I’ve worked at several Starbucks stores. The same people work at all of them.

The Perpetual Community College Student
The PCCS works the closing shift. He drives a Toyota pickup. He goes to school part-time and works full-time to pay for the classes. He has too much homework, but always seems to have time to hang out on the patio after closing. He hasn’t declared a major. He’ll transfer to a local state school in four years or drop out.

The Young Mom
This chick is probably younger than you. She is always willing to pick up a shift if you need coverage, but you feel a little guilty taking her up on the offer. Her mom watches her kid while she’s working the morning shift so she can get home by noon. She waits for her ride outside with a Frappuccino.

The Stoner
He’s always too broke to buy lunch, but has enough money to get stoned on Saturdays. He’s an artist, but you never see any of his art. He hitches rides from friends and coworkers. When he has money, he moves in with the Musician. When he’s broke, it’s back to mom’s house. More than likely he has a second retail job at the mall or Target.

The Unmarried Dad
He’s the only one wearing shorts at work. He always seems a little on edge. He probably had a real job before working here. He’s the only one besides the Manager driving a car built in the last five years. The Assistant Manager probably has a thing for him, but it’ll never come to anything.

The Bi-Curious Gym Rat
She has a fan club of men and women who come in just to flirt with her, but she won’t settle on any one. About half of the males and at least one of the females on staff has a crush on her. She’s a free spirit and listens to indie bands. She spends her days off getting tan at the beach or snowboarding in the mountains. She’s got a Jeep, but she’s thinking of trading it in for a motorcycle. You want to hate her because you’re jealous, but you can’t because she’s so damn cool.

The Super Happy Teen
She’s got crazy hair, either in style or color. Her smile is infectious. The old people that come in love her to pieces and she brings in tons of tips when she’s on register. She’s probably religious and has a steady boyfriend she went to high school with. She gets along with her parents, especially her dad, and they’re helping her get through college. For her 16th birthday they bought her a used, sensible car and she still drives it.

The LGBT Barista
This person gets away with wearing canvas Converse on the floor instead of the ugly restaurant shoes. A favorite with all the college girls that come in, and makes a tasty soy chai. Best conversationalist. Probably vegetarian. Has a dog and lives with the Bi-Curious Gym Rat.

The Musician
This guy is pushing 30 but acts like he’s 18. He plays a regular gig at the dive bar downtown. One of his songs was on a local college station. When not working with you, he’s waiting tables or bartending—anywhere he can flirt for more tips. He makes comments about the hot regulars. He hangs out with the Stoner most weekends because of their mutual interests. He calls in “sick” but really he’s just hung over.

The Manager
If you’re lucky you get a manager that understands that people have other stuff going on in their lives and that increasing retail sales is not one of their top priorities. She puts out a fair schedule, pays you the right amount, and never stiffs you on labor. If you’re unlucky, she’ll spend all day in the back room doing paperwork and not helping you out when there’s a rush. If you’re really unlucky, she’ll get promoted to district manager.

The Assistant Manager
Poor, poor assistant manager. Your crew and your manager have life in balance. Then corporate tells you you’re training an assistant manager. She comes in with big dreams of making changes to your store and messing up everything. You’re not a fan. She drives a minivan and has to be off by 3 to pick up the kids. She’s the Yoko to your Beatles. The evil stepmother to your Cinderella. But balance returns when she’s shipped off to manage her own store, thank god.

The Overworked Shift Supervisor
Takes his job too seriously. Probably going to school full-time, but took on the job as shift supervisor for the experience and the bump in pay. Fears getting fired, but wants to throw in the apron almost every day. You like him because he gets you out on time. You hate him because he’s bossy. He drives a Subaru and lives with other college friends, but can just barely afford it all. Secretly dating one of the baristas, but everyone totally knows.

Katie Peoples lives in San Diego and is an ESL teacher by day, writer by night.

Where have you lived, Katie Peoples?

Perkins and Grand, Oakland, Calif., $1,050 (shared)
This was my first apartment, after my sister and I came to the realization that after sharing a bedroom during childhood and then a house in adulthood, we had to part ways or kill each other.

It was a basement apartment with a tiny bedroom that barely fit the queen bed my then-boyfriend and I brought with us. The rest of the furnishings were hand-me-downs from my rich sister who had it all stored in her old garage in Alameda. The apartment had crooked floors, three windows (all with bars), and contact paper on the walls in the bathroom. To get to it you had to go through the side gate of the much nicer apartment building it was below, then a second gate, past the artists’ studios and garbage bins, and there you were.

But it was cheap, close to BART and utilities were included. It was also next to the best Ethiopian food, and I gained ten pounds as a result of living there.

