The Wold in My Latte

 remember the day my Starbuck's discount stopped working.

I ordered a Caramel macchiato and a tall almond drip.

“I’ve got a partner discount,” I told the guy at the register.

I was nervous --- I hadn’t worked at Starbucks in close to a month, but I was still rambling off the six numbers that defined me. If they weren’t still valid, they were at least still mine.

“Invalid partner number,” he said. “Do you want me to try it again?”

“No,” I said. “Never mind. Don’t try it again. It’s a long story.”

“Oh well,” he said. “Don’t worry. I used my discount.”

I thanked him, took my drinks and walked into a world where I was, for the first time in many months, a civilian.

Civilian life is scary.

There are no discounts in the civilian world. Nobody expects you to know anything about anything and nobody listens when you do. If you want coffee, to wake up in the morning or to stay up at night, you have to pay for it.

Now your money takes on apocalyptic importance. You have to pay attention when people tell you your dollar could make or break the world. When you hear hipsters yelling, “Starbucks kills!” outside of a store, you can no longer ask yourself why you hate them so much. The question now is why you loved the store.

And so what do you do?

You sit in a shop for hours, watching espresso somersault into milk, watching milk smother the espresso. You order something just to pay rent in the house of your obsession. When you order, you want to confess: how you miss the dance between the blender and the coffeemaker; how your tongue still yearns for those Italian vowels. Instead, you just say something dumb: " A medium iced coffee, please". Then you move on, down the line. Your yearning's just a body memory, a drug habit, all that's left of how they taught you to keep busy.

You begin to feel a little bit like a third marriage ex-wife stalking her first husband.

Eventually, you approach somebody. Somebody who understands. Somebody who's been there; worked the work; thought the thoughts.

“I’m writing this article about coffee shop employees,” I said to the guy. “Do you think we could ever do an interview?”

“What’s your thesis?” he asked. “What’s the point of it?”

“It’s kind of political,” I said, “I guess.” He looked confused. “Your opinions on how coffee is viewed in various ways as political, you know?”

“All right. Yeah, we can talk about that.” He scribbled his number down in my notebook and walked back towards the bar.

“Thanks,” I said.

“You’re not selling it to Starbucks or anything, are you?”

“No, but I used to work for Starbucks,” I said. “That’s kind of why I’m interested in this.”

“215462,” he replied, sliding back behind the counter.

“What?”

“Partner number,” he winked.

“You work for Starbucks?”

“I used to,” he said.

“1165536. Nice to meet you,” I said, stumbling out of doors towards the sunshine, nursing a blinding caffeine high. “But wait. What’s your name?”

“Max!” he yelled back.

A few days later I met Max at the cafe. He’d gotten me a cup of fruity iced coffee to drink while he ate a sesame bagel with perfectly spread cream cheese.

“Tell me about Starbucks,” I said.

“I started there in 1998 as a junior in high school and worked there for two years,” he said. “We had no manager. My friends basically hired me by filling out the paperwork. For, like, six months, we didn’t have a manager, and once we did have a manager he didn’t do anything because he was an alcoholic. We pretty much worked without any central authority. I mean, there was a district manager, but we were basically self-sufficient, just these teenagers. We still had one of the top stores in the district, the most profitable. Our shop was pretty much the only option, the only coffee shop in town except for Dunkin Donuts.”

“Did any of your friends give you shit for working at Starbucks?”

“We made fun of it more than anyone. I mean, we understood the nature of the job. We knew we were in a corporate structure and we were always acting to subvert the corporate end of it.”

“Subvert? How did you subvert?”

“We built bongs and things like that with Starbucks cups and supplies.”

“On company time?”

“Yeah, and we’d eat a lot of food without paying for it and give free drinks to all our friends. Everybody that worked in the store was on something. The day people took speed, pills, anti-psychotic drugs. At night we were pretty much always stoned, but we had the highest secret shopper scores in the district.

We’d take all this pride in who could build the best stuff with Starbucks equipment: bongs, pipes.... Do you want to see a diagram?” he asked. He sounded excited. I handed him my notebook. He meticulously drew a dome-covered rectangle with skinny blocks sticking through it. Inside there was a shaky line like a crayon drawing of the edge of an ocean or a graph of some heart beats.

