Have you ever had to make a hundred lattes during rush hour?
Unless you are a barista, probably not. And if you work in an office setting, you’ve never had a lot of people coming into your workplace at indecent hours demanding to get breakfast ASAP because they’re getting late.
Seems like we were lied to. Movies made us think that being a barista was an easygoing part-time job to do while you go to college and live your best life. You clock in, make some coffees, practice your latte art, and romanticise the exchange between servers and customers. Everybody is nice to you, and you tend to your customers with a big smile on your face. That’s the image we all got from TV, right? Wrong.
Being a barista or working in customer service in general is not easy at all. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never been a barista myself, but some of my friends and family certainly have. By their experience, it seems like sometimes you get hundreds of moody customers who may not even bother to say hello, but you have to keep the smile plastered on your face. Someone comes in and asks for a flat white, but in reality they wanted a long black; they just didn’t notice they said the exact opposite. During rush hour, you have to keep up with all the orders and specifications: three matcha lattes, two americanos, four capuccinos, and that special someone who comes in and asks for a pumpkin spice latte, with coconut milk, no pumpkin, no cinnamon, and four pumps of vanilla. They might as well make up an entirely new menu and use whatever names they want for drinks. As funny as it sounds, we know it’s true.
People don’t always appreciate the effort baristas put into every drink, because many of them actually like their job. They simply go unnoticed, even though they have already learned our coffee order by heart and know exactly what we’re having the minute we enter the shop. They probably know more about us than we are aware of.
This coffee-pot full of memes is to make those baristas feel seen, and for them to relate while they take their five-minute break before going back out there to the jungle of caffeine-deprived people.
