The thing is ….
I may just be temperamentally unsuited to be a coffeehouse mistress. At least the kind I have to be at little B*heme. This is one of the things I’ve learned. Quite arduously and repeatedly, I might add, lo! these many months. And this is likely to be one of those rambling, sweet-Jesus-what-the-heck-is-she-talking-about posts. Sigh. I’m trying, peeps. I’m just worn down to a nub right now. Forgive me.
But I’m not kidding when I call it “little B*heme.” Just to go through some logistics here: My primary coffeehouse area is 276 square feet. I have 2 tables in this area that seat 2 people each. My front doors are always open — literally — so I’m a kind of indoor/outdoor coffeehouse. The sidewalk area has 3 tables, seating, oh, about 10-12 people. In the very back of the building is the private bamboo patio. That seats about 25-30. To get there, you have to walk through the wine lounge. People go back there, they like it there, but the main action, so to speak, is up front.
And this is bad.
Because somehow, over the last several months, I have managed to open a gaping Pandora’s box of conversation and I just cannot get. it. to. SHUT.
No. I’m a prisoner in my own space. There is literally nowhere to hide. I can’t leave the area unattended; I’m by myself most of the time. Just to use the bathroom only a few feet away, I must lock up the register, run — quick like a bunny, and pee faster than anyone in the world has ever peed. Even that boy in third grade who peed so fast and deadly during the class spelling bee that we spellers didn’t know until the floor got slick under the soles of our wallabees. Poor kid. He peed a puddle AND he couldn’t spell Caesar.
So — as I was saying somewhere back there, ahem — when solo customers come in and sit in this teensy area, I am naked, exposed, a captive audience to whatever it is they feel they simply MUST talk about. Right then and there. For hours on end. Ad infinitum. I’m not kidding. There are probably at least a dozen customers who come in regularly who make my heart sink like a stone when I see them because I know they will stay and stay and stay and staaaaay, like the worst zit you’ve ever begged God to be rid of. They will come in and set up camp and part of their camp is somehow me — conversation with me — because, apparently, in the beginning I seemed friendly and open and conversationally accommodating. None of which I actually AM. No. I am snarky and closed and conversationally intolerant. But, through the magic of improvisational theater, I have managed to create a credible character — coincidentally also named Tracey — who likes nothing more than people who drone on endlessly about nothing. Tell her what’s on your shopping list? She is agape. Lecture her about the films of Luis Bunuel? She will sit and take notes. Share about how you ripped a really good one and stunk up your house for hours and hours? Why, that’s Tracey’s most favorite thing to hear! Please tell her more, Mr. Fudgypants! Seriously, it is the single greatest acting job of my life and I have performed it 6 days a week, 9 hours a day, for 7 months now. Talk about yer Long Day’s Journey into Night. Except without the blessed haze of morphine addiction. And without a thundering ovation. And without a damn-ass boquet of smelly roses.
Look. It’s not that I hate these people, although I realize it sounds like I do. It’s just … they quite literally exhaust me. I go home at the end of the day and I’m not physically tired; I am emotionally worn down. Shredded. I’m not an extrovert. I can seem pretty gregarious, but to do so, I must really work at it. When I discovered theater as a kid, I was the shyest girl in school. One of those painfully shy, perpetually red-faced types. Acting brought me out of that shell but it didn’t take the shell away. I like my shell. I need my shell. I like to decide when I come out of it and when I go back inside and regroup. Recoup. But I don’t have that luxury at B*heme. It’s like every day I’m hosting a party where someone else has chosen the guest list. I’m always anxious about who’s gonna show up next. I’m always anxious about having to be “on.” I’m always anxious about how long certain people, who have serious misapprehensions about my charms, will stay. The anxiety makes me cranky. And, you know, when these customers show up, they’re not coming for conversation, even though I’ve called it that. To me conversation means give and take and, honestly, there ain’t none of that going on. Nope. They come to talk at me and to hear themselves talk. It is almost completely one-sided. A kind of monologue … written by a playwright of dubious distinction.
Unfortunately, most of the time there’s no deterrent for this batch of talkers. I mean, I could be in deep shackle to a conversation, see another customer approaching, and think, Aha! Salvation is at hand! Their mere presence will break the conversational shackles! It will! It must! Nope. It doesn’t. The talker just continues to talk at me as if the new person isn’t there because — I don’t know — they’re OCD or something or I’ve become their listening ear, their shrink, their priest. I mean, what to do when your ears are sprinters and their mouths are marathoners? I don’t know. Slit your wrists or something? Seriously. I could slit my wrists in front of them — because of them — and they would not miss a beat blabbing on about how to make salmon cakes with crackers. Then they would blab through my tearjerking memorial service and haunt my grave, blabbing, blabbing, eternally from 6 feet above me. I am dead. You have killed me. Please please pleeeease shut up.
