Sunday, November 5, 2017

Fiction: My Life from Barrista to Top Foreign Policy Advisor

This is my The Moth story about my rocket rise to the top

I was lost and dejected after working on a political campaign in January 2016 working at the Starbucks on Fifth Ave. near East 56th St. in midtown Manhattan when I got my big break.  I was a pretty good Barista because I had a few languages under my belt and could get the spelling of people's names correctly on their cups.  This heavy set guy from Iowa came in every morning to get coffee and we struck up a conversation.  He was a great talker, but kind of disheveled and disorganized.  He found out that I had volunteered for the Carson campaign and he became more interested in me.  The guy who claimed his name was "Impact" but I have no idea, started coming down two or three times a day for coffee.

He told me one day to bring up a carafe of coffee in the tower, and when I got there he was impressed that I brought the cups, sugar (two different kinds) and cream.  I didn't have the heart that this was standard operating procedure.  He showed me around and I met some bigwigs in the campaign he was working on.  I told him about my work writing about  Cyprus, Greece and Israel. Impact was especially interested in my work on Cyprus because he said that the campaign manager had a lot of dealings in this country.  I exaggerated my skills telling him I was big into model UN back in high school, but whoever pays attention to that?  

I went back to Starbucks and finished out the day.  A week later, Impact came back into the Starbucks and was frantic because he had a big interview with the Washington Post for his candidate and he needed warm bodies.  He asked if I could take some time away from Starbucks to come to a meeting of the “Trump Foreign Policy Advisory Committee,” and be listed as one of the future President’s policy team.  I told Impact that I was the coffee guy, and he pointed to my experience as a volunteer for Ben Carson.  I got time, so I told him, “What the hell?”

From there it was a whirlwind of meetings and dressing up to look smart.  The campaign told me that I had to get a job at a different Starbucks because if any reporter recognized me it would hurt the Chairman.  This meant that I had to take an extra Subway ride, but I loved being a big man on campus up in the Tower.  I got to go to meetings, and speak on behalf of the campaign to foreign companies, diplomats and others.  People from all over the world called me once I was identified as a foreign policy advisor.  They want to talk to ME.  I could believe it.  Professors in England who were experts on Russia wanted to meet with me.  Can you believe it? There were so many who wanted my help trying to set up meetings or get to the candidate to pitch ideas.  It was like I had won the Apprentice.  

It was such a rush of adrenaline every day I stepped in that elevator.  Every day that the security guard allowed me to pass was a victory.  I got to go to rallies and people loved the candidate.  I got to answer e-mails on behalf of the campaign and got to sound important.  I still had to serve coffee to survive, but the other members of the campaign trusted me.  I got to go to Cleveland for the convention and got to strategize around stuff.  I did not stick my head up too much to avoid having it cut off, but I recognized what people liked and tried to make that happen.  The candidate and his family had a weird obsession with Russia, so I did everything I could to feed that obsession. 
My Cyprus connection left the campaign in August, but I still went forward with providing input on energy, Russia, Greece, and Israel.  I know it is strange to think that people were asking a barista about US relations with Greece, but no more strange than “the Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement” becoming the Campaign Manager of a Major Candidate for the Presidency.

Alas, I flew too close to the sun.  After the election, they did some deep digging and found out that I had never been in the Model UN.  I knew the jig was up.  I went back to Starbucks and forgot all about the campaign until the FBI knocked on my door.

by Max Johnson

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