“That’s… a bong?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he smiled. “Made out of a cup.” He smiled again; his eyes lit up. “But mostly I just cared about making coffee,” he said. “I loved working at the espresso bar. It was one of the best jobs I’ve ever had.” My search for other revolutionaries was mostly unfruitful.

I met Carter. He said he'd once heard a rumor that Starbucks was owned by Philip Morris. It made him think about putting cigarette butts in the coffee. But-- he'd only thought about it. He soon learned that the rumor was false anyway.

I met Ester. She said that the shift managers at the university district store where she used to work didn’t care if anybody stole anything. She herself didn’t feel right about it.

I met Sheena. She told me how Starbucks builds hospitals and schools to give back to the countries that grow the product. “It’s not just shit that Starbucks tells their employees so the employees think they’re the bomb, either,” she said. “It’s common knowledge.”

I even met a girl who told me that she cannot talk to me at all, though she’d be glad to give me a 1-800 number for Starbucks' Public Relations

Outside of Starbucks one evening, I watch the people in the store while I try to make sense of myself on notebook paper. I remember the feeling of slinging the register back in place with my hips, of drinking iced latte after iced latte: the decadence, the feeling that the decadence is sustenance. I’m sit there, massaging my temples, sucking down ice water.

A petite and wiry, taxed looking man in his 30s sits down at the other outside table.

“Doing a little journaling?” he asks.

“Something like that,” I answer. Because he's still looking at me, and because I'm aware of how much it sounds like a pick up line, I say, “Do you come here a lot?”

It turns out he’s an alumni of my college; his name is Mike. He’s a filmmaker, like everybody I know, and he comes here nearly every night. He wouldn’t mind talking about coffee. I don’t know exactly what I’m getting into, so I kneel down tentatively in front of his table. I tell him about ambivalence, obsession--- and how wired I am. A tall black man walks by with a woman at his side. He looks like a fashion model, blissful head turned towards the heavens, skin dark as leather.

“How’s it going?” Mike says, looking up from where I’m kneeling to greet the guy.

“Good, thanks,” Supermodel answers without looking down.

Mike takes the cover off his large drink and sets it aside. An air bubble sits on the top of the liquid. “Look at that,” he says. The liquid is the anonymous caramel cream-brown color of most Starbucks specialty drinks. On the cup is written XH NF CH.

“Extra-hot no-foam Tazo chai latte,” I say under my breath. “Why do you come to Starbucks?”

“I like Starbucks’ business model,” Mike says. “I studied business some, in college.”

“Business?” I ask incredulously. “At Hampshire?” Anybody who says he's studied business at Hampshire is kidding you; the school specializes in a useless but inspiring liberal arts curriculum. Mike really did study business, though; he took classes at the University of Massachusetts; he really admires Starbucks. He admires that part time Starbucks employees and even their same sex domestic partners can get health insurance and free stock in the company. He admires that Starbucks sponsors domestic volunteer programs, that it assists coffee-growing countries in the event of an emergency or a natural disaster.

“But anyway,” he said, “I like coffee shops. I come to coffee shops because I like to watch people, to try to understand human nature. That’s what I do: I’m a filmmaker… I tell stories.” He pauses, then adds “I’m a writer,” and nods at my notebook. I nod back.

“Like that black guy that walked by,” he says. “I said hello just so I could hear him speak.”

“You didn’t know that guy?”

“No. I’ve watched him pass by a few times and I keep thinking he’s probably African, not African-American. And you heard him answer in an accent --- now we know for sure he’s from the continent. Just by seeing people pass by, I know things about them,” he says, gathering momentum.

“You want to know the first thing I do when I enter a restaurant?” he asks.

“What?” I reply.

“The first thing I do is count how many people are inside.”

“Did you count tonight?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

His lips spread into a wide smile. “I’m not going to say.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t say,” he tells me. “But the second thing I do is look for all the exits.”

“Even in a place you’ve been to a thousand times?”

“Well, I know where all the exits are here. I know how to get out if I wanted to. Most people don’t know all the exits,” he says.

“And then what?” I ask.

“Then I order my drink,” he answers. “Coffee in the morning and chai at night.”