There are times when one of these people is hanging around, where I act aloof, uninterested, brusque even. Then I pull up a stool and try to hide behind my mammoth espresso machine. But it’s not long before I hear a voice, wheedling, “Traaaaaacey, aren’t you gonna come talk to me? Come onnnnn.” This happens more times than I can count, no matter how many signals I put out that “the doctor is OUT.” And I cannot do it anymore. I’m simply not suited to it. I’m exhausted. I feel trapped. I AM trapped. I’m not extroverted enough to make it work and B*heme isn’t busy enough to make such endless conversations impossible.
I’m tired of feeling that gray sinking doom when I see certain people lumbering up the sidewalk.
And I’m tired of feeling guilty about the gray sinking doom. You know?
So really …. well, that’s the thing.
Oh you poor thing! I can so relate. The part about the shell – me too. And yes – it’s nice to decide when to stay in and when to come out. To have the choice. Don’t feel guilty about the gray sinking doom. It’s just a…messenger, of sorts. Nothing wrong with you for not wanting to be completely drained at the end of every day. That’s something I’m going through, too. Good for you for making a change.
Tracey – I got emotionally exhausted just reading your description of what you have to go thru!
I have friends who are bartenders who mention the same feeling … it’s not the crowds and the craziness that they dread, because that means money. It’s the REGULARS, who park their ass on a stool – who look at the bartender as a captive audience for their tale of woe (because no one else will listen to them anymore – otherwise why would they be hanging out in a bar at one oclock in the afternoon?) It’s a drain. Having to deal with other people’s ISSUES all day long!!!
And yes – some of us NEED our shells. It’s not that we are cold and bound up. It is that we are TOO open and raw and we need a little bit o’ protection, thank you very much. Your shell is YOURS and these people with no boundaries just cannot understand that.
It must be awful (I think) to be a person with no boundaries. Who does not pick up on the social signals that: Hmmm, maybe that woman DOESN’T want to talk to me??
I totally, totally understand what you’re talking about.
I don’t get it as bad – but even as a college prof, I get the people who just have this deep need to SHARE, and to SHARE stuff that is in no way appropriate to SHARE with your professor. So I know the strange convolutions of the blended and re-blended families of some of my students, I know more detail than you want to know about changing dressings after surgery to remove MRSA, I’ve heard enough detail about several pending court cases to almost certainly get me out of jury duty for them (and perhaps for the rest of my life).
I describe it as being like people’s “trouble tree”. You know the old story about that? About the happy carpenter with the happy family? And how he stayed happy and kept his family happy despite the fact that being a carpenter is in some ways not unlike being a coffee house mistress except people also expect you to be able to do impossible things to make their houses better? Well, he had this tree – he’d come home at night and symbolically place all his troubles on the tree (by touching the tips of its branches) overnight.
The problem is, a lot of times that kind of thing eventually kills the tree.
I wish you a future free of people with such a deep and needy need to SHARE stuff that probably only should be shared with their doctor, psychologist, or spiritual advisor…
D’oh.
I guess the last comment I posted off of this account was under the guise of Opportunity.
Don’t read too much into the fact that that last comment came from Opportunity, okay?
I am dead. You have killed me. Please please pleeeease shut up. I feel ya’ girl.
And shells rock. I think I may have been a hermit crab in a former life. I come out when I want and stay as long as I want. Some people just don’t get that. To them I say, “Deal”. I am a hermit crab. Not a parrot.
I think it’s sweet that Opportunity came blogging when Tracey needed it.
On behalf of all of us talkers, I’m sorry – at least in some cases we’re just trying to be friendly, but from the other side, it’s just another demand on your energy. The problem is, extroverts recharge in public. It’s pretty much a vampiric relationship, actually. They feed on the energy introverts carefully store up in private; then they vroom off, leaving the pale husks of bewildered people.
And that’s just the nice ones! The lousy needy grabby whiny ones are worse, because they NEVER leave.
Maybe you should just go drive-up window ONLY, so nobody can chat – too much honking in the queue – Here’s your joe, Jack, thanks, boo-bye.
Square peg, meet round hole.
You’re not allowed to beat yourself up because you can’t do something you’re not suited for. Especially if it’s not life or death, but commerce.
I am a talker, too, but I usually can recognize whent he other person isn’t (I THINK I can, anyway. I HOPE I can!)
But anyway, I’m with Nightfly…sorry from me to you on behalf of the talkers and over-sharers of the world.
Either way, you shouldn;t feel bad about it. You are who who are. Like Sal says…don’t beat yourself up!
