“Large latte for Ian?
Silence.
“Noel? Nathan? Nail?
“It’s Neil.
“No worries, thanks Nick.”

So goes the tango with the barista, a dance we enjoy or endure depending on the nature of the barista in question, but mostly on how much we are in dire need of the drug we are about to score from them.

Our tolerance for the chaos of the daily coffee queue − and it always starts with the name, and its transition to the writing on the coffee lid − varies wildly according to circumstances and personal habits.

Are we murderous before our daily caffeine hit? Have we had a sneaky shot at home, making this a mere top-up? Is the barista funny? Is the barista scary? Is the barista stupid? Is the barista hot? (Don’t lie, you’ve been there.)

All these factors contribute to our tolerance or celebration of the experience, and a frisson of fraught tension delivers the human buzz while we wait for the liquid one. If you’ve never secretly fallen in love with your barista − or worse, suspected your barista might have the froths for you in a manner entirely unrequited − you haven’t lived. Waiting for those coffees is a special kind of hell, depending on your role in the rom-com.

A quick Google search reveals that barista romances, such as they are, are the stuff of a million stories around the world. Articles such as 10 Ways to Tell Your Barista You Love Them, or to flip the equation, How to Tell if Your Barista Is in Love With You are common, and of course, there’s even a bunch of TikToks on the subject. Humphrey Bogart was wrong: your love dramas really do amount to more than a hill of ethically sourced beans in this crazy world.

If you’ve never secretly fallen in love with your barista — or worse, suspected your barista might have the froths for you in a manner entirely unrequited — you haven’t lived.

Amid all this loin-wrenching, froth-dispensing tension, spare a thought for the poor barista, who has to navigate crushes and creeps, crashing bores, cryptic names, crazy orders − and a criminal lack of downtime in which to deal with it all during the morning rush.

I’ve often watched a barista in full flight in the caffeine peak hour and thought it looked like the worst kind of hell, as workplaces go. Relentless. They have usually been up since sparrow’s fart, and in our coffee-fuelled nation they are often among the first (and easily most important) person many people engage with every day.

It seems to me it is less a question of how they get things wrong, and more a question of how they ever get things right. I’d be a wreck.

Consider what it’s like from the queue, when you front up at your favourite spot to find yourself in morning coffee hell. That is, stuck behind the person armed with the office coffee order − a long list of soys and almonds and magics and mochas and caps and flats and skinnies and shorts − and you realise you could be waiting 15 minutes for your humble long black.

I speak from experience. In the silent language of the coffee queue, this moment is usually translated as “Hurry the f--- up.” (This clip − which has, as they say, divided the internet − kind of captures it.)

It’s a jungle out there − Colombian, Brazilian, African, name your poison − but a jungle it surely be.

Wrong names are the least of it, though they are often the most reliably cute and entertaining part of the experience. There is an entire genre of social media content built around this now, largely driven by the extremely peculiar American relationship with Starbucks, but a popular bit of passing comedy in these parts as well. Just be glad your name is not Arielle. And anyone named Clint will be familiar with the daily adventure they face whenever their name is scribbled in a hurry.

Just be grateful they didn’t call you Chief. Or worse, Champ. The worst.

Compared to these horrors, most of us have it easy. I asked my favourite barista if he and his kind share our fascination with them and the quirks of the trade.

He replied: “As long as we get the coffee right, that’s all you need to worry about Noel. Is it Noel? Ian? Nathan? Whatever. Here’s your coffee.”

And right there, he hit the Nail on the head.