Episode 8: Grab a Coffee, Settle In, And Let's Begin

I’m sitting at a table, sipping a large cappuccino while typing this script into my tablet. The café is quiet, not even half full. It’s only half past two in the afternoon and yet already dark outside. I look out through the full‑length window on my right, into a tired, foggy day. It’s not the first time I’ve visited this particular café, and yet somehow, this time feels different.

Welcome to cherryontop, the podcast brewed in the quiet hours between who I am at work and who I am in the world. So, grab a coffee, settle in, and let’s begin.

Intro music

Every Friday, I get up at six in the morning, make myself a cup of coffee, wash my face, brush my teeth, get dressed, and go to work for an 8 a.m. start. For the next eleven hours, I will be pleasant, nice, smiling, and inviting. I will anticipate and satisfy people’s needs. At 7 p.m., I put on my civilian jacket and go home. This repeats on Saturday. And then again on Sunday — except with an earlier close.

For at the weekends, I am a Café Assistant. And the café I’m currently sitting in is the same café where I work.

Today is Monday, my day off. Today is not about my job. It’s about my identity. From Monday to Thursday, I get to be me. From Monday to Thursday, I get to be the person who works from home. From Monday to Thursday, I am a Digital Consultant. A Brand Fixer.

Being a Catering Assistant is my job. The rest is my identity.

It’s not easy to combine the two, but somehow, I’ve managed so far — mostly by keeping them apart. After all, being a Catering Assistant is about being fast, efficient, invisible. It’s about heavy lifting, agility, and 20,000 steps a day. Consultancy and brand fixing, on the other hand, is about problem solving, brainstorming, and creativity. It’s slower paced and requires smarts.

To be a Catering Assistant, you need a strong body. To be a consultant, you need a strong brain. In both, you have to provide excellent customer service.

There are many things I love about my job — and it shows. In the two years I’ve been working there, I have been consistently praised for the quality of my work. Reliable, calm under pressure, warm and personable, hard working, team oriented — just a few adjectives my supervisors use to describe me. And yes, I can prove it. I’ve got it in writing.

But the truth is, all these qualities are learned. It’s a role I put on together with my uniform. And the reason I’m so good at it is that, when I was a kid, I was trained that way. I was trained to put the needs of others before my own. Trained like a monkey. All of you who grew up in a toxic family know what I’m talking about.

Mind you, I’m not complaining about having been brought up that way. I’m sure many people have been even less fortunate. And it’s our unique experiences in childhood that make us who we become as adults. Well — contribute to it, anyway.

But… despite excelling at the job, I cannot deny my identity. While I can put on a smile for a customer every day and go through all the automated movements that lead to excellent customer service, I cannot stop being a deep thinker, a creative, and an introspective person.

More and more, I’ve been slipping into my identity while doing my job. And it throws me off. It creates a gap. A need that wants to be satisfied — a need to be seen, heard, and appreciated for what I really am, and to meet other people’s needs at a much deeper level.

Yes, I do love my job. But it’s just a job. A job that any’body’ can do and every’body’ is replaceable. See what I did there?

And so here I am, on a Monday afternoon, sitting in the same café where I spend my weekends being fast, efficient, invisible. Except today, I’m not wearing the uniform. Today, I’m not the person who wipes tables, pulls shots, and carries trays with the speed of someone who knows exactly how many seconds she has before the next customer walks in.

Today, I’m the person who thinks. The person who writes. The person who notices things.

I am the creative freelancer with a personalised laptop, a leather laptop bag and matching leather shoes. I am the person who wears quirky accessories that reflect my creativity, intellect and my place in the world. This is my identity.

And maybe that’s why today feels different. Because for the first time, I’m not trying to keep my two worlds apart. I’m letting them sit next to each other — the job and the identity, the uniform and the leather shoes, the weekend version and the weekday version.

I know I will have to drop the job. But I don’t want to let go completely. There’s something about cafés — the rhythm, the warmth, the quiet theatre of it all — that still feels like home. Not the work itself, but the world of it. The atmosphere. The stories. The small human moments that happen over a cup of coffee.

And maybe that’s what I’ve been trying to hold onto. Not the apron, not the shifts, not the routine — but the essence of the café. The part that feeds my creativity rather than drains it. The part that belongs to my identity, not my job.

So no, I’m not planning to buy a coffee shop and start hiring people. Not in the physical world, anyway. But I am building a space of my own. A place where my ideas can sit at the table. A place where my voice can pour the coffee. A place where the creative version of me gets to be the one behind the counter.

And if you’ve noticed the shift in domain names, then you already know where this is going. Welcome to CherryOnTop.cafe.