Men who like coffee

Joe who owned the small coffee shop on Lavender Row in East Village was spending more time there than necessary, despite the fact he'd recently made huge efforts to have most of the shifts covered so he could enjoy some time off lately. Now, as life would have it, he was spending all that free time at the coffee shop. The employers, a little confused, were doing there best to do the best they could at their job, assuming this was a transitional trust phase Joe was going through, since he used to run the whole place on his own. Joe on the other hand was playing up to this presumed rationale for his constant presence through out the day, although he couldn't care two capuccino's and a latte for wiling away his hours checking up on everything. In fact he hated the fact he was there everyday, it was getting slightly awkward. Although there was one excuse. He had to come in at least once to make his usual and to make the usuals for the regulars just as they always liked it in the morning.
There was old man Yachin who had to have the grains ground in front of him to a specific size, he once disgruntled and unshaven exclaimed to Ellie, who covered the morning shifts.
" You don't do it like that you have to hold the grinder at a certain angle and for 12 seconds. Where's Joe? Joe knows."
Ellie exasperated from failed attempts to get it right on his first morning shift ended up having to call Joe in to work, to help with all these personalized particularities and peculiarities people where demanding. He had no idea people could be so pedantic about their coffee. Then there were the 10 or so contract laborers who all wanted double espresso shots on the dot of 8 when they came in to work on the hospital under reconstruction across the road. Commuters by the dozen filed in and out in an orderly fashion always on schedule to catch a bus, tube or train and so expected their order to be executed in the same exact manner that they walked in and made it. Ellie was alarmed at the pace of things in this tiny inconspicuous coffee shop, and had a hard time from customers who didn't like any threat to their routine, as if how their coffee was made was the last grip on control they had in their day. Especially since the rumours of recession actually made newspaper headlines, there were no allowances for coffee not up to the usual standards. So Joe's habit of turning up everyday was a huge relief to Ellie.
Joe wished the opposite, he was sick of the place since it seemed like he had spent most of his waking hours there since he bought the shop off an old retiring italian couple 4 years ago, but he couldn't help himself. He was falling in love. He sat on his laptop at his favorite table all day, looking as if he was seeing to very important admin, just to be near the person he was bursting to shower with affection. Today tensions where even more strained because of the tiny incident last night which on waking suddenly seemed mammoth, dramatized by the memory in daylight hours rather than the sweeping happy experience it was last night.