One of the most obscene things I learned as a barista was how eager people are to be liked. NYU sophomores, the ones with Jansport backpacks in full makeup at 9 a.m., stuttered their orders and shyly complimented me on my nose ring. I semi-patiently listened to innumerable Wikipedia-style monologues about the music I was playing from men in their twenties trying to render their business attire invisible with cultural know-how. I was given zines, mixtape-party fliers, home-recorded chillwave demos.
I said things like "How’s the app going?" and "Welcome to the neighborhood." I answered questions for new Greenpoint residents—of which there were more each year—about the best place to grab wine and tapas, get a shave and drink a beer at the same time. How myself and my co-workers became to be known as experts in such matters was largely beyond me, particularly since many of us shortly couldn’t afford to live in the neighborhood in which we served. More than anything else, though, I was asked what else I did.
"Oh you know," the t-shirt designer or gallery assistant with blunt bangs or unpaid Harper's intern would say on their way into the office. "When you aren’t making coffee." (...)
I was 17 when I got my first job, at the Starbucks in my hometown, a suburb about an hour south of Boston. I was trained in the store’s break room through a series of videos. The position’s first directive—conveyed by softly lit panoramas of women chatting over steaming lattes, men in tailored suits smiling gently in the direction of the espresso machine—was to maintain the brand’s identity as a "third place." The term, as appropriated by Starbucks, was actually originally coined by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe a particular kind of community space, one that facilitated civically minded social interaction. The "first place" is the home and the "second place" is the office, in Oldenburg’s conception, and the idea fit Starbucks’ self-styled business of "conversation and a sense of community" so well that the idea of the third place became their very foundation.
At that age, becoming a barista—as opposed to a waitress, or the girl serving popcorn at the multiplex—seemed like a good idea. In my budding process of cultural affiliation, I’d recognized the coffee shop as my spiritual home from an early age. This was 2006. Like I said, I was suburban. Something about a coffee shop felt intellectual.
There were only two coffee shops in my town, and they didn’t so much compete as complement each other, poised as they were on opposite sides of the economic spectrum. If you weren’t grabbing a large ice coffee, "extra-extra," (that’s extra cream, extra sugar) from the Dunkin’ Donuts down the street, you were exercising your right to, in the words of Tom Hanks’ character in the immortal You Got Mail, "get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self. Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino."
Though the appeal of such choice—and the corresponding price of such decision-making power—comes as no surprise to anyone, I will say that at least twice I gave empty Starbucks cups to high school girls so they could disguise their Mr. Coffee drip in 8 a.m. homeroom.
But actually working at Starbucks wasn’t cool by any stretch of the imagination. It was my first and only corporate job, with its corresponding dress code (khakis, collared shirts, no tattoos) and business practices standardized to a point well past common sense (the temperature, I was told, was controlled remotely, from an office at HQ in the Midwest). (...)
I transferred stores twice, and though I wouldn’t recognize it until later, there was already something uniquely banal about my interactions with the customers at Starbucks. The robotic and infinitely scaleable details, our uniforms and employee numbers, the pre-calibrated automatic espresso machine, all contributed to a general sense of interchangeability. I had exhausting customers, but their demanding nature didn’t feel personal. I had no doubt the pudgy businessman would have told any woman where to put that whipped cream, or that the undergraduate with the fancy handbag, detailing last night’s party to a friend on the phone, was the kind of girl who would’ve shouted down any one of her servers for ostensibly placing a half-pump more white mocha in her beverage. If a customer was particularly bad we exercised one of the only powers we possessed and "decafed" them. To covertly rob a caffeine-addicted asshole of their morning jolt was truly one of the sweetest pleasures of baristahood, and one that my subsequent professions haven’t come close to replicating.
I said things like "How’s the app going?" and "Welcome to the neighborhood." I answered questions for new Greenpoint residents—of which there were more each year—about the best place to grab wine and tapas, get a shave and drink a beer at the same time. How myself and my co-workers became to be known as experts in such matters was largely beyond me, particularly since many of us shortly couldn’t afford to live in the neighborhood in which we served. More than anything else, though, I was asked what else I did."Oh you know," the t-shirt designer or gallery assistant with blunt bangs or unpaid Harper's intern would say on their way into the office. "When you aren’t making coffee." (...)
I was 17 when I got my first job, at the Starbucks in my hometown, a suburb about an hour south of Boston. I was trained in the store’s break room through a series of videos. The position’s first directive—conveyed by softly lit panoramas of women chatting over steaming lattes, men in tailored suits smiling gently in the direction of the espresso machine—was to maintain the brand’s identity as a "third place." The term, as appropriated by Starbucks, was actually originally coined by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe a particular kind of community space, one that facilitated civically minded social interaction. The "first place" is the home and the "second place" is the office, in Oldenburg’s conception, and the idea fit Starbucks’ self-styled business of "conversation and a sense of community" so well that the idea of the third place became their very foundation.
At that age, becoming a barista—as opposed to a waitress, or the girl serving popcorn at the multiplex—seemed like a good idea. In my budding process of cultural affiliation, I’d recognized the coffee shop as my spiritual home from an early age. This was 2006. Like I said, I was suburban. Something about a coffee shop felt intellectual.
There were only two coffee shops in my town, and they didn’t so much compete as complement each other, poised as they were on opposite sides of the economic spectrum. If you weren’t grabbing a large ice coffee, "extra-extra," (that’s extra cream, extra sugar) from the Dunkin’ Donuts down the street, you were exercising your right to, in the words of Tom Hanks’ character in the immortal You Got Mail, "get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self. Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino."
Though the appeal of such choice—and the corresponding price of such decision-making power—comes as no surprise to anyone, I will say that at least twice I gave empty Starbucks cups to high school girls so they could disguise their Mr. Coffee drip in 8 a.m. homeroom.
But actually working at Starbucks wasn’t cool by any stretch of the imagination. It was my first and only corporate job, with its corresponding dress code (khakis, collared shirts, no tattoos) and business practices standardized to a point well past common sense (the temperature, I was told, was controlled remotely, from an office at HQ in the Midwest). (...)
I transferred stores twice, and though I wouldn’t recognize it until later, there was already something uniquely banal about my interactions with the customers at Starbucks. The robotic and infinitely scaleable details, our uniforms and employee numbers, the pre-calibrated automatic espresso machine, all contributed to a general sense of interchangeability. I had exhausting customers, but their demanding nature didn’t feel personal. I had no doubt the pudgy businessman would have told any woman where to put that whipped cream, or that the undergraduate with the fancy handbag, detailing last night’s party to a friend on the phone, was the kind of girl who would’ve shouted down any one of her servers for ostensibly placing a half-pump more white mocha in her beverage. If a customer was particularly bad we exercised one of the only powers we possessed and "decafed" them. To covertly rob a caffeine-addicted asshole of their morning jolt was truly one of the sweetest pleasures of baristahood, and one that my subsequent professions haven’t come close to replicating.
A few hours before close, a younger shift leader might travel the few blocks down Thayer Street to the liquor store. We’d drink Vodka and Red Bull out of our green-and-white venti cups and snigger behind the hulking safety of that massive, push-button espresso machine. As long as we didn’t get so drunk that we slurred the lines we’d been given—"Next guest please; Welcome to Starbucks, how may I help you?"—we were still doing our jobs.
by Molly Osberg, The Awl | Read more:
Image: Matt Biddulph
