The president of my company took notice and urged my boss to have a chat with me. She let me know that with my long tenure and dedication to the craft of coffee making, I was just as disposable as I was the day I walked in the door a broke and confused 24-year-old. Disheartened by the reality of being a lot less important than I allowed myself to believe, I spent the slow parts of most mornings staring out the window. I watched a guy I remembered from a computer science course in college illegally park his Land Rover in front my shop and dart across the street to the Starbucks that had been burying my store, and wondered where our paths had diverged in such radical ways. Juggling an iPhone, a set of keys and a frozen brown drink covered in whipped cream and caramel, he climbed back into his SUV, made an abrupt U-turn, and sped toward downtown.