Coffee & Crypto
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and other, or actual events is purely coincidental. However, if the material feels too real, well then, that's something for you to think about.
Part 1
The bell of the elevator dings and the stainless-steel doors open. Mahdi looks to his left, to the bright red numbers above the control panel on the LED screen that indicates the floor level. He confirms it's the 15th floor and steps out of the elevator nervously. He was previously working on the 13th floor. He checks that his shirt is tucked neatly into his pants, centres his belt buckle, and adjusts the strap of his laptop bag to alleviate the discomfort on his shoulder. He retrieves the building pass handed to him downstairs from his left side pants pocket, holds it up and scans it. The door to his new office unlocks.
It's been one month since his training period at the Taxation Office started on the 13th floor. He meets Olga at the entrance to his new workplace, just outside the door to the corridor where the lifts and bathrooms are located. He follows her into a training room, her index finger tracing the computer names printed onto the towers, more commonly referred to as the computer box, and sometimes NOT the monitor. Finally, she stops at one computer name, double-checks it, and then turns to Mahdi. “Bring this computer."
He disconnects the plugs connecting the tower to everything else, leaving behind the monitor, the mouse and keyboard, the desk phone, and the headset too, carrying the tower in his two hands like a newborn child. “That's you," she says, pointing to the empty desk next to hers. She plonks herself into her chair and sighs.
“Aargh!" shouts Olga, after a minute of silence.
Her body sinks deeper into her office chair, and her butt slides to the edge of her seat. Mahdi's startled by her outburst but he doesn't flinch. She turns to face him, and he turns to her attention at once.
“Sorry, I just need to get a coffee in me before I can do anything," claims Olga, and shares a sickly smile.
He only just managed to regain his composure. The idea that her clamour was due to her need for coffee further unsettles him. He nods respectfully.
She twiddles her thumbs for a minute more before turning back to him. “Let's go for a coffee, eh? We'll start the training after. Hmm?"
Mahdi nods slowly.
“Okay!" beams Olga.
Her mood changes entirely. Her smile's wider than the Murray River after a week of heavy rain. Her eyes open wide too, what was a glimpse of the pale blue eyes behind her dark brown eyelashes is now the blossom of an expansive blue plane. He leaves his bag behind, hesitating for a moment, unsure if he should put it in a locker instead as instructed in the security module he completed during his training period. He determines the bag's almost empty and leaves it underneath his desk, grabs his wallet from the front pocket, and skips a few steps to catch up to her. The two travel down to the café on the floor level of their building.
At the café, Olga asks Mahdi for his order.
“I don't really drink coffee," he replies.
“What!" exclaims Olga. “I can't buy just for myself," she adds, unable to hide her disappointment.
“Then maybe... I'll have whatever you're having."
She turns to the cashier instantly, before he can change his mind or ask for details. “Two almond lattes please, double shot no sugar."
Back at his desk, Mahdi struggles to finish the coffee. It's nothing like the coffee he drinks at the homes of his Ethiopian friends. If he hadn't witnessed Olga order it, the barista preparing it, and her handing it to him, he would've thought it to be some other liquid concoction. This is not coffee, he thinks to himself. It's not even hot.
Disappointed by the coffee, he wants to rid himself of a debt owed for such a subpar experience. He makes an attempt to learn the price, having neglected to pay attention to it at the café.
“No, no, forget about it. I'm your Team Leader!" laughs Olga, waving a finger at Mahdi. After a short delay, she adds, “But you can get the next one."
“Okay, but how much is it? I just want to know."
“$7."
“$7! What the hell! For what?" exclaims Mahdi. The experience worsening.
“Easy there tiger, that's a pretty normal price..." Olga sits properly on her chair and prepares to work.
“Sorry, I've never paid for a coffee before."
Mahdi looks at his lonely cup of coffee placed away at the top of his desk. He retrieves the cup for another sip.
“If you think that's expensive, I had an amazing cup of coffee on the weekend. It was $20."
“$20! What the hell! For what?" exclaims Mahdi, again, somehow managing to get the words out, swallowing the remaining coffee in his mouth.
Mahdi's heart wavers. He can feel himself losing respect for Olga, and it disappoints him. He wanted to have a good relationship with his new Team Leader, but how could he, when she could be so easily fooled into spending a ludicrous amount on coffee, and speaking of it proudly at that!
“It was worth it. I've never had a coffee that made me feel so good." She lifts the cup of coffee in her hand. “This always throws my stomach into disarray, even with almond milk."
“I knew this wasn't milk!" snaps Mahdi.
He wasn't sure what it was before, but he could not quite understand why the coffee tasted so strange.
Olga looks at him oddly but she's eager to continue speaking.
“But you see," she adds, turning her body to Mahdi, her eyes glowing with passion. “The café I went to on the weekend, Celeste Café, these guys use natural spring water from New Zealand." She looks into his eyes waiting for the right reaction. “I don't think you understand. I didn't use the toilet for 5 hours after that. Don't you get it? And they used full cream milk!" She turns back to her computer. “It was worth every dollar."
Mahdi “ah's" for Olga's sake, nodding generously. He turns to his computer as well.
“If that's true, there's something in the water here..." Mahdi mumbles to himself, unsure if there's indeed a connection.
Olga takes another gulp of her coffee, and realising the lightness of her cup continues with another gulp and another until the final traces of the coffee run past her tongue and down her throat.
