Coffee with a Side of Offensive Britishness

Okay, so there are a lot of dickheads who drink coffee. Incidentally, there are also a lot of dickheads who don’t drink coffee, but still remain dickheads.

Usually, I pride myself on being able to tell what kind of person you are from your drink. If you like extra foam, you’re generally a little more fun-loving, a little kooky. Wet-latte drinkers tend to be like wet blankets, or rather, they like things quick and to the point, no fun foam getting in the way. Decaf soya types tend to do yoga and be on raw food diets, or the diet of the week. Occasionally, they’re pregnant.

Now this particular dickhead ordered a large filter coffee with a shot of espresso (a red eye) and pouring cream. What can you tell from this drink? Someone who enjoys the taste of strong coffee, who needs an extra kick of caffeine, who wants to savour it over a long period of time, and the pouring cream suggests a little bit of indulgence, taking the edge off the bitterness. Nowhere in this drinks order does anything scream ‘I’m a racist’. But a racist he was.

(I can’t really think what drink a racist would drink. Perhaps tea, two tea bags and with full fat milk?)

So this racist has decided to become a regular customer, goodness knows why. He doesn’t exactly fit in amongst the sophisticated and haughty of the area.

So he orders his ‘usual’, gets annoyed when I don’t know what his usual is (‘I was here yesterday, don’t you remember?’ ‘No Sir, I wasn’t working yesterday, you must be thinking of the other young woman with dark hair and a tan’.)

Then he starts to rant. Or rather, ‘explain’ his views. To the manager, who is English.

‘Didn’t fink there was any English people left in these jobs, innit? All them foreigners come over, take all of em. All Haww hawww heee heee, ya? Not a word of fucking English between ‘em. All chinks and blacks and the like. Are you the only proper English here?’

Well, as if that wasn’t horrific enough…I have to serve his drink. He turns to me:

‘What about you love, what colony you from?’

Now, what’s the right response here? Firstly, I plan to respond in any language other than English that I can think of, or perhaps even make one up.

Secondly, I consider letting him know that if the ‘proper British’ didn’t want ‘bloody foreigners’ taking their jobs, perhaps they shouldn’t have created The British Nationality Act of 1948 in which immigrants were welcomed to Britain, because the ‘proper British’ considered themselves above being dustbin men and street cleaners.

Instead, I emphasise my London accent, present him his drink with impeccable manners, call him Sir, infer that I speak better English than he ever will, and that he really should consider slithering away to die somewhere.

Well, since he’s now a regular, there’s always the chance to irritate him further. Perhaps, every day he’s in, I’ll assume a different accent, piss him off. Perhaps I’ll tell him in detail how to trace my British ancestors back however many generations. Perhaps I’ll continually get his drinks wrong and pretend it’s because I’m foreign and don’t understand.

Or maybe I’ll just keep telling you nice people all about it, how’s that sound?

Oh, and for all y’all who haven’t been bombarded by it yet, The Coffee Song:

© Cafe Disaster