How do you like your coffee?
Does a coffee tastes better if the person serving it to you smile? Should you even work as a barista if you can’t stand people? It is all about social interaction.
Sure, everyone has a bad day, and baristas do like a party of sorts – and possible something else. At least that’s what I think, not having worked as one in my life, I’m restrained to guesses. That been said, let me guess a little.
Well, it really isn’t the best paying job ever (and that I know for a fact and, should you disagree, just ask someone in the business). It isn’t the easiest job either; not only you have to serve different people and have to stand and bend behind a counter all day, you are obliged to hear complains and stand the heat, you also have to make the coffee properly. And I mean it.
Let’s think about that, not everyone has grown with access to good wines or teas (chose those because of how complex they are, very similarly to coffee), but almost everyone has had – or at least had the opportunity to – drink a cup of coffee on a daily basis. It’s something we judge to know. My very grandma brags her coffee is “strong and really good” – also said the Ethiopian coffee I had her try was “tea like and weak”. Which means that she’s been drinking coffee her whole life and that’s how she “must know” what a good cup of coffee tastes like.
And this, my fellow reader, is what a barista must face on a daily basis: people like my grandma who’s never heard of specialty coffee before, asking for something “strong” to drink at a coffee shop. I’ve seen it many times before, the barista with sad face explaining that “as we work with specialty coffee, it is a little less roasted and that kind of taste you are used to is a little different here, try this chocolate/nut flavour first, you will probably like it better”.
So, of course I understand it when I get smile through gritted teeth when I say: “I’m currently making coffee tourism and I came here specially to try your coffee”. At the same time I’m just one more guy who “knows coffee” (much like my grandma) and put the server up to a trial they didn’t ask for: they are working, not being tested. All the same, it is my passion, I did went there for a very special experience and I will be putting the bar up high.
How has it been so far? Well, more disappointing than not. There are a few jewels here and there, but most coffee establishments now a day (even the famous ones) settle for a very easy drinkability, in a very sad try to please my grandma, which is profitable. The ones where good coffee can be found becoming rare and it is because they have both something that’s easy to drink and something “different”, for those who are willing to try (which is also a little disappointing because of how overpriced it is).
All the same, the whole experience is what counts and I praise and much respect the barista who smiles and is patient to explain to me how they don’t have amazing coffees, “cuz thats only for the website selling”. So, thank you for that.
In fact, it pleases me even more than having a good drink when I can share my passion with the people involved who tells me “my princess is yet in another castle” and, much like Mario, I continue my quest looking for an amazing and acid drip coffee. After all it is a “mouth to mouth” business and when the barista tells you where to find nice coffee it gives you that cozy felling of been in the inner circle of those who deserve great coffee.
It is all about social interaction. Coffee binds us together: to share and compare how it was and how it could be, and for that we need each other…
Altogether, it feels like what we really love is to tell and share our experiences. And I know you, my dear barista, won’t always be pleased do be there and it must be exhausting sometimes but, please, smile!
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Edited by Karina Macedo