Musikalnaya Street, Chernihiv, Ukraine
I joined the Peace Corps. My second home away from home was the apartment of a young widow, Inna, and her preteen twins, Alina and Dima, in Chernihiv. I liked this little apartment a lot because it was cozy and warm when it was so, so, so cold outside. The building had a tiny elevator which I was always suspicious of, and thus, avoided.

My host family, like most of the tenants, kept vegetables in the basement of the building in little storage units and my poor brother Dima always got sent down to get the bucket of potatoes. This place was a jackpot as far as apartments go for Ukraine. My first introduction to Ukraine was an awful, run down sanitorium that was freezing at night and had a simple hose over a drain for a shower. I walked into this place expecting the worst and nearly wept with joy at the bright colors, warm kitchen and hot modern shower. And it had laundry!

Lenina Street, Vasilkivka, Ukraine, $50/mo.
My first apartment in the field was, I was told, temporary—I would only need it for about eight weeks because a woman closer to the school promised to rent her apartment to me—so there was no reason to get internet installed. I arrived at this apartment in the middle of a blizzard. Most apartments/houses in Ukraine start running their heat mid-October (October 15, to be exact according to host mom Inna) so by mid-December they’re pretty toasty. Not so for my Lenina apartment—it was near freezing. I was warned not to get changed out of my clothes but to just go to bed because I’d be too cold. In the morning a neighbor came over and unclogged my shower, which was spewing up some small food matter I’d rinsed down the sink in the kitchen. The neighbor, Sasha, turned out to be the director of the local sports school and took no time in asking whether I was married and if this boyfriend of mine was tall. I spent my first Christmas in Ukraine alone, curled against the heater in my bedroom reading Harry Potter on my computer and willing myself not to cry.

Partyzonskaya Street Vasilkivka, Ukraine, $50/mo.
My site mate and I dubbed this the Peace Corps Palace, and my regional manager told me it was the nicest apartment he’d ever seen given to a volunteer. The whole apartment had recently been remodeled and had a much more spacious floor plan than other Soviet apartments with a huge wide living room and two small bedrooms. Even though the living room had 16 different patterns and the glare off the shiny wallpaper made me squint, this was easily the nicest apartment I stayed in during my service.

But nothing’s free right? My landlady and her family would often come into my apartment and do things like turn down the heat, cook in the kitchen. One of them stole the iron I was borrowing from my boss. My boss had words with the landlady, and I was out of that apartment three weeks after Orthodox Easter. Sigh.

Pervamayskaya Street Vasilkivka, Ukraine, $50/mo. ($55/mo. in the winter)
After going from the Palace to this dump I was crushed. Only two of my windows opened—a tiny square one in my bedroom and a long skinny one in the kitchen. The toilet had a pull chain and was actually crumbling. The wallpaper in the WC was coming off the ceiling because of a leak in my upstairs neighbor’s bathroom that neither he nor my landlord were going to fix. My parents came to visit and almost took me home. My sister actually cried.

My neighbors here were awesome though. They talked to me when I was outside, told me when I had mail, and helped me fix my crappy lock. The lady who worked at the shop next door never forgot my parents and always asked after them and would then compliment them for how young they looked, despite being older than 55. Sometimes I miss this place, even the spiders and the mouse I found dead in my sink. One morning I woke up to the beginning of a open casket funeral procession outside my door, making my deceased neighbor the third dead person I saw in Ukraine.

Crossroads Drive, North Charleston, S.C., $750/mo.
After Ukraine nothing looked bad. This place was a one bedroom, 800 square foot apartment and we got it for $750/month, utilities not included. I was still bathing in the afterglow of my reunion with America so I was only too happy to drink all the tap water I could, whenever I wanted, while using a washer AND dryer. My number one priority then was get a job that paid money. I got a barista gig. Being so far from home and in a whole other culture again was fun but I couldn’t wait to move back to California. I do miss the fried pickles.

Downtown San Diego, Calif, $1,550/mo. (shared)
We picked the first apartment within our budget to get back to us which turned out to be kind of expensive for San Diego. However I conveniently got a job working as a teacher at an ESL school just a few blocks away. I loved the ten-minute walk to work, but then I realized I was seeing more and more of my students in the elevators, in the garage, in the small gym, and worst of all yelling at each other just outside my window on Friday night. And if it’s not them it’s a bunch of drunk college kids. In the six months I’ve been here there have been more fire alarms than I’d like in a residence and I’ve had to yell at a few kids being too rowdy at weird hours. We’re currently looking for a new place because this one makes us feel old.

Katie Peoples lives in San Diego and is an ESL teacher by day, writer by night.

1. Weed through unpaid “internships” and “volunteer/experience” opportunities on Craiglist to find two postings I’m qualified for, would willingly do. Mood: Despondent.

2. Browse Mediabistro for jobs in San Diego, but most jobs are in L.A. Consider possibility of four-hour roundtrip commute. It might not be that bad??? Mood: Optimistic/crazy.

