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escher4096 t1_iudq6rb wrote

3:30am. Time always seems to slow down as I wait for the demon to show up. The first couple of times he came looking for a latte was absolutely terrifying. I can always smell him before he actually opens the door, the stench of sulphur and blood. It puts you on edge. It’s like your subconscious knows that smell and what it means. But nothing prepares you for when a 7 foot 8 inch demon walks through the door. He has to duck or snag his horns on the door jam. Even though it is the dead of winter, shows up wearing nothing but a chain mail loin cloth. His rippling muscles covered in deep red skin and nasty looking scars. He is a sight to behold.

3:31am. It is tempting to start making the latte early, just so he leaves early. I learnt the hard way that he wants it made so he can see you make it and so it is as hot as can be. I tried to make it early…. Once…. He yelled and banged his fist on the counter. Yelled is an understatement but I don’t know what else you would call it. The glass coffee pots exploded and it drove me to my knees. I tried to plug my ears as they bled. The front counter collapsed under the impact of his blow.

It was weird. He apologized and didn’t come back for almost a month. I had convinced myself it was a bad dream…. And then he started coming back again.

3:32am. I turned half of the over head lights off. It is so bright that it makes him squint and he is visibly pained. It is all about making the customer happy after all. The first time I turned off some lights for him, he was visibly relieved. He even got chatty, which was oddly terrifying. He has a voice like scraping rocks that is deep enough that your guts vibrate as he talks.

3:33am. I can smell the sulphur and blood in the air. The bell on the door dingles, letting me know we have a customer. I look to see him coming in from the driving snow. He is literally steaming as the snow melts off of him.

He ducks just enough for his curly horns to miss the door frame and walks in. A slight jingle from his chain mail loin cloth as he walks to the front counter.

“Hey Clair, how’s your night going?”, he says. Making small talk with a demon. So weird.

“Oh, same old, same old, Steve. I thought you might be late, given the blizzard out there.”, he wouldn’t give me his name when I had asked. Something about a true name freely given having power or something. I don’t know. So I started calling him Steve. He seems ok with it.

He chuckled, a terrifying sound. Like squishing kittens between rocks. “I made a snow demon in the parking lot. I have never laid down in the snow before. It was quite nice.”

I chuckled at that. “What can I get you Steve?”, I asked. Trying to keep it friendly but professional.

“Oh the usually. A double latte with a hint of Tabasco.”, he said with a smile as he leaned on the counter. There was a bit of flesh hanging from a fang and a bit of blood on his chin. Probably the demon equivalent to a bit of spinach in your teeth.

The “hint of Tabasco” threw me the first couple of times. No matter how much I added, he would always ask for a hint more on his next visit. Now I brew the coffee using Tabasco instead of water. It makes my eyes water but Steve seems to like it.

I do my best to make a nice hell themed picture in the cream. Today it is a horned skull. A useful skill around halloween time too.

“There you go, Steve.”, I said as I slide the cup over to him.

“The skull is a nice touch”, he says and gives me a wink. He takes a sip. He rolls his eyes and lets out a sigh. “That is, dare I say it, divine.” I smile as he takes another sip. “Thank you Clair.” He put a gold nugget on the counter, about the size of a robin’s egg. “See you tomorrow.” He says as he flashes me a smile and walks out humming some nameless tune that his pointy tail is keeping the beat to.

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Dimantina t1_iue3o77 wrote

I loved this story the most out of all the others posted. However I know most people are gonna say "After a week of making that type of money, the Barista would most likely quit."

Let me do some math for you.

The average Robin egg has a volume of 78.66 cubic centimeters.

According to this gold weight calculator (https://www.omnicalculator.com/construction/metal-weight) a volume of 78.66 cm3 of gold is 1.518kg.

At current market rate for let's say 24k gold ($52.77 per gram), that nugget is worth $80'105.

This means the main character will need to work 5195.25 years to earn enough to make Jeff Bezo net worth.

<S> So yeah, if you want to be a peasant you could quit after a week. </S>

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escher4096 t1_iueb53b wrote

I was trying to think of something small that most people would have a reference to. Robin’s egg, thimble, head of a pin….. I don’t know something smallish while also conveying that it is worthless to the demon.

