Ante Litteram
This is a personal record. It involves a great deal that has vanished forever, but I can’t tell it in any other way than by using the words we used to use for those vanished things, so they have to stand. But even to make the setting intelligible I find that I shall have to go back farther than the point at which I started.
—John Wyndham, from The Day of the Triffids
For nearly seven years I worked for the largest coffeeshop in the world. I want to honor discretion and personal information. Names have been changed for privacy.
This text is more memoir than autobiography. These stories are true to memory and cover my memories as they happened between 2004 and 2012. These stories are not fabricated or fiction — I don’t have any interest in writing “Starbucks fiction.”
Chapter 1
If you’ve never read Herman Melville’s 1851 classic, Moby Dick, now is your chance to stop reading this post. Spoilers ahead. Or you could stop reading this and go read one of the greatest novels ever penned. Or just give your dusty copy to a friend.
Either way, Captain Ahab’s boat, the Pequod, sinks, thanks to the White Whale — and everyone except Ishmael dies — even our old pal, Starbuck. But the level-headed and thoughtful Quaker lives on as an eponymous global coffee chain. Because, why not.
I read Moby Dick while working at a Starbucks in Raleigh, North Carolina. I used to work at least 40 hours a week — maybe more. It was truly a full-time job. Corporate didn’t like paying overtime (time-and-a-half) so I floated between 38 and 42 hours for years on end. All the while smelling like ground coffee and flavored syrups all stuck to my skin and clothes. But I’d go back on my days off to sit and read in the booth. I was truly living the Third Place lifestyle. (Starbucks was founded on the “Third Place” concept: first is Home, second is Work, and third is where you spend your free time: a coffeeshop.)
Look here, friend, if you have anything important to tell us, out with it.
—Ishmael, claimed sole survivor of the wreckage of the Pequod.
I started making minimum wage to eventually earn a promotion and various raises through the years. Plus tips! The generous tips of the white Chevy Yukon culture. I mean, tips accumulated to take my wife and I on a three week European vacation across France, Spain, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands. That’s entirely true. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
I was hired as a partner. This is the word Starbucks gives to its employees to make them feel part of the team. “Partners” are either a mutually respectable relationship or a fragile codependency and I think Starbucks might not realize they are generally employing the latter. Quite a loaded term.
The training period for new partners is two weeks. At that point, Starbucks (and management) considers you fully onboarded, all drinks and recipes memorized. Do you really think any human being can spend two weeks learning dozens of drink recipes and excelling at the high standards of customer service and demand? I guess folks do it everyday.
Anyway, I had settled it. I was part of the culture, a true partner.
When I started I was told that a barista was a “bar artist” — it’s Italian, be proud of the work you do, we have Italian job titles! What a nice ring that has. I’m a partner… and a bar artist. I looked this up recently and “barista” simply translates to bartender. It’s still Italian but lacks all the artistry and craft of an artist. But I do know from Reliable Sources that a Subway employee is a “sandwich artist.” Art imitates life. Or at least large companies imitate art to the degree that it creates a new narrative, a completely corporate fabrication to yield profit.
After a few months, comfortable behind the bar and making drinks, Julie walked up to me. Julie was very kind and very short. She was also very wealthy and no one could understand why she was working this minimum wage job. Her purse was always spilling with $20 bills, just falling out of pockets like it was lint.
Once Julie offered me a $5 bill to shoot a single shot of espresso like it was liquor. Easy. I could always use a five spot on some food. But my ignorant teenage self didn’t think about temperature and the molten sensation of liquid scalding my esophagus. My eyes bulged and I choked on steam and heat. Julie handed me a water and turned to walk away, ambivalent to it all. It took my throat days to fully recover. Julie never gave me that $5.
Weeks before my throat received a second-degree burn however, Julie dropped an anecdote that still baffles me.
“Look at the palm of your hand,” she said, pointing to the espresso grinds I was wiping away. We used a La Marzocco espresso machine. The portafilters required we wipe away some excess from the grinder before tightening the handle into the machine for espresso shots. When we did this, the brown coffee dust accumulated on our palms like fine sawdust.
“Yeah, what a mess,” I said.
“You know you can get addicted like that,” she said, all seriousness in her eyes.
I was too busy actually making a drink, using the espresso machine’s portafilter and wiping my hands to reply.
“This is how you get addicted to caffeine — even if you don’t drink it,” she continued.
I was actually stunned. I had never had coffee before — I was 17 — and had no intention of starting now. Was I really already addicted to caffeine? I stopped making the drink at hand.
“Are you serious?” I asked. Julie was kind but could also be cynical. She possessed some blend of sarcasm and cynicism that left about half of her words a complete falsity. And yet, some small bit of charm was still there that left spending any working time with Julie a pleasant experience. A somewhat pleasant experience.
“Yeah, the coffee is ground so fine that when you get it on your hands, it gets into your skin and eventually, ever so slightly, into your bloodstream,” she said. “It might not seem like much now but over time it adds up and you really do come to rely on caffeine,” she concluded. She could not look more indifferent to me and she faced another customer in line to take their order.
I handed off the customer’s drink and went to the sink and washed my hands. I think my heart jumped into my throat while my brain leveled the weight of her statement. It might not sound like much but I can point to this moment as opening the floodgates of my understanding of coffee. I poured myself a small black coffee and tasted it — with my own mouth — for the first time. This changed my life.
Years later…
We’re about to close. Weekends are later — doors lock at 11pm.
This guy walks in casual and slow. He’s a little dumpy with a stretched henley shirt (a little too open) and some loose jeans. He stops to raise his arms above his head, fingers clasped, and stretch mid-stride, arching his back and exhaling hard. He cocks his neck a little as if he hasn’t moved in a century.
"I’m on a road trip,” he says. “Been in the car for hours.”
Makes sense, I think and nod to him. "Need a little pick-me-up?”
“Yeah, but first I have a question. That cardboard box there, how long does it take to make? And about how many cups of coffee does it serve?" He is pointing to pre-made carafe, the Starbucks Coffee Traveler.
“Those are 96 ounces — about twelve 8 ounce cups, or eight, twelve-ounce cups,” I say. “They don’t take long to make, maybe ten minutes, max. Are you serving a crowd? Do you need more than one?”
“Just one will cover it. I’m on the road for a few more hours and gonna drink this myself.” His confidence is intimidating. Or extremely naïve.
“That’s a lot of coffee... are you sure you don’t want just a large cup to-go? Might also be a little cheaper.”
“Nah, I’ll buy this and take just a single cup. Make it two cups,” he says. He turns around to keep waking up, somehow. He’s rubbing his eyes and trying to crack his spine with awkward twists and turns. “Please!” he turns around. “Sorry, forgot to say please!”
“Okay cool, just give me a few minutes to brew this up and I’ll have it right out,” I say. I glance over at my other barista, a whole carafe for one dude? Is he going to survive tonight? my eyes are screaming.
After a few minutes, and a thick awkward silence, I gear him up with his near-gallon of coffee, some cream and sugar on the side, and wish him a safe travel. I was ready to close the store and too worn out from the day to make conversation and hear about what he was up to.
Out the door he goes. I lock up behind him. That guy is driving hazard, no doubt about it. Stay off the roads tonight, y’all.
Stay tuned for part II. The best is yet to come.