Open Writing

The customers stand in line, a respectful seven steps from the counter, patiently filing off to be attended by half-a-dozen, snappily uniformed cashiers. Central queuing is the great innovation, which has revolutionised turn-waiting by taking away the chance element.

However on reaching this counter in downtown Toronto, people don’t proffer completed forms, cheque books or bank slips … In answer to an inquiring smile, they mutter things like regular or triple decaf.

“Double, double,” the person ahead of us intones without looking at the server, whose hair and skin tone suggests English is probably her third language, but who turns to fill the order without blinking. Over at the next wicket, a muttered “large to go” is sorted with equal efficiency. We are now at the front of the queue. My son is treating. We step up to the counter with due solemnity.

“Medium triple double. What’s yours mum?” I’m flummoxed. I have a fair command of written English and can pass muster with the spoken word, but I’m lost. No problem with the queue, but I only want a drink. Where do numbers come in?

“How may I help you?”

The server waits expectantly, fingers hovering over the till. The aroma of Canada’s favourite brew fills the air and along the counter, customers of all shapes and sizes are managing to get cups of it without a problem. They’re speaking English, but it’s foreign to me.

I clear my throat.

“A coffee please.” The server is baffled.

“How would you like it?”

“In a cup please.”

“Is that regular?”

“Well, I don’t know, is it?”

“Medium?”

“I don’t want a paper cup.”

“Cream and sugar?”

“Thank you, cream would be nice, but I don’t take much sugar, maybe a bit. Can I put my own in?” The challenged salesperson now raises her eyebrows and looks at my son. People in the queue shift restlessly. One screw up doesn’t matter, and the cashiers on either side carry on smoothly, but I feel inadequate.

At Tim Horton’s, Starbucks and Country Style, the initiated citizenry of Ontario’s capital, down amazing quantities of coffee every day. Coffee shops are as ‘in’, as their high stools, curvy counters and giant lattes.

The ordering of the required beverage is a serious business with its own formulas, etiquette and jargon. Coffee counter personnel are trained in the same way as bank clerks, driving license staff and immigration officers. And just as when dealing with them, no one here is joking, though for an instant I am tempted to try and pay my electric bill.

I think fondly of the froth-topped café cortado recently drunk in Santiago, which comes in a glass, with soda and a mini-biscuit and is ordered from a smiling waiter who says “buenos dias.” I remember the strong cuppas poured from steaming teapots by no-nonsense ladies in Merrie England.

I start again “I’d like the coffee in a proper mug with a drop of cream and a half a teaspoonful of sugar.” The server is still bewildered.

Only now, seeing the situation swinging out of hand does my son lean forward and with the deliberate patience of the young for the old and uninitiated say,

“She means single, single.”