In a bittersweet story out of Boston, MA, local barista Renee Miller is reportedly feeling a deep nostalgia for the three minutes before her boss just asked her to do something.
“I never thought I would long so achingly for that lost moment when I was just standing behind the counter waiting for a customer to arrive,” says Renee, whose bossed asked her to clean the fridge a few minutes ago. “Everything was so simple then.”
“Of course the bitter irony is I never appreciated what I had before,” Renee adds, down on her knees laboriously removing oat milks and sticky simple syrup bottles from the fridge. “Is that irony? It doesn’t matter, I am sad.”
“Why must we always want? Always compare our current situation to a more favorable one, blind to the fact we were living good and simple times?” asks Renee, who just 180 seconds ago was standing at the counter, Googling tofu recipes on the point of sale iPad. “Before I was cleaning the fridge, I just wanted to be not at work. Now I’d give anything to go back to that moment.”
The whole ordeal has forced Renee to reckon with the often-cruel chaos of life.
“When I really start to spiral is when I think about the fact that I’m not getting paid any more for the time I spend cleaning out this fridge than I was when I was simply doing nothing,” she says. “I mean, in what kind of world?
“At least I’ve learned from this experience,” says Renee, who hasn’t even really started cleaning the fridge yet. “It could always be so much worse. I will never take the peaceful moments for granted again.”
Sources confirm she will.
