I say a prayer of thanks as the aroma of the blessed bean wakes up and fills my senses. You can almost smell the old yellowing books amongst the caffeine and croissants.

What a bitter irony it is, I think, that the piercing cry of the coffee machine is the thing that will deliver me from this pain I have in my head and this weight I feel over my eyelids as the swanston st trains rattle by.

Fashion forward RMIT students sip their lattes as their scarf sporting tutors mill about looking academic. Everyone who works here looks like they’ve just gotten back from Rio and has an epic story to tell.

Whilst waiting against the brightly decorated bench I peer across at the RMIT green brain and wonder what on earth it means.

‘Holly’ an angel in a grey t shirt calls, ‘have a great day darlin’.

The place is so cool that I don’t even mind being called darlin by a 30 year old man.

This is poverty.

Toasting Asian Beer Cafe’s genius Ladies night strategy with multiple guzzles of 1 dollar champagne. Let it be known, it is from South Australia.

Shimmying through ticket barriers hot on the heels of paying, usually elderly, commuters and exploiting the paternal qualities of male ticket inspectors if caught.

I will let a man hit on me for a gin and tonic. The promise of an ebullient tang of bitters and lime will negate any unwanted playful touching of the hair or face, and I will surrender my dignity and pride as he did when he made the decision to wear a sports sandal to a bar.

$7.50 is a lot if you are 19 years old with no job or verified skills and a history of impulsively quitting jobs in a frenzy of empowered entitlement.

Why should one have to work from the toe jam up upon entry into the workforce? Mopping and scrubbing floors with no cartoon birds to underscore the whimsy, starting a 12 hr 6am shift having got home 6 hours earlier, appearing ditzy as a pre requisite for being female and making a mistake in the hospitality business, burning and bruising your arms on hot trays and accidentally looking like a heroin addict, being so afraid of messing up a family’s fine dining experience that you plunge the corner of a plate into the temple of their frail grandmother.

It’s just unbearable. The orgasmic rush of quitting a job you hate lasts approximately 30 seconds until you animorph into an adult child living at home in a nice suburb who may or may not still be reimbursed for unpacking the dishwasher. Ooooopps, you think, I am a privileged white girl, and I don’t even have the tousled ombre waves of my reality tv counterparts.

I’m not saying that upon wanting financial independence- in my case the ability to buy food everywhere and all the time, to buy alcohol everywhere and all the time and to afford the maintenance of a strong, classic brow- young people should just be able to whip out and get a job as a CEO or Yo Chi cashier. This is ludicrous. Society works because qualified people are assigned particular roles and can carry them out because they have been taught in some formal way how to do them. If people’s upwards of 15 years of education didn’t propel them towards a job, society would crumble. This is my understanding anyway, my point is young people shouldn’t feel entitled to work in awesome jobs if they don’t have the experience or training to deserve them. However, why must the virginal employee have it drummed into them that being treated poorly is simply a pre requisite for entering the workforce?

Our first few bosses will become psychological bedfellows with our memories of our early exes, evidence of our youthful naivety and charming potential to be casually exploited.

‘I can’t believe I worked at the drive thru of Red Rooster’ will soon carry the same sentiment as ‘I can’t believe I went out with a guy who wore velcro sports sandals/whose favourite singer was Taylor Swift/who met me on a blind date and immediately left.

As we grow wiser and gain legitimacy to make important decisions, the people we go out with will change and our jobs will get better. We will be able to pay for alcohol, food and a benebrow in theory, but we won’t want to anymore, it’ll just be boring stuff like taxes, a collection of kitten heeled Kumpfs for the office…. and a solo winery tour for me and all my cats.