Phil is elbow deep
in ice cream when a customer tells him he’s leaving an extra dollar for tip.
Phil is making a mocha shake—his least favorite order.
“Thank you much,”
Phil says over his left shoulder.
“Whad’ya say?”
“Thank you,” Phil
says while straightening up, “I said thank you much.”
Phil Cowley has to
repeat himself often. Customers at Fourth Coast Cafe have a hard time hearing
him over the constant hum of peripheral conversation, espresso machines, and
music. “I guess I’m a low talker. But I hear myself just fine,” Phil says.
In addition to his
low voice, Phil has quite the poker face. His slightly pronounced jaw, tight
lips, and deeply shadowed blue eyes do not leave room for many emotions other
than sternness. Yet, his sternness is further translated into somberness when
laid across his ghostly pale face and stacked upon a tall and lanky body —his
expression always somewhat diluted, always somewhat less potent than intended.
After one and half
years at Fourth Coast, and two years in the restaurant upstairs, Crows Nest,
Phil is ready to leave. He says, “I’m looking for other shit. I’m getting
really tired of this job. I’ve been in customer service too long.” Phil has
been working in different sectors of customer service since he was thirteen
years old, making him a veteran with his upcoming thirtieth birthday.
But, it’s not the
years in the industry, the labor, or the humdrum routine of it all that
exhausts Phil—it’s the fakeness of the forced interactions. He refers to it as
“placating” when customers can tell he isn’t engaged in conversation yet
persist anyway. “...Either they don’t know or they don’t care...they don’t
realize the shame in it [being placated]”. He continues, “I like people talking
to me. I just don’t like people I don’t want to talk to talking to me.” He
feels no sympathy for others’ loneliness—he is definite in thinking that it is
shameful to want to be “placated”, regardless of the reason.
In an ideal world,
Phil gets out of customer service, becomes a zoologist, and builds himself a
house made out of stone in a town that’s a hybrid of his hometown, Kalamazoo,
Michigan and his favorite place he’s lived in, Savannah, Georgia. Savannah is
the only place Phil has gone back to live in for a second time. He was
initially drawn to Savannah because he has distant relation to General Sherman,
the Union Army General who gave Savannah to President Lincoln as a birthday
present. Phil fell in love with the simple things of Savannah: the flowers, the
Southern charm, the architecture, and people’s friendliness.
He’s also lived in
Washington D.C., Chicago, Fort Knox, Kentucky, Alexandria, Virginia, and Costa
Rica. He’s been on the move for almost thirteen years now, leaving at the age
of seventeen because he tested out of his senior year of high school. He
travels out of presented opportunities—a brother-in-law in Virginia, a friend
in Costa Rica, family in Chicago. He returns to Kalamazoo whenever he runs out
of money, usually making his travels last about two years.
When initially
asked about his frequent moving, Phil chalks it up to his gypsy blood. His
ancestors must have been nomads, he thinks. He even recently turned in an
application to be a flight attendant because of the free travel. But upon
further reflection, he thinks it really comes down to the utter boredom he
feels on a daily basis. “I’m bored at work, bored at home...I think I’m grumpy
most of the time because I’m bored.”
Now that he’s
older, Phil would settle down somewhere if it were the right place. His next
intended city of living is Charleston, South Carolina. He asked his co-worker,
Nathan, to come down and live with him, but Nathan can’t move now because of
financial reasons.
Nathan becomes
instantly animated when asked about Phil. In three words, he describes Phil as:
independent, smart, and crazy—crazy in the sense that Phil does everything his
own way... a way that doesn’t match any one else. Nathan says, “Everyone really
likes him [Phil] but are confused by him because he doesn’t give you a lot.” But,
Nathan is one of the people that Phil wants to talk to, so Nathan is always in
the listening mood when spending time with Phil. Nathan thinks Phil’s life
stories are useful because he is not caught up in the popular culture of
feeling like one has to contribute in order to make one’s life meaningful.
“Phil lives for himself and just exists,” he says. His favorite story about
Phil is when they were both working together, and they had to kick a customer
out because he was giving them a hard time. They went outside to mess around
with the guy because it was a quiet night, and the customer began threatening
to shoot both of them in the face. Phil got right up the man’s face, and in his
characteristically steady and low voice said, “Shoot me in the face then.”
Phil’s calmness in
the sticky situation with Nathan is a reflection of his growing up. He lived
near the Edison neighborhood on the South side of Kalamazoo, where robberies
were common. His dad taught him if he wasn’t immediately attacked, the
perpetrator didn’t mean business. He learned how to bluff muggers and claims he
only got beaten up once because of it.
Phil’s dad also
taught him to be environmentally conscious before it became cool, and also
raised him as Buddhist. Today, Phil is strictly agnostic though, saying, “I
don’t think there’s any way to know...I just can’t bring myself to believe.” He
also thinks, “religion is the trouble with the world”, but he’ll still
respectfully listen to a religious person talk about his/her beliefs.
It is mid
afternoon, and Phil is outside smoking a cigarette—American Spirits because
even though they’re double the price, they’re supposed to last longer and be
less addictive, which he doesn’t believe because he still smokes a pack a day.
He’s got three hours left in his shift, and he’s getting agitated, “Time is
dragging by today. It sucks.” He doesn’t stay outside for long though because
his baby blue polyester pants are making him sweat in the humid weather. After a short conversation with a prep cook
from the restaurant above Fourth Coast, Phil returns behind the counter. He
seems troubled, and looks towards the door as he talks, “Everything is made to
be temporary so we can make more.” This is a typical nugget of wisdom from
Phil, the discontented yet happy barista. Perhaps Phil is bored because he is
too smart for his own good, or perhaps he is bored because he’s waiting on
himself to make permanent change in his life.
Either way, he still has a few hours in his shift to kill, and a few
more customers that will want to talk to him, even if he does not know how to
grin and bear it.
