Be Nice to Your Barista

I am halfway through my second month of living in Minneapolis, making my way in the world as a minimum-wage earning employee, at the mercy of any and all powers that be. While it is a little scary (I was terrified at the prospect, before I moved here) I know now that it is very much possible to make your way in life by dropping in on a completely new place, and that you don’t necessarily have to let geography limit your actions. [Provided, of course, that you are lucky, able-bodied, hard-working, and ballsy as hell.] I am learning a lot out here. It really is surprising how much your motivation and attitude changes when you realize that YOU are the only person who is going to help you make it in life, and when the only person you really have to fall back on in case something goes wrong is yourself. None of the places (two cafes) that I work at have any high-school aged kids working there, nor do they have any seasonal workers. Everyone who works with me is either my age, or older, and all of them are trying to do things like make rent, save up for a house, or pay their way through school. I am very lucky to work with a bunch of motivated people who work like they need the money. (Which we do.) It is a way different dynamic from, say, a college work-study job, or a summer job that you don’t really care about. So why is my post title referring to baristas, you might ask??
I am a barista at both of the jobs I work at, right now. Baristas are generally an awesome bunch of hardworking folks, whose temperaments and job duties fall somewhere between those of a waitress and a bartender. We chat people up, and get to stand behind a counter like a bartender, but we also bend over backwards to be pleasant, and provide excellent customer service, like a waitress. The catch? You get shat upon by spiteful, disgruntled people with way too much of a sense of entitlement like a waitress, and you can get majorly creeped-upon like a bar-tender (this applies more to the females baristas, out there.) So, it’s sort of an odd modge-podge of working styles, and one that has only recently been established, so it is understandable that there is a lot of confusion as to how, exactly, one treats their barista.

1)Baristas make minimum wage. We are generally poor, poor, poor. (Unless we live with our parents, or something, and don’t really need the money.) Baristas
make tips, and we need them. After taxes and whatnot, I only make $375
every two weeks, from working over 70 hours. Since that alone barely covers
rent and utilities, where do I get my money for food, personal care products, and gas for my car? You guessed it – tips. Tips make up a large percentage of the take-home pay for anyone working in the service industry. Be that a pizza
delivery guy, a waitress, or a hair-stylist. Some people are better at tipping than others – but what I have noticed, is that the absolute best tippers are those
fellow, minimum-wage earning service employees. It’s like an unspoken rule. I always leave a ten-dollar tip for a hair-stylist, or a masseuse, and I generally tip 20 – 25% at a restaurant, unless the service was extremely sub-par. Now, since I don’t make much money, it’s not like I have cash to throw around – but I KNOW that tipping well really makes a big difference in people’s lives. I know that I appreciate it when someone leaves me a $2 tip for a $3 drink, so I figure I may as well ‘pay it forward,’ and help a brotha’ (or sistah’) out.

2)Coffee shop etiquette: Rule number one: GET OFF YOUR FUCKING CELL PHONE WHEN YOU’RE IN LINE! It is very disrespectful to the person attempting to serve you, and to everybody else in your general vicinity, who has to hear about your latest doctor’s appointment, or your opinion about your sister-in-law’s-cousin’s-daughter’s divorce. I (and everybody else) has had to stand for a minute or more behind a cash register, with a sweet smile plastered on our faces, waiting for whoever it is (usually a middle-aged woman) to stop blabbing into her cell phone long enough to bark “Soy Mocha!” at you – no ‘please,’ no ‘thank you,’ and generally, no tip. They usually get annoyed at you if you attempt to ask them while making their drink things like, “Would you like whipped cream on top?” So you have to play the part of super- psychic mind-reader, and hope that you can discern exactly what they want, because their conversations are (obviously) more important than you attempting to get their order right. My personal thought is this: If you enter an establishment with the intention of making a business transaction, be it buying post-it notes, or ordering a pizza, you owe it to the person involved in helping you accomplish these goals to actually be civil, pay attention to them, and treat them like a human being.

3)Your barista is not really flirting with you. When your barista flashes you a wide, sweet smile, and asks you if you would “Like room on top for cream?” they are not really trying to get into your pants. This is usually because people who work in coffee shops are (mostly) very sweet, nice, affable people, who try their utmost to give excellent customer service. While your barista may express genuine concern for you if you are having a bad day, they are not going to want to have you unload all of your negative feelings and frustrations on them while they are trying to help the other five people in line. This isn’t because we’re mean – it is because we are doing a job, and we need to serve everybody that comes in the store. In general, I think that a minute and a half is a good length for a conversation with your barista. Two minutes is the absolute limit. It is not okay to blatantly hit on your barista, or to make suggestive comments towards them. (Although it is sometimes tolerable if you tip well enough.) I have a lot of stories of super-creepers, and the raunchy, disturbing things that they have said to me (and others) that I think I will save for another blog post. Some of them are pretty funny, if you get over the initial freak-out factor. I think that a lot of this stuff happens because a coffee shop is sort of a weird, ‘in-between’ place. It has all of the comforts of home, you can relax, and stay as long as you want, and you can chat up the employees, as well as other customers. It is not really a public space, but it is not really a private space either. It is a place where you are supposed to feel comfortable, and have a sense of ownership over, but you are sharing that space with hundreds of other strangers every day. It’s sort of like, it isn’t your living room, but it isn’t McDonalds, either. The people who work there may know you well, but they are neither close, personal friends, nor are they your shrink.

And with that, I think I’m done talking about coffee shops for a while. I just want to offer a sincere “Hollah!” to all of my fellow minimum-wage earners out there. To all those who make sandwiches, deliver pizzas, and have to deal with other people’s shit (I think that’s everybody on earth) I want you to know that I love you, I’m pulling for you, and that we can totally rock this bitch-of-a-thing called ‘life,’ and go off to accomplish great things. Keep living the dream! Peace!!