Page 17 of September (New Orleans #9)

“A nd it’s two pumps for the small,” she said. “If it’s an iced drink, though, we add one extra to account for the melting ice diluting the flavor.”

“And an extra shot of espresso?” the roaster asked.

“Not for the small, but for the medium and large, yes,” Juliet replied.

He nodded, seeming to be taking her seriously.

“Once you have the espresso going, you’ll start to steam the milk. Listen for the sound to change. This machine will do all the work for you, but you don’t want to burn the milk. When you put it under the steam wand, it’ll be a little higher in pitch. The milk is done when it gets lower.”

“What about for customers who want it extra hot?”

“Start with fresh milk for them and don’t use that milk for another drink.

If they know just how hot they want it, wait until the milk reaches that temperature, but if they don’t tell you, do the usual time and leave it in for another five to ten seconds.

That’s good enough for most, and the ones who are extra particular usually know how hot they want it anyway, so you can just get it there with the thermometer without having to guess.

Always pour enough milk into the container for the one drink, though, so that you don’t waste any milk in those cases.

We have lines on the inside of these.” Juliet held up a clean stainless- steel container and pointed to the lines on the inside that had letters S, M, and L that corresponded to the drink sizes.

“You’re probably not using these often because when you’re busy, you just fill up the container to handle as many drinks as possible, but you’ll have customers requesting certain milks and extra hot, so it’s good to know that they’re in there. ”

“Cool. Yeah, thanks,” the guy said and looked off at two other roasters who were learning the cash register.

They were doing rotations around the store today.

This store was a relatively small one and would start with eight employees since it was only going to be open from six in the morning until two in the afternoon on weekdays and four on Saturdays.

The manager was doing a walk around the outside of the building, which would be part of his job twice a day, to ensure there wasn’t trash gathered in the parking lot and no one was violating any of the no-parking or reserved-parking spots.

Three employees were in the small back kitchen space, learning about the food items and how to clock in and out and complete their end-of-day paperwork.

One person had already called in sick and likely wouldn’t be remaining on if she couldn’t even make it through their few days of training.

Juliet’s job today was to give everyone an overview of how things worked in the store and to give them chances to practice and be graded on that practice.

They were rotating around each of the roles, and she was keeping an eye on how each of them performed.

The guy in front of her now, learning to make the drinks, had been paying attention to everything she had said all day and was doing well because of it.

One of the guys at the register was currently picking at his nail while his colleague attempted to ring up fake drinks that Juliet had pretended to order so that she could see how she did.

The store manager was fine, but he had also come from another store and had received additional training upfront, so he knew his stuff.

The three employees in the back were all right, but nothing to write home about.

She suspected that the store would only open with six employees and maybe even only five, and the manager would need to hire three new ones right away.

It was common that they lost people through the training process, but the company didn’t like to overhire in preparation for that because they hated the idea of having someone work for only a few days and then lose their jobs just because they didn’t need them.

In their founder’s mind, these people were giving up other job opportunities to work at Southern, so they shouldn’t be considered extra, and no one in the group should worry about getting cut because they’d hired too many people.

So, instead, they hired just enough, and, in many cases, everyone made it through training.

In some cases, though, they lost one or two, but they could hire new folks within just a few days, and they could typically start right away.

Earlier, she had grabbed herself some lunch at the taco place next door since she’d been craving something different and the tacos were cheap, and she had ended up picking up a whole box of them because of that and had given them to the staff.

After lunch, they’d rotated again, and she had talked to the manager about her observations of the two she didn’t think would make it onto the actual schedule.

He had agreed to keep an eye on them and to take a look at the notes on the people they hadn’t hired to see if any of them might be available at short notice.

At five, with the day finally done, all the hourly employees had left, but Juliet had remained behind to speak to the manager for another hour or so about a few of the end-of-the-day procedures that he’d never had to do before.

At that point, she’d been on for over twelve hours and was more than exhausted, but she grabbed dinner on the way back to the hotel.

