The Smoothie Diaries: The Beauty in Accuracy

 


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Working in food service requires a number of skills: people pleasing, efficiency and multitasking are the main ones. But I am proud of a more obscure skill: I can exact right amount of smoothie. When I make a smoothie there is nothing left over in the blender after I have poured it. This is the king of my smoothie bar accomplishments. I have perfected the ratio of banana to grape to apple so that if a customer orders a sixteen ounce kale smoothie -- I make sixteen ounces of smoothie. 
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No waste. No leery customer saying, "Are you going to throw all that out?" No small animals peering over the top of the counter as though around a watering hole, hoping to get their snouts in to the leftovers. No congealed smoothie clinging to bottom of the blender. Ok, you get it. 

Of course I am the only smoothie barista with this particular obsession. This can be hard for me if I am watching while they make an eighteen ounce smoothie for a sixteen ounce cup. Deep breathing as they wash the rest down the drain. Must. Have. Self. Control. 

Sometimes I just can't take it. I snatch the blender out of the incompetent's hands and make it myself. As I thrust appropriately sized wads of kale into the blender as I growl something along the lines of, "You wasteful creature. Have you no idea how to correctly gage the amount of bananas requisite to make a sixteen ounce smoothie?!"

So maybe I don't actually do that. But you get the point: Smoothie amount accuracy (SAA) is a high priority in my book. It is not even about the Save the Planet aspect, although that is part of it. It is more about the art of perfection. Like finding a beautiful box that is the perfect size for a particular object. It matters in and of itself. So let's get it right, People.