Baristas never sit down on the job

PALMER HAY FLATS -- "If you're going to try and predict who's going to tip, you shouldn't base it on their car," 18-year-old Angie Bonnell said. In fact, there are few assumptions you can make about people by looking at their cars, according to Bonnell. She knows this because she's one of the baristas who works mixing coffee drinks at Espresso Exit on the Glenn Highway and at its sister espresso stand, the Purple Moose in Palmer.

Small sports cars are usually -- but not always -- driven by young people. Mini-vans and those over-sized station wagons the auto industry insists on calling SUVs are usually driven by parents. For them, the coffee shop staff offers animal cookies and goldfish crackers, and doggie biscuits.

"You got any kids back there?," Amy Lawton, asked one driver, offering a baggie of animal cookies. "How about dogs, are there any dogs back there?"

Lawton knows a couple of passenger dogs by name.

"I know Bruce, because he comes through here all the time," Lawton said. Bruce is a one of the Alaska State Trooper's working dogs. He travels around in a patrol car marked K-9 with a partner Lawton knows as Trooper French.

"I know Bruce because he comes from the Palmer shop," Lawton says with a shrug.

Bonnell, Lawton and Owen Lane were working the afternoon rush at Espresso Exit. People stop there going to and from Anchorage, but during the afternoon rush hour it's mostly people going to Anchorage. The traffic heading to Palmer, Wasilla or points beyond can't always get off the highway here. The construction workers did buy quite a bit of coffee here, the baristas said, but they've stopped working for the winter. The project should be completed by October 2004 and will have spent most if not all of a $50 million federal appropriation. Some of that money will trickle into the espresso stand and the barista's tip jar, but ultimately the project will limit access to the freeway and limit the commuter's access to the shop's special, a white chocolate mocha dubbed the "Polar Bear."

The baristas didn't really want to express an opinion on all that. Bonnell, who recently moved here from Arizona, thinks the highway project is generally a good thing. Lawton, at 26 and a lifelong Valley resident, seemed to have mixed feelings. She flip-flopped, at first wondering out loud if the interchange is necessary, then saying it will help traffic.

All of the baristas have seen cars backed up there, especially when a train comes and the crossing arms immediately to the north come down. On Wednesday afternoon, one car in a northbound lane snuck under the crossing arm as it was lowering and with bells ringing and red lights flashing, they said.

"I guess they need it," Lawton said with a shrug. "It'll be good."

Lane, 21, expressed some frustration at the giant mound of earth across the highway that will eventually lift traffic over the railroad tracks.

"We're just losing our scenery," he said.

But if asked, none of the three baristas will say they are there for the view or the tip jar. Bonnell said she likes customers and is learning to serve coffee drinks the way they want them.

"In Palmer [at the Purple Moose] you get a lot of regulars and they tend to stop and chat," Bonnell said.

Lane enjoys meeting the more eccentric drivers who stop in when he works the night shift, and he likes the teamwork at the shop.

"I like the camaraderie. Most of my friends in Palmer are people I have worked with," he said.

Lawton likes to stay busy and saidthe Espresso Exit is the busiest place she's worked.

"There's always something to do and you never sit down," she said.

Just before 5 p.m. Lawton makes a phone call to tell the person on the other end of the call that she'll be there soon to pick up her kids.

"I've been here since 10 a.m. and I haven't sat down even once," she said as she prepared to leave.