hello, we are those people whose orders still psychologically traumatize former baristas years later

I worked at a coffee shop back in 2007. As with any coffee shop, we had our fair share of strange regulars and weird orders. For a while I was actually chronicling them on a blog called Coffee Shop Introductions, which I spun off of a series of posts on my old Xanga.

I still remember the most disgusting regular order we got, which inspired a CSI post entitled "Hello, We are Those People Who Want an Unhealthy Number of Espresso Shots in Their Drinks." There was a couple that would come in every morning, and both of them would order the same drink: a large latte with eight shots of espresso.

Our large was comparable to a Starbucks Venti size. By comparison, a typical Venti latte at Starbucks will have three shots of espresso. That's more than twice the typical amount of caffeine in what is already a heavily caffeinated drink. (Not to mention that once you've put that much espresso in a cup, you can't really taste anything other than the bitter, smokey espresso flavor.)

That wasn't the most disgusting part, however. What made it truly horrifying is that the same couple would then come back to the coffee shop in the afternoon and they would each order the same drink again.

So, if you're keeping score at home, that's a daily(!) dosage of sixteen shots of espresso coffee.

I think most people, myself included, forget that caffeine is a drug. As such, caffeine has addictive qualities and can cause damage to your body when ingested in large quantities.

According to some quick and sloppy internet research, a typical espresso shot contains 64mg of caffeine per fluid ounce (although the actual amount in any given shot can vary significantly). If a typical shot is one fluid ounce, then these customers were consuming over one full gram of caffeine per day. Doing even more sloppy and unverified internet research, some consider one's daily caffeine intake level to be safe if you limit it to 300mg or less per day.

It's entirely probably my calculations are off, so don't take these findings to court. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable that these customers were daily consuming (and probably still consume) over three times as much caffeine as one person should. And this doesn't even include any other caffeine they took in during the day via sodas, chocolate, other cups of coffee, and so on!

But what disturbs me the most about it is this: In some way, I helped enable them.

Granted, I imagine the vast majority of coffee drinkers don't drink more than three or four shots of espresso per day. Also, these were paying customers, and it wasn't like I was dealing drugs or continuing to give a drunk refills and then letting him go without calling a cab. As far as vices go, caffeine addiction must be low on the totem pole.

Nonetheless, I felt a pit in my stomach each time I prepared those awful drinks, and I and some of the other baristas tried to persuade them to tone it down on more than one occasion. These two coffee lovers brushed off our suggestions, however, and kept on with their habits.

At the end of the day, I probably don't have a stone to throw. How much time do I spent on my computer when I could be doing more productive things? How much junk food do I eat when I know it's bad for me? How often do I deny myself sleep when I know I need rest to be healthy?

As someone who grew up in church, I've heard the "drugs, sex and alcohol" narrative of sinful behavior so many times that it's easy to brush aside all the seemingly benign vices. However, if I can't get my own habits under control, what right do I have to judge?