read the cover, back cover blurbs and maybe the table of contents. I had to then trust my instinct, obey my intellectual curiosity, and chose to read the book based on something inside me.

The icing on the cake was that if you had time you were able to read at least some of it then and there, before you had to head home. Once home you could read that whole book that you did not know existed just an hour or two beforehand. By reading it you could learn, discover and grow. As a preteen, I felt a rush, a buzz on the walk home holding the new book, this new world under my arm. That feeling was one of both anticipation and excitement with a dash of something undefinable. It was perhaps the sense, the understanding that I growing my mind and furthering my understanding of the world I lived in.

Keep your mind shut. No one wants to hear it

But what if I went to my library looking for something I knew was already there? A book or books that someone had told me to go find for some other purpose beside genuinely wanting to read it? Another reason besides satisfying honest intellectual curiosity? You know, that energy that can’t be defined by formula, measured by a scale or held in your hand? That thing, that mental force that got us out of the caves one fine spring day and on the way to indoor plumbing? What if you put other books aside and read a different one because a SEO program told you it was what someone else wanted you to read? Expected you to read, so that you could post about it to get clicks, likes and comments?

And this is what is scaring me about myself. More and more often I have been finding myself basing my choice of what I read and if I can post about it, or how I can post about it.

When reading was for it’s own sake

Give them what they want, to hell with your your own intellectual curiosity. SEO it steering your content towards clicks. Where does the content orginate? My mind. Who is in charge of my mind and all of it’s possible thoughts? Me. Or, it used to be.

It may be me over-reacting a bit, but I want to roam all the stacks in my library again. SEO and Google can piss off. I want to read so I can continue to learn for it’s own sake. I thought that was supposed to be the great thing about the internet, it was supposed to give us unlimited access to the world, not contain and control that access bit by bit. Like I said, I decided last year that it was time to read Don Quixote. I will honor that intention when it finally warms up around here. The book has been calling to me the same way all the books on the summer read lists have: In an undefinable way which I’ll call it the law of intellectual attraction. I am going to read Don Quixote because I want to.

All the said, the point underlying all this is that I like to write fiction. And recently, I have found writing about writing fiction in this blog to be too time consuming and not all that much fun. I have posted weekly for about two and a half years, which is quite commendable considering most blogs die after just a few months. So, I’m going to post less often for the time being. I’m going to ignore as much as I can SEO, SERP and web crawlers. I’m going to read and write and post for the fun of it!

So there. Is this what they call “tilting at windmills?‘ If so, I’m about to find out.

P.S- I’ll let you know if it was.

“What about that writing you used to do?”

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May 11, 2021

It led to thoughts of quitting everything for good. Not stopping, or taking a break, but quitting everything for good. – a journal entry from last week

I wrote the above entry in my journal after a tough week working on the books and the blog. I could list the causes that generated that entry but they are all downstream. The lists always are. They are different for everyone, everyday, every time. My list of woes, trials and challenges were mostly all of a technical, after market nature. I can do content. That is no problem. It’s the rest of the stuff involved in moving the books and the blog along that drove me to the point I noted above. My life as whole was fine and dandy. In fact, the next day’s entries mention that I got a raise at work. I am grateful to have a job in the first place so don’t bust out cryin’ for me just yet.

What about that writing you used to do?

But the two are connected. I received my raise partly do to the fact that I go into work mentally energized and ready for the day. Often times, I have already achieved something such as a good first draft on a post that has put me in a good place mentally. This carries me thought the work day and it’s challenges. Before I know it, I’m home and work has gone well.

That cycle has been generated over and over by getting up around five every morning, making my doppio, and writing on my books and my blog. My after work day mind is fatigued, my stomach empty and body in need of a shower. Yet, I can sometimes find space in the evening for social media, blog maintenance and revisions.

This is a great routine for me. It may not be clear yet but I am simply doing what my mom asked me to do years ago. My mom is not the most direct person on the planet. She would not ask directly for things. I remember once making a pot of afternoon coffee for a group of family and friends and my mom was there. She saw me obviously performing the task and asked, “Are you making coffee?’ This was her way of saying that she’d like some.

