Page 67 of The Beach Shack Artists 3
Stella checked. "We'll need an extension cord. There's one in the back office."
"I'll get it," Bea volunteered.
For the next ten minutes, they worked with focused efficiency. Anna followed Stella's directions exactly, clearing space without trying to redesign the layout. Bea measured coffee very carefully, asking questions about strength preferences instead of making artistic assumptions.
Then Bea opened the filter box and paused.
"Um," she said, holding up a cone-shaped filter. "These are the wrong size."
Stella looked over. The filters were clearly meant for a different style of machine - cone-shaped instead of basket-style.
"Oh no," Anna said, looking stricken. "I grabbed them so fast, I didn't check the size. I was just thinking 'coffee filters' and?—"
"It's fine," Stella said quickly, her mind already moving to solutions. "We can work with this. What do we have to work with?"
Bea examined the filters thoughtfully. "They're too narrow for the baskets, but the material is the same. Maybe we could..." She held one up, testing its flexibility. "What if we flatten them and cut them to fit?"
"Improvised filter design," Anna said, catching on immediately. "Very resourceful."
"Do we have scissors?" Bea asked.
Stella grabbed a pair from the office supplies. Anna and Bea worked together, carefully flattening cone filters and trimmingthem to fit the basket-style machines. It was problem-solving in real time, without panic or artistic interpretation.
"This is actually kind of fun," Bea admitted, testing a modified filter in one of the machines. "Like engineering, but with coffee."
"And we're actually being helpful instead of creative," Anna noted with satisfaction. "Following the plan instead of improvising our own."
The improvised filters worked perfectly. The first pot of coffee finished brewing at 11:28 a.m.—five minutes later than planned, but still successful. Stella poured the first cup, tasted it, and nodded.
"Ladies and gentlemen," she announced, "we have coffee."
A small cheer went up from the waiting customers. The businessman, who had been surprisingly patient once the tea kicked in, stepped forward for his long-awaited cappuccino substitute.
"It's not espresso," Stella warned him, "but it's strong and hot."
"At this point, I'd drink instant," he said, accepting the cup. He took a sip, considered, and nodded approvingly. "Actually pretty good. Thanks for the adventure."
As the line of customers finally got their caffeine fixes and the morning returned to normal operations, Stella found herself looking at Anna and Bea with something approaching amazement.
They'd seen a crisis, responded practically, followed her leadership, stayed focused on solutions rather than aesthetics, and genuinely helped solve the problem. No artistic interpretations, no creative tangents, no taking over the process.
Just teamwork.
"That was..." Stella started, then stopped, not sure how to finish.
"Different?" Anna suggested.
"Good different," Bea clarified. "I actually enjoyed the problem-solving part. Very satisfying when you see immediate results."
"Plus we got to be genuinely useful without taking over," Anna added. "Turns out respecting someone else's expertise doesn't mean you can't contribute. Just means you contribute differently."
Margo appeared beside them, having watched the whole operation from the grill. "Well done, all of you. That was exactly how you handle emergencies.”
"Think we passed the test?" Stella asked.
"What test?" Bea wanted to know.
"The test of whether you could actually help without commandeering the process," Stella said honestly. "Whether you'd learned to be partners instead of just... creative chaos.”