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Dimantina t1_iuecaiq wrote

I think you did an excellent job at that! Just gold is ridiculous in how much it's worth.

I like that something which the average non million/billionaire would drool over is such a trivial thing to Steve.

That gold and money is so worthless in hell that Steve could literally spend the next 1000 years giving away this type of money every day and it wouldn't even touch the net worth of our top current billionaires.

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Artanthos t1_iuhmvlz wrote

Imagine having as much gold as Mansa Musa.

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P1emonster t1_iuifzpt wrote

Couldn't tell if you were talking about Steve the demon or Steve Jobs

Turns out we know what happened to Steve Jobs after he died.

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MehKarma t1_iuelxjx wrote

Clair got student loans. There I solved your plot hole.

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Dimantina t1_iuemkv0 wrote

Hahaha I love that.

Honestly at the end of Clair's life at this rate she'd have a little over 2 Billion in gold.

<S>And if you don't have 2 Billion for retirement in 2085 you just can't retire.</s> (I hope).

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Toptossingtrotter t1_iuhjvw2 wrote

Clair: Hmmmm, let's see. I am set, my children are set, and I can help all my friends and family. How long does a demon live? This job can suck, but I'm getting paid very well. Yeah, might as well keep my head down keep the gravy train running!

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ReaperofRico t1_iui1ezi wrote

She does finally pass away and Steve lets her keep going, got a nice little shop in hell that she makes coffee for the higher demons of hell all the while the big man downstairs just prefers a simple tea.

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the-benegesserit t1_iuh52or wrote

Made me laugh louder than I should have. There solved your plot hole lol. Haha.

Although, meetings with a demon… I think I wouldn’t quit even though I’m rich. IRS would soon call me tho.

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Artanthos t1_iuhn31b wrote

It doesn’t matter how much money people have, they always want more.

E.g. even billionaires keep competing for additional wealth.

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MehKarma t1_iuhneot wrote

When Andrew Carnegie, by far the richest man on the planet at the time, was asked how much money was enough? His response was just a little more.

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Hminney t1_iuf2hna wrote

That would be nice. But a Robin's egg is about 8cc not 80cc, so at 19g/cc that's 144g gold worth a little under $8k. Still a tidy sum, I'd go on doing night shifts as a barrista for that kind of income, even after I was rich! But yes, 50,000 years before I could buy twitter and turn it over to trolls

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Dimantina t1_iufcyxu wrote

Average width, 2.1cm, average length 2.8cm.

Volume of an egg is equal to.. 49.42... huh I did my first math wrong. Well damn. Anywho. Loads of money.

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aldhibain t1_iug137z wrote

Okay, using 2.1cm and 2.8cm I still have no idea how you're getting your volume from. Even very roughly approximating the egg to a cuboid 2.1 × 2.1 × 2.8, the egg would be under 12.5 cubic cm. In reality, it's probably about half that, closer to 6 cm3, ~120g.

But yes. Still good money. $6-7k per nug.

Edit: I think 49.42 came about by taking (2.1×2)^(2) = 17.64 ('rounding' to 17.65) and multiplying by 2.8 to get 49.42. But 2.1 is width, not radius, so there's no need to double it.

Anyway another commenter helpfully provided a formula for egg volume, and a(n American) robin's egg comes to about 7cm^(3).

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seganku t1_iug5vw5 wrote

"The resulting formula for egg volume, V, was V = (0.6057 - 0.0018B)LB2 in which L is the egg length in millimeters, and B is the egg maximum breadth in millimeters."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15782919/#:~:text=The%20resulting%20formula%20for%20egg,B%20are%20taken%20in%20millimeters.

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aldhibain t1_iug7w4j wrote

Thanks for the formula. It's for chickens, but works well for an estimate. Using that formula, we get 7012.429 mm^(3), or 7cm^(3) for an American Robin egg, still nowhere close to 49.

European Robins lay smaller (non-blue) eggs, 2cm long and 1.5cm wide with a volume of ~2.6cm^(3). That would be about USD2.7k worth of gold.