As much as she wanted to fall flat on the bed and sleep until morning, she worked up enough energy to eat her dinner and opened the pet camera app to check in on Carly.

When she saw Carly lying on the sofa, with her head on her paws, looking lonely and sad, she closed the video and went to dial Gwen’s number.

Instead of dreading having to make a phone call, though, which was the norm for most people her age and younger, Juliet found herself energized and even a little excited at the prospect of talking to Gwen.

“She looks sad,” she said.

“Huh?”

“Carly. She looks sad. I just checked in on her.”

“Oh. She does?” Gwen asked.

“Yes. She’s just lying there with her head all the way down and staring out the window.”

“I’m sure she misses you,” Gwen said. “But I’m on my way now to pick her up and take her for a walk. Is it okay if I just take her home after so that I don’t have to come back in a few hours? I will, though, obviously.”

“Oh, sure,” she replied. “If it’s easier. You’re doing me a big favor here.”

“Nah. She really is a great dog. She’ll keep me company tonight.”

“Did she take up more than half of your bed last night?” Juliet asked.

Then, she realized that she’d just assumed Gwen had slept alone the previous night and that Carly had been the only other occupant in that apartment besides Larry, who had a tank or an aquarium of some kind.

She internally crossed her fingers for luck that she hadn’t made a fool out of herself with that assumption and that Gwen wasn’t about to tell her about a hot date from last night.

Gwen laughed and said, “No, she kept to her side until I woke up to a cold, wet nose on my cheek.”

“Oh, yeah, she does that,” Juliet replied, relieved. “Was it a big inconvenience to have her there?”

“What? Not at all. I told you, it’s fine. I don’t do this often, but I’ve had a few animals just stay at my apartment with me because they needed it or their humans did.”

“Which is it this time? Does she need it, too, or is it just me?”

“I think a little of both. Want to talk to her?”

“Can I?”

“Yeah, I’m here. Give me a second, and I’ll FaceTime you.”

Juliet looked down at the bed, where she had a messy double cheeseburger and chili cheese fries in front of her.

The milkshake and bottle of water she’d also gotten were on the table by the bed, but she’d changed into a T-shirt and sweats when she had gotten back and had only a moment ago, very inconveniently, dropped a glop of cheese from those fries on that shirt.

She hadn’t been worried about it when she’d called Gwen, but now, Gwen would be able to see the drying orange spot of congealed cheese mixed with a little brown from the chili.

“Carly, hi,” Gwen said to the dog.

Juliet heard the key in the front door of her apartment as Gwen arrived there and quickly jumped up to find a new shirt.

She was so excited to see her little girl after a very long day that she just reached for a tank top and threw it on after tossing her other shirt to the floor to deal with later.

“Ready?” Gwen asked.

“Yes,” she said, making her way back to the bed.

The FaceTime call came in moments later, and Juliet accepted it immediately. She was met with Carly’s face very close up; so close to the camera that Juliet could only see a tiny nose that looked much bigger that close.

“Hi, baby,” she said through her laughter because her dog did not know how to use a phone.

Carly stiffened and pulled back a bit from the camera, trying to figure out where Juliet’s voice was coming from, and it was adorable. Juliet put her hand over her mouth because she wanted to cackle at how on alert her tiny dog had just gotten.

“That’s mommy,” Gwen said. “Where is she?”

Carly got excited and started her little huffs that she did when they were about to go outside or she was about to get her favorite treat. Juliet dropped her hand and laughed as she watched her dog try to figure out where she was.

“Carly!”

Carly tilted her head and looked toward the phone again, and not just to sniff it this time. She had her inquisitive face on, which made Juliet shake her head and smile.

“She’s doing that tail wag thing you warned me about. I should probably take her out,” Gwen said before she angled the camera toward her face. “Also, hi. This is me. I’m a person. I’m the one holding the phone. She didn’t figure out how phones work while you were gone.”

“Hi,” Juliet replied with a little laugh.