The interesting thing about Starbucks is that all the exit signs are green, not red. Like the Company logo, the Siren, the green exits give you a sense that everything is peaceful and under control. You're in a place where emergencies don’t happen.

Sheena said that when she first started working at the Northampton store, she noticed streaks of red on the outside of the door. “I was out there sweeping cigarette butts and I asked ‘What the hell’s all this stuff?’ I guess not long before I got a job there --- maybe four or five months --- some people walked by and threw red paint at the building.”

When she told me this, I was reminded of how I used be:

Speeding down the highway, my hair pinned-up neatly on all sides; dressed, black with black, black with white, black with khaki. Dressed in a collared shirt, always, and always a clean apron. Mascara and blush. Fingernails, bare, because paint chips could fall in drinks; naked scent because coffee beans absorb perfume. I’d park my car outside with the Against Me bumper sticker and wonder if anybody familiar with them would drive by and sense the irony. I didn’t know what such irony said about me; I didn't know that all the irony in the world wouldn’t save you if somebody on the outside thought your head was a good target for brick and shattered glass.

I asked Sheena if she was ever afraid of being personally injured. She said, "No". Sometimes, though, she said she'd worried about being harassed while taking out the trash.

When I told Clarissa, the manager of an independent café, about the red paint, she said it was ridiculous. Clarissa had moved to the Valley from Berkeley. “It’s like Earth First activists spiking trees in Northern California,” she said. “People get seriously injured and it doesn’t help their cause. There are probably other things that are as equally political--but they aren’t targeted in that way. For instance: I don’t know why there aren’t more people who are infuriated by our gasoline situation. The fact that we use so much of it, and it’s so dirty, and it’s not renewable. I don’t know why people aren’t throwing red paint at Exxon stations.”

On almost any given day, there’s a black man standing in front of the Starbucks in Amherst performing music for spare change. The first time I saw him, he had altered his routine for the upcoming holiday. “The Black Bunny wishes you a happy Easter!” he shouted, in between banging on a bucket and singing Sugarpie, Honeybun, Can’t Help Myself at passersby. The Company's round, green Siren symbol hung above his head; it was plastered with a sticker that said FAIR | UNFAIR, THERE’S NO MIDDLE GROUND. The sticker was an advertisement for Dean’s Beans, a Western-Massachusetts company that got in trouble for accusing fellow Fair Trade Certified brands of not being "sufficiently comprehensive". After being reprimanded by the certifying organization, Dean’s CEO took out an ad in the Village Voice which highlighted the pathetic ratio of Fair Trade to non-Fair Trade coffee purchased by supposedly socially responsible brands. Starbucks responded by saying that percentages aside, the Company had bought four times as much Fair Trade coffee as Dean’s had in the past year.

When I met Clarissa, one of the first things I brought up was that none of her independent café’s products were Fair Trade Certified.

“Right,” she said. “The mission statement here is to serve good coffee, not to buy beans that meet some political end. Just to buy the top one percent of beans in the world. If that comes from Point A one year, and maybe the next Point A's had a drought, we’re going to get it from point B to maintain our standards.”

“And you believe that’s right?”

“Well, when I first started working here, I was like, ‘Oh, it should be Fair Trade, it should be Fair Trade,’ but--- from what I’ve heard-- the Fair Trade organization doesn’t work with the highest quality beans. You get mediocre coffee that’s Fair Trade Certified, because the people who are doing the certification don’t go to every single coffee grower to organize relationships. They just go to those that are receptive, not the ones who sell their beans for top dollar… The 'top dollar' sellers are just trying to get the most money out of the deal and… to make a living wage. That’s what it’s all about. The whole idea is to pay a living wage to the farmer. Most of the beans we buy are of such high quality that the farmer’s getting top dollar for them anyway.”

“Do people come in here asking for Fair Trade?”

“Yeah, all the time.”

“Is there a certain type?

“I don’t think there’s a certain kind of person,” she said. “But I think they're kind of locked in to a slogan: I Must Buy Fair Trade. It’s sort of like the Health Food mentality: "If It’s From Whole Foods, It’s Good". "If It’s Organic, It’s Good". Regardless Of The Fact That It Got Trucked Here In A Diesel Truck…

“But you feel pretty good, conscience-wise, about working here?”

