A man with a goatee, who had just exited a Holden Commodore, stood at the entrance of the cafe, wearing a black sabbath singlet, tracksuit pants and thongs. Restocking the sugar behind the bench, I stood watching as he looked around the room, comprehending, before squinting for a long time at the menu hanging above a big coffee machine.

“Do youse guys do coffee?” he shouted from the door.

“No,” I said, gliding a hand over the machine, takeaway cups, and a sign that said We Love Making Your Coffee. “This is just decoration.”

“True,” he said, softly, head tilted slightly down, disappointed, then began to walk out of the cafe.

“No, no, no,” I said confounded. “Come back. I was just joking.”

He laughed at that. “True that. Youse had me there, aye.”

The man looked charmingly out of place, almost as much as Ace at this party.

The cafe’s demographics were mainly young professionals who liked ethically sourced single origin coffee and almond milk. He meanwhile seemed more acquainted with roadhouses who haven’t changed the menu in 30 years—the types still only serving cheese Kransky sausages and ‘white coffee’ and, maybe, a long black for the rare purist—because at the counter he said: “Just a coffee, thanks.”

—

As a millennial who is used to having every personal preference accounted for, the days of only having only one option of something is hard to comprehend. I doubt whether we, the millennials, would have been able to survive on the food rations of WWII, for example. “But gluten makes me bloated,” we would’ve objected to the rationer giving out bread. I can’t even recall the times when an unbranded, glass milk bottle appeared on the doorstep every Friday from the local farmer.

What I do remember, though, is slapping $4 on the school canteen bench and saying to the lady on the other side, “Lunch, please,” to which she would then hand over the ‘daily special’, no questions asked, because, apart from the left-over Mrs Macs pies, there was never anything else offered. The meals were only special in the sense that a wild, three-legged dog in Bali who has survived a gunshot to the head is special: the offerings were a rotation of Italian-themed slop, beginning with lasagne and ending with premade Coles’ pizza. (We could see the supermarket’s packaging stacked in the corner.)

Though the food was terrible, we never complained because the lunch lady, an older Italian woman with hoarse voice and a hairy upper lip, championed the edict: “Get what you’re given and if you're not grateful I’ll throw the lasagne in your face and make sure you starve for the next week.”

She never did throw food in a child’s face. But she did repeatedly threaten to do so, especially when an entitled, fresh-faced Year One with a stiff collar and a gelled-back combover protested, “But I don’t like lasagne.”

The lunch lady, as a child of the depression, wasn’t being malicious, just reminding millennials that being choosy is a bi-product of having too much choice.

Any person who has left home to quickly pick up bread only to return an hour later having forgotten the bread but somehow amassing a long grocery receipt and a much lighter wallet and a feeling of deep discontent— even shame for having been so easily coaxed into buying an expensive bag of that new superfood and too many on-special sweets—knows the tyranny of having too many options. And will, therefore, understand that the Italian woman’s stern reminder would invariably transform precious children into grateful recipients of whatever meal plonked before them, even if a long, pubic-like hair did appear under the first cheesy sheet of pasta.

—

Baristas certainly know the limitations of giving people too many choices. I didn’t think about that, though, when I served the man in the black sabbath singlet who simply wanted a ‘coffee.’

Instead of making a flat white or something knowing he probably couldn’t taste the difference between most of the drinks—customers who say ‘just a coffee’ usually just want a big takeaway cup filled with several shots and milk—I gave the man options.

“What kind of coffee, though?" I said.

“Ummm.” He pondered the menu again, hands in pockets, unrushed, the line of customers building behind.

“Flat white?”I suggested.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’ll do, aye.”

“What size?”

“Do you do more than one size?” he said, eyes lighting up. He seemed very impressed.

“Yeah,” I said, leaning on the bench, tired. “Large or small?”

“The biggest one you got, aye.”

“Sugar?”

“Go on. Just one, aye.”

“Okay.”

Actually. Make that two. Two big ones.”

The customer behind ordered a large almond flat white with three shots. The man who’d overheard the order then asked: “How many shots are in a flat white normally?

“Two.”

“Could I also have three shots?” he said. “And what’s almond milk?”

“Not sure,” I said, finally, hiding the almond milk, tired of giving options. “We only serve full cream cows milk.