A Halifax Barista Kept a Secret Notebook of Her Worst Customers. We Got the Notebook.

We agreed not to publish Mel's last name, the cross-streets of the location, or any identifying details about the customers. What we can tell you is that the notebook is real, the orders are catalogued by date and time, and the marginalia is the most honest piece of Canadian coffee writing produced this decade.

Page one, July 2019: ‘Triple-triple in a SMALL cup. Tipped in dimes. Eye contact like he was daring me to say something.’ This entry is annotated three times across the years — same customer, same order, same dimes. Mel started a sub-tally. He came 1,847 times. He never escalated to a medium.

Page seven introduces the man Mel calls only ‘Regular Just A Regular’. He orders ‘just a regular’. When asked to clarify, he says ‘you know — a regular’. Mel writes, in red pen, underlined twice: ‘THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL REGULAR. THERE NEVER HAS BEEN.’ This is the single most quoted line in the staff group chat to this day.

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Page twelve is the iced-coffee-with-hot-espresso-on-top page. Mel describes the drink, in clinical prose, as ‘a beverage I am asked to construct, not make’. The customer is a woman in her thirties. She has ordered it 412 times. Mel notes that the woman always thanks her warmly. Mel admits, in a parenthetical, that she has come to respect her.

Then there's the order Mel never solved. Page nineteen, January 2021: ‘Medium double-double. Extra cup, empty. Asks for both lids on. Drives off.’ Mel adds: ‘Why the second cup. WHY.’ The same customer appears 600+ times across the notebook. Mel never asks. Nobody on staff ever asks. The mystery becomes a kind of religion.

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When Mel quit in March 2025, the day shift held a small party. They asked her, finally, to ask the man about the second cup. He came through the drive-thru that afternoon. Mel leaned out the window. She said, ‘I have to know — the extra cup. What's it for.’

He paused. He looked genuinely surprised that anyone had noticed. Then he said, ‘That's for the dog. He likes to hold one.’ Then he drove off. Mel closed the window. Mel went into the back. Mel wrote one final entry in the notebook, which her sister photographed and sent to us with permission to publish: ‘THE DOG. IT WAS ALWAYS THE DOG. SIX YEARS.’

We reached out to the man through a regular customer who knew him. He confirmed the dog. The dog's name is Brisket. Brisket is a 9-year-old beagle. Brisket has held an empty Tim Hortons cup in his mouth on every morning drive since 2019 because, the man told us, ‘he saw me holding one once and decided he needed one too. I can't take that away from him.’

Mel works at a specialty café in the North End now. She still keeps a notebook. She says the orders are weirder but the customers tip in fives. We asked if she'd send us the new notebook in a few years. She said, ‘Ask me again in 2031.’