I finally had my cafe training at work today. I was originally scheduled for 9 hours of training for a day that was weeks ago, but the cafe was broken on the day I was supposed to train, so I've been waiting for them to reschedule me. Today I finally got my chance to learn how to make drinks, but rather than having a whole day to practice and learn the ropes, I only got three hours! Uggg. To practice making drinks, I would just make the drinks and dump them down the sink drain when I finished. It's so wasteful, but how else am I supposed to learn how to make the drinks? My co-workers were able to get free drinks made by yours truely! That was so not fun because they would ask for tricky things that weren't even on the menu!
Anyways, when I woke up this morning, I found a sloppy shirt to wear that would pass as work appropriate, yet boring enough that I would be okay if I spilled something on it. And I'm really glad I didn't wear a shirt I was pretty fond of, because I got pretty messy.
The Border's cafe doesn't have an extensive Starbucks-like menu, so I didn't have to learn how to make millions of drinks. The main drinks I had to learn were lattes and mochas. Everything else is based around them, whether it's iced drinks, cappuccinos, or caramel/raspberry/white chocolate-flavored drinks.
The first thing I spilled all over myself (and all over most of the cafe) was steamed milk. I poured the milk into the pitcher, put the steam hose thinger into the milk, and turned the knob so the steam came out and into the milk. I was supposed to turn the steam off when the thermometer reached the red line, but I was so preoccupied with making sure the milk was getting thoroughly steamed, that I didn't see that the thermometer needle passed the red line. In panic, I yanked the pitcher out from under the steamer hose. But by doing so, the steamer blew hot milk all over the place. It was like the equivalent of pulling the egg beater out of the cake batter while the beaters were still turning. Scalding hot milk got all over me. Ouchy.
I didn't burn myself on just steamed milk. I spilled really hot coffee down my arm. I inadventently placed my finger under a flow of steaming water from the espresso machine. I got too close to the little oven where we heat up bagels.
And steamed milk wasn't the only thing I splashed on my shirt. While pouring a pitcher of Mango Creamice down the sink drain, the stupid smoothie drink plopped into the sink and errupted all over me! I had the stupid stuff in my hair! And you know how when you try to squeeze ketchup out of the bottle, it'll sometimes spray all over the place... well that's what happened to me and the bottle of chocolate drizzle!
But all-in-all, I had a lot of fun learning how to make drinks. For the first time in my life, I made a pot of coffee! And I know how to work the espresso machine! I know that a medium mocha has three shots of espresso and four pumps of chocolate syrup and steamed milk to top it off! And Cafe au Laut is water and coffee. But in case I forget, I wrote EVERYTHING down on a little cheat sheet.
But after making all these coffee drinks, I still don't like coffee.
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