in customer service. “I want to speak to your manager!”
Oops.
Hannah hadn’t been a barista for long, but she had been waitressing for almost two years before this. And yet, she still hadn’t gotten the hang of this whole be nice to people who don’t deserve it malarkey. She’d never planned on a career that would require her to interact with adults, and certainly not with adults who considered her inherently beneath them. She had planned to spend the rest of her life looking after children—preferably babies—because they didn’t mind being bossed around or managed, and because they gave credit where credit was due. Give a kid your time, energy and care, and they’d repay you with trust and happiness.
Give an adult the best fucking chai lattes they’d ever tasted, and they’d ask to speak to your manager. Honestly. The ingratitude.
As if summoned by some demonic magic, the man in charge, Anthony-but-call-me-Ant, emerged from his office. He’d spent the last few hours in there doing Super Important Official Things—like playing Candy Crush on his phone—and every time Hannah asked for help, he’d waved her away with a load of supercilious bullshit about how busy he was. But the moment he sensed a chance to reprimand her, the tit popped out like a mole from the earth and asked brightly, “Everything okay out here?”
No, Ant, everything is not okay. It’s even less okay now you’ve shoved your round, shiny, bowling-ball head into things. Why do you exist? Why do you selfishly breathe the precious oxygen that could be better used to sustain a local mischief of rats or perhaps an especially large ferret?
This was what Hannah thought. Angrily. She could be quite an angry person, at times. Even her depression manifested as anger, which was always fun. But she’d been managing her medication quite wonderfully for the last few months, so she didn’t think that was to blame for today’s mental fuming. No, this was just her baseline rage talking.
Luckily, Hannah had a lifetime’s experience in hiding her baseline rage. Which is how she managed not to fly across the counter and commit a murder when the blonde pouted like a child and said, “No, actually. Everything’s not okay. This person is being extremely rude to me.”
Well. Extremely was laying it on a bit thick.
Ant grimaced sympathetically at the customer, then glared at Hannah. “I’m so sorry to hear that. What seems to be the problem?”
“The lady would like to change her order,” Hannah said with as much sweetness as she could manage. Which, admittedly, wasn’t much.
“You got my order wrong,” the woman snapped.
I am Hannah fucking Kabbah. I go to the supermarket every week without a shopping list. I once memorised an entire psychology textbook the day before an exam after realising I’d been revising the wrong module for weeks. And guess what? I got an A. I spent the first few years of my professional life keeping multiple toddlers alive. Do you know how hard it is to keep toddlers alive, Ms. Chai Latte? It’s really fucking hard. And I was good at it. I do not get things wrong. I do not make mistakes. I do not fuck up FUCKING CHAI LATTES. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?
This was what Hannah thought. But what she said was…
Oh. Wait. Shit.
Judging by the looks of utter astonishment on the faces of Ant, the blonde, and the elderly couple sitting over by the window, what she’d said was…
Every single word that had just run through her head.
Out loud.
Oh dear.
“Hannah,” Ant choked out. He sounded like he was having a heart attack. She didn’t blame him. She should be feeling the same way. She should be drowning beneath a tidal wave of shock and panic and embarrassment, frantically grasping for ways to take all of that back and, you know, not lose her job.
But she wasn’t. Instead of terrified, Hannah felt peaceful—relieved, actually.
And elated. And free.
Once every few years, Hannah experienced what she privately referred to as a break. Whether one chose to interpret that as a pleasant, holiday sort of break, or the more negative oh-dear-I’ve-snapped sort of break was neither here nor there. It didn’t matter what she called it or why it occurred, because the outcome was always the same: Hannah’s tightly leashed temper broke out, she did something extremely ill-advised, and in the aftermath of her terrible behaviour, she experienced the sort of carefree, unconditional happiness that was usually out of her reach.
Her last break had arguably been the most extreme: