I have been a barista for most of my adult life. I also went to art school so a lot of my friends like to say I’m a walking cliche or a caricature of myself; a barista with arty dreams in a town that is obsessed with coffee culture. My Disgruntled Barista series is a response to that “cliche”. There are a lot of disgruntled baristas in my generation. We tend not to be paid enough so we work for tips, which means we have to be charming and/or put up with bad behavior. Since caffeine is an upper we can be pretty excited about the work we do, but the crash can be brutal, and that’s when we can be disgruntled. My plan is to eventually create a comic strip about the characters I am revealing with these drawings. They are all inspired by real people: friends of mine.