I used to be an extrovert (it’s possible I still am, but being so isolated from everyone, I won’t know until I get back to real life). But even when I was an extrovert, I always knew when people wanted me to shut up or go away. And I always obliged. I don’t want to talk to people who don’t want me to talk to them.
Oh, I forgot to say yes. It sounds completely emotionally draining. I couldn’t do it.
I work with a guy like that. You put him alone in his office and he’s a one-man party. He has a voice like a radio announcer and talks like one, and he is constantly laughing hysterically at his own jokes, which of course are not funny.
And he’s just one person! I can’t imagine what it’s like to have a steady stream of these guys coming through each day.
Seriously, you have my sympathy. I’m a quiet introvert, too, and I like it that way. I don’t mind people who are talkers if they have something to say, and they show some respect. Otherwise, they are like chains smokers constantly blowing smoke in your face.
Yeah, it’s weird, you can be a socialized introvert — which I believe is what I am — and people don’t know the difference. I get people telling me how “friendly” and “nice” I am, but internally, I am going through major calisthenics on a daily basis just to keep that appearance. So it’s not that I don’t seem gregarious. I guess I do. Or at least ENOUGH. Or I’m a warm body and my place is open and there are chairs. Which is a deadly combo. But when I’m putting out signals, I think they’re obvious.
And it’s weird too but I think if people saw me with my actor or artist friends, they would think I’m an extreme extrovert. Sometimes it’s just the company … where you feel most comfortable.
Given that you seemed to do fine at the Beanhouse, I think the problem is the layout of the space and the fact that you are unequally yoked to the Overlord.
YES! It’s the company. I mostly just don’t have that many people I want to talk to. I’m not misanthropic or anything… well, maybe a little. I just sort of am a rechargeable battery of extroverted-ness. When it’s used up, I have to go. Or my friends won’t like me anymore.
Tracey, I have been reading your blog for some time. I love it–and you–very much. What you did took courage–courage to open the coffeehouse, to keep it going, and to finally say to yourself, “This just isn’t working for me.” You are not a failure–those who stay in rotten jobs they can’t stand are. You are a success–you have said, okay, this is over, it’s just one part of my life–not my whole life–and I will move on to something different and better. Something that makes me happy.
You actually gave me to courage to say “screw it” to a job I was holding on to, trying to make things better, hoping things wouldn’t get worse. There were more reasons to leave than stay, so today I proverbially said, “Fuck you!” and left. (Everyone was shocked, shocked, I tell you!)
I feel so much better. So will you.
On the other hand, I can’t help think about the people that you have touched and made friends with. You have talked about your friend M and others. Maybe they are worth the price you’ve paid, tough as it is. And maybe the difference you’ve made will be there long after the coffee house.
Just a thought.
Another shell-sistah here.
I always wondered how small biz owners like you, tracey, and the father and daughter who run the small cafe around the corner from my work (and I do mean small, as in “order your lunch before they run out”), manage it. Especially the regulars–treating them well, to keep business going, but trying to maintain the proper boundary. (Discretion is dead, in case you didn’t know already. . . I guess we have talk shows in part to thank for that. . . and oversharing just creates this false sense of intimacy that merely, um, pleases oneself.)
And what Sue Bob said. The environment’s getting you down and it needs some tweaking.
plantlady — Oh, welcome! To my little world here! Haha!
Thank you so much for your kind comment. I’m in tears over here and I cannot tell you what that means to me right now. And good for you — finding the courage to say no more to your situation. It’s hard, isn’t it, but necessary sometimes.
Sue Bob — Yeah, I have more to comment on that. I don’t have time at the moment.
Witness, Kate P — Thanks you guys. Seriously.
Sue Bob — You’ve mentioned this before and I must confess, I don’t understand the reference to it in this situation. I’m not “yoked” to the Overlord; actually, we don’t even have any sort of written lease of any kind whatsoever. And we’re not partners. So I don’t really get it. I feel like there’s an implication that I wilfully chose disobedience here or something and perhaps you don’t intend that at all. But I read those comments as a bit of an indictment against me, to be totally honest. And if that’s not what you’re saying, then I apologize for taking it that way.
I guess I’m trying to figure out how a Christian in the business world can hope to do business exclusively with other Christians. I mean, if I wanted to move my things and open up elsewhere, would I need to find only a Christian landlord? My husband was, up until very recently, in business with a fellow “Christian” who proved to big one of the biggest — excuse me — bastards we’ve ever known in our lives. There’s not quarantee of “righteousness” or good treatment if you partner with a Christian. I’m not meaning to lecture you. I guess, mostly, I need to try to understand what you’re saying. Can you help me out here?