One of the things that gets me through moving house – an ordeal I treat as an acute psychological punishment perpetrated against me specifically – is exploring a new neighbourhood’s food and beverage options. My girlfriend and I recently moved and No 1 on our list of priorities (before unpacking or sussing out the emergency exits) was to find our new Local Cafe.
Similarly to experts who say “it’s important to buy a good mattress because you spend a third of your life in bed”, I say “it’s important to find which barista you can make small talk with for 15 minutes every day until your sublet ends, because you’ll be talking to them more than to your own mother”. Perhaps not as universal, but equally true.
So we set out, ready to put in the hard yards. Over the course of a few weeks, we sampled each of the numerous cafes within a distance from our front door that we’d realistically be willing to walk each day, regardless of our state.
After lots of coffee and food, and some trial and error (including accidentally paying $14.50 for an average ham and cheese croissant that I will NEVER get over), we decided on The One. This cafe has everything: it could only be closer if we paid the baristas to work from our own kitchen, the coffee tastes like heaven, and the people that work there are nice and make us feel welcome.
We’d done it! It was perfect.
Except for one tiny thing.
If you become a regular at a cafe, the people that work there will generally try to learn your name: it’s good business practice, and it’s also nice. They do this by asking your name for the order and then remembering it. My girlfriend managed this simple process without a hitch, communicating her name, which they then took on board.
For me, it was slightly more difficult. A couple of visits in, I heard one of the baristas say my name. It sounded a bit different to “Rebecca”, but I couldn’t quite hear him, so I just let it go.
A few more visits in, it became abundantly clear that everyone at the cafe had learned my name as “Rachel”.
This is a very easy mistake to make when dealing with two of the world’s most boring white woman names, but it left me at a crossroads. Other people disagreed with the “crossroads” part, seeing one very clear road: tell the extremely nice people at the cafe that there’d been a name mixup.
To them, it was simple, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It had been too long, the embarrassment I would feel too large, the fear that I would make them feel embarrassed also weighing heavily.
I decided I would just be Rachel at this cafe for a few months. It wouldn’t be a big deal, how much could my name possibly come up?
After some reflection, I can admit now that I underestimated how much my name could come up. I forgot that in order to remember so many customer’s names, the names must be repeated at every opportunity. I am greeted and farewelled and chatted to (lovely), all with the name “Rachel” dangerously zipping about in the air. My loved ones, at first resistant to my deranged conflict avoidance, were eventually, inevitably dragged into the fray.
One morning, when I spilled the coffee I had just brought home, my girlfriend went back down to get more. She tried to keep my name out of the small talk by saying “we had a spill.” Unfortunately, the barista immediately asked “who spilled it?” and she faced her own crossroads, eventually quietly answering “Rachel”.
When we both got Covid and were stuck inside for weeks, our friend did a cafe visit for us, and confirmed to them he was buying coffee for “Rachel”. Like I’m in some sort of witness protection program, I text people I’m meeting for coffee that they have to call me Rachel. If I run into friends randomly at the cafe, I’m required to quickly sidle up to them and murmur “please call me Rachel”. I began to have a few small regrets.
Then, my new name started making it onto the coffee itself.
Rach! I was now getting nicknames on my fake name!
Still, I refused to say anything. I was in too deep, and besides – there’s only so many new situations that can happen at a cafe. We must have reached Maximum Rachel.
Or so I thought. Meeting a friend for breakfast, we decided to eat in at the cafe for the first time. I did the usual text warning to my friend, and she arrived with a wave and a happy “Good Morning Rachel!”. I ordered my coffee, and when it was placed in front of me, this is what we saw:
I can’t quite find the words to explain the emotions that ran through me at this moment. From the outside, I can only imagine how bizarre our reaction to this beautiful coffee art looked.
We fell silent instantly, our mouths hanging open, a physiological reaction to the funniest thing in the world happening, with no right to laugh. Then, almost in unison, we all realised how strangely we were acting and burst out with “oh my god so cute” and “wow the talent!” all at once.
It has been a breathtaking, and obvious, lesson. By trying to avoid a minor situation where both parties would have felt a tiny piece of embarrassment, I have now gotten myself into a complicated situation where I have to worry about a much bigger embarrassing moment: if it comes out I’ve been Rebecca this entire time.
I am humbled by the terrible and confusing decisions I have made in the near past, and I will never end up in this position again. Even though this experience has taught me a lesson, I am sorry to tell you all that I absolutely will not be applying what I have learned to this current ongoing situation.
Unless the absolute angels at the cafe read this article and discover my secret (if you’re reading this, I love you, your coffee is the best, I’m so sorry), inside those four cafe walls – I’m Rachel.
• Rebecca Shaw is a writer based in Sydney