3. Contemplate sex work. Decide too old. Mood: Relieved.

4. Eat chocolate. (Love you, chocolate.) 

5. Take a look at my resume to boost confidence. (I’ve had jobs and will have jobs again!) Mood: Confidence not boosted.

6. Contemplate selling contents of ovaries (“eggs”). Realize I AM too old. Feel biological clock ticking. Mood: Tick tock.

7. Send out desperate sounding email to well-connected family and friends letting them know I’m on the hunt. Get three responses back (two from the same person), none of them a job offer. Mood: Helpless.

8. Wonder why I majored in journalism rather than something sensible like accounting. Mood: Regretful.

9. Perhaps I can get by by working as a barista. Look up barista wages. Perhaps not. Mood: Crying.

10. Wine.

11. Repeat.

12. Start browsing grad school programs.

Katie Peoples lives in San Francisco, for now.

I learned a lot as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine, but most practically: I learned how to live on a budget. As a volunteer, you’re given a tiny stipend (though large in the local setting) to live on. Mine was 2,300 hyrvna ($280) a month, and I lived on that for two years. Everything I did had to be paid for in cash, from my rent, to buying train tickets, to the tab at the shop near my apartment. Credit is a relatively new concept to the former Soviet Union, so no one took credit cards except for fancy hotels and restaurants in the big cities. Even on a small budget, I lived a happy life, and it really changed the way I relate to money. Here were my monthly expenses.

Rent
I spent 400 UAH ($50) a month on a Soviet apartment that had running water, heat, a water heater, an indoor flushing toilet, three big windows (but only two little panes that opened), and no air conditioning. In the winter I shelled out an extra 50 UAH ($6) a month to keep the heat on. In the summer I paid 100 UAH ($13) for a standing fan and sat around in my underwear. Also sometimes there wasn’t running water after all. Surprise!
Thing I learned: You can tolerate more than you think when it comes to an apartment. Also, running water is the greatest thing known to man.

Food
I spent between 100-200 UAH ($13-$25) a week to feed myself. I did this by keeping an almost vegan diet and cooking for myself every night.
Thing I learned: Cooking! Cooking. Seriously.

Water
This was a legit budget item. I spent my entire moving-in stipend of 250 UAH ($30) on an imitation Brita filter and 50 UAH ($6) each on filter refills every few months. I’d also spend 5-10 UAH ($1) a week on 5-10 liters of drinking water from the water truck that rolled through town. Yes, I had free running water, a filter, and access to a well, but I also had enough stomach problems as it was.
Thing I learned: If it’s going in your body it should be the best you can afford. 

Clothing
The stands in my village’s bazaar were, um, wanting. So I saved my shopping splurges for when I went to a real mall in a city. This meant stretching what I already had in my wardrobe and sometimes, especially in the winter, I wore the same thing every day. If I did buy something, I’d try to buy the best I could afford, which was somewhere between 100-400 UAH ($13-50).
Thing I learned: Don’t freak out about having a different outfit every day. No one is paying attention. Also: Take care of your clothes.

Entertainment:
Local eating and drinking were limited, and going to the all-ages disco on Friday night to get down with my ninth graders was a little weird, so my buddy and I would get together and cook at my house and catch up on American shows on our laptops. Birthday parties were potlucks and involved lots of cheap wine. Ditto for picnics “in the nature.” In all cases, I had a great time with my friends.
Thing I learned: It’s not the bar you’re going to that makes the times awesome, it’s the people you’re with.

Travel
I managed to travel on a pretty small budget by saving all my money during the winter months, living like a hermit and squirreling away any cash windfalls I got for birthdays. I took advantage of people willing to host me around Ukraine, and when that wasn’t available, I stayed in hostels and used their kitchens to keep myself fed. I spent $300 meeting my brother in Venice and then $700 visiting him in Paris where he lived. I spent $800 on a 10-day trip through the Baltics with another volunteer. Sure, I was bored being stuck at home, but, oh man, it made getting gelato on the Grand Canal on Halloween, strolling through Riga in August and seeing the Louvre in May all the sweeter.
Thing I learned: A little suffering (“suffering”) now pays off enormously later.

Internet
This was probably my biggest monthly splurge. My school principal went bug-eyed when I said I wanted Internet in my apartment. It cost about 100 UAH ($13) for installation and 110 UAH ($14) a month or 25% of my entire rent/utilities. That’s basically like spending $250 a month for Internet in your $1,000 apartment. Totally worth it though to maintain my sanity.
Thing I learned: It’s okay to splash out on things you really care about. Plus: My parents learned how to Skype so they could talk to me; that was totally worth not being able to afford meat or anything else, really.

Katie Peoples lives in San Francisco.