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BSJones420 t1_iug04cr wrote

I was gonna say lets think here for a second...even a robins egg worth of lead wouldnt weigh 1.5 kilo (almost 3.5 lbs) just basic logic lol

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LiptonSuperior t1_iuep1e5 wrote

Yeah, I don't think that being the dark lords barrista is a job you get to just walk away from.

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redditingatwork23 t1_iufuiju wrote

How fucking crazy is that for perspective? You could have a demon from hell give you pure golden eggs every single day and you would still die from old age thousands of years before catching up with Bezos.

Hell, you wouldn't even break the top 1000 richest in the world unless price of gold skyrocketed.

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5tr4nGe t1_iugoe9k wrote

Hell just the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire is terrifying

A million seconds seems like a long time right? Well it’s a little over 12 days

How long do you think a billion seconds is? A few months maybe? It’s just shy of 32 YEARS.

Let’s put it this way, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man. His wealth is truly mind blowing. Imagine you went back in time to the building of the pyramids, and set up a scheme where you would be paid a dollar a second between then and now, and then you came back to the present day, and you STILL wouldn’t have as much money as Elon Musk.

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Xamonir t1_iuhmt2a wrote

I have seen this reposted many times. But I admit I had never seen it in comments. Didn't expect that. So now for me you will be the Original Commenter of that.

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Dimantina t1_iufw1n1 wrote

Kinda why I did the math. Wanted to see how much it was.

The perspective is insane.

Thanks for appreciating it.

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Mad_Moodin t1_iuggfce wrote

The net worth of top billionaires is just something else.

Going from 2017 to 2018 Bezos made more than 8 million per hour. More money than most people will make in their lifetime. Hell you could add together what my mother, father, sister and I will earn in our lifetime and it wouldnt reach Bezos' hourly income.

During that year he made as much money as the GDP of Ethiopia with a population of 100 million people.

The entire output of these 100 million people was less than Bezos' income.

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Killfile t1_iufplln wrote

Lemme add an line to deal with that problem

"As he steps out into the snow I sweep the nugget under the counter and into the box with the rest of them. It's almost three quarters full now. No one else in the shop seems to have noticed them or even be able to see the box but somehow I know that, if I were to spend them, something very, very bad would find some way of happening. "

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re_nonsequiturs t1_iug3pyh wrote

The main character will quit just as soon as she figures out how to sell the gold without drawing unwanted attention. It's not that she would mind paying taxes, it's just the whole "being in jail for felony theft because she can't explain where she got it from" that palls.

She managed to get enough scrapings off one to cover the next year or so of Steve's lattes, so at least she's not out of pocket anymore.

But aside from...shall we say "mortal" concerns? Aside from those are the supernatural concerns. Shortly after she worked out just how much Steve was tipping, she saw that Tumblr thread about Fey running a coffee shop and the dangers of not paying fair value.

Could accepting an extreme over payment count as a deal with a demon? A few days of reading and she added "may be given of your own will and do not bind us together by any contract" after "TIPS" on the counter jar^* . She's taking Steve's lack of reaction to the change as a good sign. But she's also not rushing to get that gold sold.

^* Actually a brilliant move, tips from human^& customers tripled after that

^& At least she assumes, hopes, they're human

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spatzist t1_iufevsz wrote

80k/day, assuming it's only working days, would net you around 20mil/year before tax. I'd run that gig for about a year, then pass on the torch to some other barista and retire.

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aldhibain t1_iugb9j9 wrote

The original math is off, so each nugget is perhaps just 7-8k. Still a hefty 2+mil/year, but I might hold out for a while more.

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ivanthemute t1_iufu66v wrote

I go panning 2 or 3 times a year for fun. Biggest nugget I've found was a whopping 3 gram piece (actually considered large.) For mines, ore that produces 1 ozt (31.1 grams) per ton (1000kg) is considered high yield ore.

Hell, it's estimated that all the gold mined in all of human existence, if put in a single place, wouldn't fill an Olympic sized swimming pool.

