One thing I won't miss...

It's been hard saying my goodbyes to everybody at Starbucks. I know I will still see them on occasion, but as a visitor, or even more sadly, as a customer. It won't be the same as working with them on a daily basis. My job is a very interactive job. It's not like an office setting where you might chat for a few minutes at a time with your co-workers at the water cooler; you're constantly working together to put out a product, as a team. In this environment, it didn't take long for me to think of my co-workers rather as friends. I will miss my Starbucks friends a lot.

But you know what I won't miss? 5:00 a.m. Especially after nights like last night. Which went something like this:

9:00 p.m. - finish work, head for home

10:00 p.m. - get ready for bed

10:30 p.m. - set alarm for 4:30 and turn out the lights

10:30 p.m. to around midnight - toss and turn

sometime after finally falling asleep - start to dream strange dreams that all seem to feature a low battery noise at regular intervals

3:15 a.m. - wake up to discover that the low battery noise is, in fact, somewhere in the room

3:17 a.m. - find phone in the dark, fumble for charger base, which is not on the shelf it is supposed to live on

3:18 a.m. - turn on light, find charger base under a pile of clothes, grumble about my crappy housekeeping abilities, place phone on base

3:19 a.m. - turn off light, try to fall asleep

3:20 a.m. - "bdaleep" (that's how I have decided to onomatopoeiatize the low battery noise)

3:21 a.m. - turn light back on, follow cord from charger base to wall, which leads under trash can, which is overflowing, grumble and complain that no one but me ever changes the trash, unplug and plug back in charger base

3:22 a.m. - turn light back off, try to fall asleep

3:23 a.m. - "bdaleep"

3:24 a.m. - turn light back on, unplug charger base, move phone and base both into the other room and plug them in as far away from my sleep-deprived head as I can get them

3:26 a.m. - "bdaleep" - from somewhere inside the bedroom

3:27 a.m. - start to cry

3:28 a.m. - turn light back on, tear room apart looking for another phone

3:30 a.m. - find another phone, also with a dying battery, plug it into another charger

3:32 a.m. - turn light off, try to fall asleep

3:32 a.m. to around 4:00 a.m. - toss and turn

sometime after 4:00 a.m. - finally drift off to sleep

5:10 a.m. - freshly recharged phone rings, it's my fellow opener wondering why I'm not at work yet, mumble a flustered apology, roll into yesterday's work clothes, check why alarm didn't go off and discover that I had set it for 4:30 p.m. (The oldest excuse in the book, I know. I swear it's the first time I've done it in ages.)

5:20 a.m. - arrive at work, spewing apologies and gratitude for the wake-up call to my fellow opener, kick it into high gear and have the doors open for business at 5:25 a.m.

6:28 a.m. (or thereabouts) - start breathing again

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