“Okay! Let's start your training."
After this morning's training with Olga ended, Mahdi couldn't hold it anymore. He never once questioned whether he was lactose intolerant but today the certainty that he's not needs to be revised. His stomach has rumbled with unusual liquidity for the past 30 minutes that continues to shock him with every surge. With a break scheduled in 14 minutes, he wants to hold out until then so it doesn't affect his performance. He thinks about all the times he drank full cream milk straight from cartons on the kitchen bench when there wasn't any dinner to warm up after soccer practice. All the times he downed cold milk from 3L plastic bottles in the fridge when there were no other refreshing drinks in sight to quench his thirst. All the times he enjoyed a warm glass of milk to compliment the fish fingers and calamari rings fresh out of the oven even after his father lectured him that mixing milk and fish leads to skin cancer. But one measly cup of tasteless coffee that he had not one ounce of desire to finish is turning his stomach into the Werribee Zoo!
Leaving the bathroom, Mahdi does not doubt that it was worth it. Screw the performance. There is no better feeling than this, he imagines. He can only liken the feeling to peeling an entire scab off your knee while it's still attached to the skin in one go. Or bursting a hard-to-reach pimple on the shoulder blade on your back. Letting cool water run on your face and chest after a long trek on a hot summer day. But even they seem miniscule in comparison.
He returns to his seat, takes out his phone and opens Twitter.
He tweets:
“drinking coffee is like crypto"
He returns his phone to his pocket abruptly, sensing Olga's presence. A few moments later she arrives at her desk.
“How's it going? Any questions? Want advice on when to make outbound calls, or how to assign yourself to backlog work? Don't be afraid to ask me questions."
“Nah, I'm good for now. Thanks."
He logs back into his computer. He changes his status to Ready. He opens Outlook, opens Teams, he checks the time. It's time for his first break.
In front of his building is a sushi shop. It's his first break but he's starving, having skipped breakfast because he refuses to eat it rushed. $3.50 per roll. He thinks about getting 3 rolls but although he hasn't paid her yet, mentally, he's down $7 for the day. There's also a satisfying feeling about spending less than $10 on a meal so he sacrifices 1 roll. Tempura prawn and cooked tuna it is. By the time he's travelled downstairs, ordered sushi, and returned upstairs, there's only 3 minutes left to eat. He inhales the rolls in 2 and for the last minute he chews aggressively as he checks his phone.
steelgate_76 comments, “Do you know about crypto?"
He scrolls up to check his tweet from earlier. “drinking coffee is like crypto"
Confused by the comment, he replies, “of course...?" Crypto as in cryptocurrency, he thinks to himself.
He rises from the table to go back to his desk. He's about to grab his phone when his stomach rumbles again. This biological weakness annoys him. He questions whether recessive genes can present themselves this late in someone's life.
With the app already open, the restlessness in his legs growing, and the inconvenience of his current condition, he starts a new tweet:
“why don't they just use fresh water in coffee? damn! this is not it!!!!!"
He feels a temporary satisfaction.
Just before he locks his phone steelgate_76 comments on the latest tweet. “It's the microparticles of crypto."
Mahdi hovers between standing up straight and sitting down, unsure what to do.
He wants to reply and ask this stranger a question, but his bowel movements grow more aggressive by the second. He locks his phone, throws the plastic packet for the sushi and his used tissues in the bin, and rushes to the bathroom.
Olga checks the time for the 8th time in 5 minutes. Her break is near now, set at a different time to Mahdi. She clicks around her screen liberally, but the correlation between her clicks and doing actual work is seriously low. Her mouth is dry as a bone, her water bottle's empty, her head is throbbing, and right now she wants another coffee.
Mahdi returns to his desk, relieved, returns his status to Ready, clicks on his workplace dashboard and begins working on backlog assignments for the Taxation Office. He reads over his current assignment thoroughly. His mind's focussed on the work now, finally, after spending so much time in discomfort and distraction.
At some point Olga turns to him, looking to spark a conversation, unable to contain her boredom even though she can see him concentrating on his work. “Any plans after work? I know it's a Monday but it's summer, the sun's out. You're in the city too..." adds Olga, while keeping an eye on the time in the bottom right corner of her computer screen.
“Yeah..." He makes a mental note of where he's at with his task and turns towards Olga to tell her about his plans.
She turns back to her monitor as soon as he faces her. The time is 10:00am. She changes her status to Short Break and locks her computer.
“I'm actually thinking of checking out this bathhouse nearby. I've wanted-"
“That sounds so fun. Talk later okay, on my break," she interrupts. Olga rises from her seat, grabs her phone and hurries out of the office.
Mahdi raises his eyebrows, spins his chair back around and returns to work.
He spends the rest of the day like this, focused on his work. Making up for a morning wasted.
It's the end of the day, Olga should be heading home now. She takes out her phone from her pocket, again, opens up Twitter and scrolls absentmindedly for a minute or two. She taps the search button and swipes to Trending. 1. Trending in Australia is Crypto. She clicks on it to see a post by Mahdi_Mohamed. “drinking coffee is like crypto". She laughs. Yes it is, she admits to herself. Her smile turns to shock. Dots connect for her and she rises from her seat. It's 5:37pm. She looks around the desolate office. There isn't a person in sight. Mahdi is nowhere to be seen. She sits back down slowly, reads it again, likes the tweet, and puts the phone back in her pocket.