The chinese woman, the drug addict and the coffee shop in Auckland

I would like to tell you this story the sister of my boss told me one week ago…

I’m working in a coffee-restaurant that opened recently, the owners are a Chinese couple.They are lovely people and they are working very hard (one day holiday last year!) for their business to work. One of the workers is the sister of the boss : a little woman about 60 years old who grew up in China when times were very different from nowadays.
As we were sharing about different things, she told me about the coffee shop she owned in Auckland few years ago…:

She didn’t speak good English and she had no idea how to use a coffee machine at this time but she opened a coffee shop in the multicultural-big city Auckland. When the first customer came in and asked for a cappuccino she answered “No, I can only make Flat White”. It was maybe a little bit risky to open a coffee shop without having any knowledge about the complex coffee science and a poor English, isn’t ?

Well, anyway she started like that !
Then, she was looking for a barista to make the coffee in her shop and she found this handsome young Kiwi guy. He was great, making the perfect coffees, teaching her a lot.
But one day, he didn’t show up at work. She tried to call him but he was unreachable.
Finally, he showed up the next day and explained to her that he is use to take heavy drugs and when that happen he feels so bad the next day that he can’t go to work. She didn’t tell him that it was bad to take drugs, she just said that she couldn’t continue to work with him if he allowed himself to not come to work sometimes. He promised that it will not happen anymore. But it happened again. And again.
She was really annoyed by the situation because he was now important as a son to her and she couldn’t take the decision to fire him.

What finally resolved the situation was when the barista met this woman. He felt in love of her, she was drug addict as well and they decided together to stop taking drugs and to go further in their relationship. Then, he continued to work in the coffee-shop and showed up every day at work.

Later on, S. stop the coffee shop but they kept in touch with each other and still nowadays I could see in S. eyes the importance she gives to this ex-barista-Kiwi-drug addict.

I loved this story between two very different people from different background, cultures, social class, that finally end up loving each other. Because I believe it’s the kind of relationship that help the world to move towards more tolerance and that’s why I wanted to share it with you, Steem people :)

Thanks for reading !

Gomart