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So, when she asked me, “What about that writing you used to do”, she was, in her own round about way, telling me to get my ass in gear and do something more constructive with my time besides drinking beer and watching football. This was half a decade ago or maybe longer ago than that. I still prepare and brew coffee the same way.

What about that writing you used to do?

When I noted in my journal that I was quitting, I had to ask myself why I started my writing based routine in the first place. I had to find the place I go back to. What do I go back to? My purpose? What hill was I choosing to die on? What would I do with my hours and days if I were not following my mom’s round about suggestion that I start writing again?

So, what about that writing I used to do? I write to give me incentive to achieve and maintain mental clarity, energy and calling. I do what I do because it generates a positive sense of self before work and on weekends. It gives me a settled mind which in turn rewards me with a great night of sleep. I wake up at “divine time”, not clock time, when my subconscious and superconscious minds have recharged and tell me to get up and begin this day. The day I will direct, define and refine by doing just this, exactly what I am doing now.

I asked myself the question my mom asked me years ago I realized that I would be quitting for the wrong reasons. OK, I’ll list a few : Tripio cover upgrade rejected by Amazon, cost of an editor, writing to keep Yoast SEO happy. Give all this up for that? No way. I was thinking quitting for reasons that had nothing to do with why I started in the first place. Fortunately for me, I think I remembered my mom’s suggestion because in few days I am finally going to be able to safely visit her again.

I found it again

To conclude, I think that it is too easy to get distracted in this world today. It is too easy to stop something for reasons that aren’t your own. Even something that you know has been good for you! And that is a red flag. Or even a red apron recipe. If you are feeling discouraged about doing something that is good for you, try to see where those thoughts are coming from. Find your way back to the why. Try not to look at the downstream list of attachments or results that are really beyond your control. The distractions, the reason you want to quit are most likely not truly your own. You are a golden Buddha, hidden by a layer of mud. Take a look, scrape off a bit of the mud. There you are! Carry on!

Oh by the way, mom, thanks! And, your coffee is ready.

VanGogh & Tripio are shaking the content tree

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May 7, 2021

“Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility”

Painters block?

I take this blog seriously. I know I have come to use humor more frequently as the blog goes on. However I believe that is an indication of growing confidence in the blog itself. The humor, mostly self-deprecating, is an attempt to create an enjoyable, unique experience for anyone reading the blog. I feel responsible to put out a good post even if it is read by a single person.

But this week, I have devoted the mental energy usually spent writing the blog to the countless other details required to sustain and maintain a published novel on Amazon. In addition I am occupied with the progress of novel number two, following other blogs and the housekeeping required to manage it all. As such, last night arrived and I found myself without a topic in my head for this morning’s first draft. It is the end of the week, the time when I usually begin work on my Monday post. Mildly panicked, I did glance over some books I have around that I sometimes refer to for inspiration. They provided none.

Shaking the content tree

Earlier this week I had met a fellow ex-Starbucks barista. We exchanged battle stories and favorite coffee drinks. I promised I would drop off a signed copy of Tripio when I returned next week. Consequently, Tripio was in my head more than usual since then. However, I could not dredge a post from it all week. Then I tried movement. I wondered around the house hoping to shake the content tree. I can usually pick up fallen fruit off the content tree after I step away from the laptop and move around a bit. Letters to Theo, by Vincent VanGogh came into my mind. I went upstairs to retrieve my copy, brought it downstairs and did nothing further with it. It was too late. I was past writing but was confident I would find something in Letters to use in the morning.

