It was a Monday morning and my coffee machine broke. So I invited my friends Jonathan and Mark to go get some coffee at a nearby coffee shop right before school.

We arrived at the coffee shop, and ordered the usual which is the iced caramel macchiato with almond milk.

“Unfortunately we are out of almond milk. Is regular milk okay?” asked the cashier.

“Yeah it’s fine.” I said.

And so the baristas were making the macchiatos for me and my friends. As we got our macchiatos, we started heading to school. We took a sip of the iced caramel macchiato and turned out fine. Nothing really happened until we went to our economics class.

“Alright class. We will be having a pop quiz.” said our economics teacher. “And it’s worth 40% of your grade. Hopefully you took very well notes on this.”

As he passed out the quizzes, I started to shake and started to feel funny. My mind was blurry, my heart was pounding, my stomach was feeling gassy, and I felt like I was about to pass out and faint. And I did. I don’t remember what happened other than the other classmates looking concerned at me.

I woke up in the nurse’s office, not remembering what happened, just that I got sick from the coffee.

“Do you remember what you had this morning?” asked the nurse.

“I didn’t eat. All I had was an iced caramel macchiato. They didn’t have almond milk so I don’t know what milk they used.” I said.

Then my friends Mark and Jonathan came to visit me.

“Marcos, you are not going to believe this. Look what we found in our coffee.” said Jonathan, holding chunks of crystal meth covered in iced coffee.

“They even added molly on the iced coffee.” said Mark, holding pieces of molly also covered in iced coffee. “It had nothing to do with the milk and everything to do with the drugs.”

“Oh shit, I didn’t know this shit had drugs in it.” I said. And I started to throw up.

This got me sent home from school. I spent the rest of the afternoon getting some sleep and also thinking about getting to the bottom of why there were drugs in the coffee. Later that afternoon, I got a message from Mark saying that the coffee shop is now hiring, and he sent me all the info. I decided to immediately apply for the job and work on weekends.

A few days later I ended up getting the job and started working as soon as I got better. It was a Saturday morning and my first day working at the cafe. I got the barista position so I started making lattes, macchiatos, and coffee for the customers. During my break, I overheard some employees talking about how bad they feel about accidentally pouring drugs in the milk gallon, and how scared they are of getting fired from their job. Then security guards and police officers came with a service dog and the dog smelled drugs in the baristas who messed up the orders on Monday. Not only those baristas ended up getting fired from their job, but they also got arrested from the job.

“Thank you officers.” I said. “I actually got sick from the iced caramel macchiato last time I ordered here.”

“Hey, you’re not the only one who got sick from their orders in the past week.” said the security guard. “My son recently got hospitalized from the coffee with the drugs.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that.” I said.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m glad you decided to work here. And I have to thank you for making these orders safe.” said the security guard. “Take care kid.”