I have been working as a barista at the Green Dragon Café since my junior year and I will work there until I graduate. It’s a fantastic job. That big, dim painted room and its bright little booth is probably more like a home than any of the three cozy, creaky Collegetown houses in which I have lived. This semester, I resolved to be more of a morning person and I signed up to open the Café three times a week. From Tuesday to Thursday, from 8 to 10 a.m., I brew teas, ring up muffins and apologetically inform you (with a mouth full of bagel) that our espresso machine is broken (again), watch you heave a sigh to the heavens and storm across the quad to Libe Café. The job is pretty easy. In the first weeks, when I got over my fear of the milk steamer, my energies were redirected to idly eyeing the customers as they come and go. Behind that sticky counter, I became a naturalist, curving my fingers into hand-binoculars, observing the patterns of studentii-stressesus. But, seriously, I have spent many, many hours attending customers and I can’t help but pick up a thing or two from these rather predictable people. Sure as shooting, y’all are.

I have most recently learned that, around the Dragon’s clock, the early morning shifts at this little café are the easiest to work out. People will just order coffee and a bagel. Maybe a fruit. Simple. The number of customers is also often determined by the weather. Waking up early to a bleak day makes it impossible to get out of bed. Nice weather means tons of people lining up for breakfast in a timely manner and madness in milk for baristas.

Because it is hidden from the view of Ugg-ed stampedes of the Arts Quad and only a stairwell away from any studio, the Dragon mostly attends the stylish and stressed of the College of Architecture, Art and Planning. As cool as they look in their square rims, these kids are constantly geeking out in their studios and would take coffee intravenously if they could. They need us. We are a filling station and we pump all day long. Green Dragon coffee people know the rhythms of Sibley Hall pretty well, as people walk through its belly of a basement for sustenance. We know when the red-eye drawing class ends, when building care staff goes on their break, which speakers are coming in, if the computers are full in the library upstairs, which professors are having meetings, how deans like their coffee or whether the architects have a big review coming up.

It’s a small crowd and faces are more familiar than you think. As we ask, “what can I get you?” we can tell whether you will have the same medium coffee with skim milk, or if you’re feeling a little wacky and ask for a special shot of caramel syrup with it. We know that many of you will go through a period of eating most of your meals at the Dragon and know its options like the back of your hand. Few people mix things up and order the exact same thing every day. There are consistently healthy eaters and others who order sodas and candy bars first thing in the morning. Drinks are programmed as well — to the smallest detail. Professors get the darkest coffee available. Hippies love chai with soy. Girls slurp up flavored lattes. Boys drink reg’lar medium coffees with thismuchmilk. Grad students like Earl Grey tea with a spot of milk. It’s not because we are a small operation. Check out Trillium, the Ivy Room or any campus cafeteria: people move like zombies towards their food. You customers are no cute creatures of habit, but lumbering trolls of tendency.

As we go deeper into the semester, into the dark of interminable papers and prelims, we enter something of a perpetual state of nerves, paralyzed by work, only able to function in accordance to-do list in your planner. You do not have time to contemplate a Mediterranean Sampler. You order a turkey-and-swiss sandwich. You like turkey-and-swiss. Turkey-and-swiss works. And a soy, sugarfree-vanilla decaf latte. That is my drink, you think. Ok, got it, time to get back to work. There are strange, unnerving moments, however, when a customer stands in front of the Dragon, blissfully unaware of the 20 ravenous, caffeine-deprived AAP students behind her, and takes her own sweet time to contemplate the muffins, Snapples, chips and even asks for suggestions.

I do it too. Today, as I do every day, I picked out an onion bagel, scooped it out canoe-style, got a small coffee, cracked open some juice (preferably Mango Tango) and read the paper. I’m stressed and overdue in writing this column and I zipped back down to the café to have my usual California roll sushi for lunch, which I all but crammed in my mouth. Ideally, I would like to be able to try something new and enjoy it. Sample. But, now I can’t. I don’t really want to, to tell the truth. I have work days and work foods. Knowing what food you like and ordering it over and over again is comfort, a small reassurance in the long haul of a Cornell day. The job, in that cozy fort, works in the same way. It’s a mega-routine. The biggest habit. Simply brewing coffees, giving out food, hour after hour, day after day, to hungry, bleary-eyed peers and seeing relief, peace on their strung-out faces is the reason I love the job most.

Erin Geld is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be contacted at esg24@cornell.edu. The Sampling appears alternate Wednesdays.