To Op's statement, that's a great reference size!

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Matasa89 t1_iufrht4 wrote

I wouldn’t dare quit, lest the demon finds a reason to come find me outside of work.

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darthcoder t1_iuhc04e wrote

I find humor that in a writing prompt, so many people are doing math.

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MolhCD t1_iufwdwe wrote

I'm also not sure how he can convince the taxman and the financial regulator that he's not like money laundering though with that amount of gold. Prolly can't cash out the nuggets for spending money that easily...

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whitemanrunning t1_iug5l16 wrote

Imagine quitting and having "Steve" show up at your door for coffee Ala "one flew over the coo coo nest" with Jack Nicholson.

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SnippitySnape t1_iugu81n wrote

I think the bigger issue is that it would be hard to actually sell it. Perhaps Clair is just like a hidden millionaire hiding her gold like Ron Swanson. But how much can an ordinary person keep selling off raw gold like that. I suppose if she managed to sell some she could try and buy materials for a forging operation and maybe get into the business of being a gold supplier for various technologies.

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Simbuk t1_iui9cdg wrote

With a demon as a regular customer, you could probably arrange to live long enough to collect that much. If he likes your coffee enough, it might not even cost you your soul.

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514X0r t1_iuee5rj wrote

Fresh brewed Tabasco...

Hell and damnation, it's rare that words can offend my tastebuds like that.

So what if you just chucked all that in a percolator? Would it be better that it's worse?

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Sojoez t1_iueuvfw wrote

Did you mean loin cloth instead?
Also did you want to use different days instead of time advancing? The interaction seems to be based on different encounters, not just 3 minutes.

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escher4096 t1_iuf0cow wrote

Totally.

I was hoping for more of a flash back effect. 3 different flash backs for 3 different minutes

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Similar_Molasses7440 t1_iuf69om wrote

The flashbacks were clear and really helped build to a point where their interaction felt natural.

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MrRedoot55 t1_iug1mmr wrote

This "Steve" doesn't seem so bad.

So long as one remains reasonable with him, it seems.

Nice work.

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escher4096 t1_iug21ov wrote

Just because he is a “bad guy”, doesn’t mean he is a bad guy….

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TorontoHooligan t1_iugawyx wrote

Brewing coffee with Tabasco made me laugh so hard.

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OreoVegan t1_iugj6tc wrote

It honestly pissed me off as a barista. In a coffee shop you wouldn't be able to make espresso using water instead of tabasco because you wouldn't be able to switch the water source -a coffee stand you could, but you would need a five gallon bucket of tabasco -which to be fair, Claire likely would have ordered/brought in; quality ROI with the gold nugs.

In the parameters of the story above, what Claire would really be doing is substituting steamed milk for steamed tabasco, and then dumping the two shots of espresso in the steamed tabasco.

The hell themed latte art would then additionally be a pinkish red color, which honestly itself would be a nicer touch than white latte art on what otherwise would be an indistinguishable cup of coffee, if it was being made with tabasco substituted for water rather than tabasco substituted for milk.

And again: you'd actually be able to get a way hotter cup of coffee substituting the milk because our steam wands get absolutely insanely hot -hotter than even the 200 degrees that our machines pour espresso at.

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TorontoHooligan t1_iugrsp1 wrote

Man… who put Tabasco in your coffee this morning?

Just kidding, I had to. This was a decent explanation actually.

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caffeineandvodka t1_iuh41hr wrote

7 foot 8 with rippling muscles, you say? Where, uh, where might this coffee shop be? Yknow, just out of curiosity.

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Toptossingtrotter t1_iuhkr0z wrote

Oh yes, I too need to know where this coffee shop is. You know, so I can avoid that coffee shop. Especially late at night.

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caffeineandvodka t1_iuhvw0k wrote

Terrible things could happen being out alone late at night. Terrible, terrible things... dreamy sigh

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quibble42 t1_iugyqgd wrote

Two things

  1. it's door jamb I think, not jam

  2. how do you make a shape in the cream of you are not brewing the coffee as an espresso? Maybe the barista is using cold moldable foam?

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