Letters to Theo It is an important part of Tripio. If you google Van Gogh you will discover he was, the letters to his brother aside, a painter. You will find the book mentioned by Jay, Tripio’s main character, in this excerpt – “One must not wait for it to reveal itself. By painting one becomes a painter. That must be from Letters to Theo.“

Starry, starry Starbucks

Jay isn’t trying to become a painter. But he is sure that he can apply Van Gogh’s wisdom to his own life and write novels. Jay questions himself throughout Tripio. Will he just write and not worry so much about anything else? Will he do the right thing by taking Van Gogh’s wisdom to heart? Will he write and forsake the promising career he had in front of him at a new and growing company called Starbucks? Will he stop writing to become the man he was meant to be? Van Gogh was shaking the content tree pretty hard in Tripio as you can see.

As for today’s post, Van Gogh provided the inspiration again. This morning, after brewing my doppio followed by a pot of coffee backer, I picked up that same, beaten up copy of Letters to Theo. I opened it. Then, I swear that I am not making this up, I turned to and read the paragraph containing the quote:

“Just dash something down if you see a blank canvas staring at you with a certain imbecility”

And so the canvas, as you have read, is no longer blank.

Two Starbucks books

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April 26, 2021

The tale of two Starbucks green aprons

I am reading “How Starbucks Saved my Life” by Michael Gates Gill with great interest and a good deal of empathy. I am marking Starbucks 50th anniversary by attempting to read other books on Starbucks that focus on the baristas, and not the business. My novel, Tripio, does that brilliantly. I had not choice however, since I began my career there as a barista. How was published in 2007. Tripio in 2018. Tripio takes place at Starbucks in 1992, and How in and around 2007. The years between 1992 and 2007 represent almost unimaginable change in the small barely regional company for which Jay Altonstreet put on the green apron. Since Jay in Tripio actually started in 1990 the contrast is even more telling.

1990
Starbucks expands headquarters in Seattle.
Unveils Starbucks Mission Statement.
Total stores: 84

2007
Eliminates all artificial trans fat and makes 2 percent milk the new standard for espresso beverages.
Opens stores in: Denmark, the Netherlands, Romania and Russia.
Total stores: 15,011

STARBUCKS GREEN APRON - Used - Barista Uniform 2020 - $18.75 | PicClick

See what I mean? But the numbers can not do much more than look back at you. If you closely though you will clearly see both Tripio and How.

“That’s the way we do things at Starbucks”

The company experienced by Jay in Tripio and M.G.G. in how would seem to be worlds apart. The company they each experienced was different. The protagonists in each book could not be more dissimilar. The books are told in a way reflecting these distinctions. The unification comes from the fact that the two books are each telling one person’s unique story while working at Starbucks. I wrote Tripio in large part to release the experience of the Starbucks years. I worked there during the Starbucks IPO and left a million dollars behind when I took off my coffee stained green apron for the last time. MGG “felt numb” at the prospect of starting his job at Starbucks, already a global corporation.

How is the story of how MGG undergoes change, transformation ands personal growth. Gill admits to a lot of his faults in How and tells how their consequences led to him working at Starbucks. Jay’s story is similar in that I wrote him the intent of keeping in all of his faults. He is selfish, convinced he is unique, and wants to do with his life want exactly what he wants to do, even if it means hoping for a mis-carriage for a child he has fathered. His faults contribute to him leaving leaving a million dollar IPO payoff behind when he quits Starbucks.

Telling figures

Tripio and How by their nature must also include baristas as major figures in their respective tales. For MGG it is his hiring manger, Crystal. For Jay that person it is a barista named Kati. Tripio features characters based on dozens of real life baristas and store managers who day to day, latte by latte built the Starbucks MGG went to work for. His baristas and managers work to improve on what the people in Jays’ time created.

The two tables of figures above made me say “Damn, look at that.” How and Tripio due their part in telling the numbers story also. I am finding How worth reading so far because like Tripio, it tells the equally important story of the real, actual people behind those numbers. Writing this now, many years later, I miss the crews I worked with. Those days at Starbucks still vibrate in my person, still resonate in my mind. Hence books and novels that tell the stories of real people, not numbers, money and data. How and Tripio tell the equally, if not more, compelling story of what happens after the tills for the the day have been counted, after that stupid green apron is untied and thrown in the dirty laundry bag on the way out the door.