Good at reading customers

By Rhonda Dredge

There’s a secret little corner in Docklands that just a few people know.

You can’t actually see the water from the tables but it’s not that hard to imagine it as a flat blue line.

Sometimes Allysar, who waits on tables and washes the floor, feels hemmed in by the setting.

That’s when she imagines herself somewhere else and writes a poem.

If you arrive just as she is finishing off her shift and order a lamb and feta gözleme, she might read it to you.

Allysar and other staff members shut up the café on the corner of Waterview Walk at 3pm.

She has another job across town and there isn’t much time between shifts to get there, so she finds it better to anticipate than complain.

When you’re in hospitality every customer counts, so Allysar sometimes offers a late lunch and a coffee as well. If you go for a flat white, she’ll understand.

It’s difficult for a poet to come out and read her verses but she likes to find a way of telling the truth about her situation even if it is a bitter pill.

Allysar told Docklands News that she sometimes missed the community of the more populated parts of the city to the north.

She knows others have different views and she isn’t about to impose her ideas on a customer unless she reckons you are a kindred spirit.

Then, all of the staff members gather around in their break to listen to an impromptu reading of Allysar’s verses off her phone.

They love her display of the finer sentiments, even if she does go too far.

Allysar’s poems are about her own passions and sorrows. She likes to keep them locked up until they’re ready to come out.

She doesn’t hold back about her situation and she has a good bitch with her friends and a customer who has wandered into the café in need of some entertainment.

She said she liked giving away flat whites, but really she’s just very good at reading customers from the lively little corner she inhabits.