“I do,” she said, but paused. “Because more important than point of origin --- well, not more important necessarily, but maybe equally important, is local economy. This store creates local economy. We roast our own beans here, buy from local companies whenever possible, and we create a community in this town. I think that’s the first step. It’s like the… organize locally, instead of… what is it?”

“'Think Globally, Act Locally'?”

“Yeah. Like, instead of going to Wal-Mart, maybe go to…”

“Do you try to do that?”

“Yeah, but it’s not always possible. Especially in the Valley, where it’s Target or Nothing.”

“If Starbucks offered you a job as Store Manager, or District Manager --- or something where you’d make a really good steady salary, would you consider working for them?”

“No, not for Starbucks. There’s this company out of California called Peet’s Coffee, though. They’ve gotten really big, but not as big as Starbucks. They still offer a really positive work environment and a good product. So--- I’d work for somebody like Peet’s."

In 1971 the first Starbucks opened in Seattle by three guys named Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker, and Zev Siegel. They were mentored by San Francisco’s Alfred Peet, who had opened a "whole bean" coffee shop in the Bay Area in 1966. At the original Starbucks in Pike Market , there were no caffe lattes, no cappuccinos; nobody had ever even heard of a Frappuccino. The store sold only whole bean coffees and coffee making equipment. For the first year, Starbucks’ beans were even roasted by Peet’s.

Somewhere along the line, an outsider, an East Coaster, and most importantly, a New Yorker, became interested in the business. Howard Schultz was Vice President of a Swedish kitchen equipment company whose drip coffeemakers Starbucks sold. Schultz visited the store in Pike Market, sampled its strong, dark roasted blend, and in his caffeination, became obsessed. He talked to the founders about expanding Starbucks beyond Seattle, bringing the appreciation of their beans to new places --- to Middle Americans, to Northerners, to Southerners, to…. In 1981, most Americans were drinking flavor neutralized, ground Robusta that came from a can. Starbucks' three founders didn’t want to rock the boat, though. Vast expansion was not part of their mission. Schultz eventually talked or begged his way into a job as their Director of Marketing.

As legend has it, Schultz took a business trip to Milan in 1983, where he was astounded by the number of espresso bars, the theatrical quality of the barista’s preparations, and the community that surrounded the whole show. He was transformed --- converted --- and returned to the States as a coffee Missionary. He shared his vision with the Starbucks guys. They were not all that receptive. It wasn’t until Starbucks’ 6th retail store opened in 1984 that the company started to sell any espresso beverage at all.

But the real excitement of 1984 was Starbucks’ acquisition of Alfred Peet’s Coffee and Tea Company. In 1985, with some moral and financial support from Baldwin and Bowker, Howard Schultz started his own espresso bar, Il Giornale.

By 1987, Bowker and Baldwin sold their six stores, their roasting plant, and the Starbucks name to Howard Schultz. His Il Giornale became Starbucks. The original Starbucks got dissolved back into Peet’s.

Bowker and Baldwin are still on the board of Peet’s; Peet's Vice President is a former Starbucks roaster. Until 1992 there were no Starbucks in Northern California because the two companies had agreed to stay out of each others’ districts. Today Peet’s has 82 stores; most are in Northern California but there are six in Massachusetts and seven in the Seattle are. Peet's is expanding at about 15 stores per year.

Back to Clarissa.

According to her: The irony of working for an independent café is that it does not make you any less removed from--or less disillusioned with the world. “When you do ordering, you realize how many products are out there," Clarissa said. ” How many companies just manufacture, like, straws. There’s a plant somewhere, probably in China, and what they do is make straws. Or they make your plastic cups and that’s all they make, and then they sell it to someone who also buys paper plates from some other factory that just makes paper plates, and it’s like: Where are all these people and how is this all happening and why can’t I just go down and buy this shit, you know what I mean? It makes you realize the whole global economy. You see the whole industry in your latte. The beans --- you can’t grow beans in North America --- they’ve got to be from South America, or Asia, or Africa. Maybe they’re roasted here, but someone got the burlap sack they're in from somewhere else. Our roasting machine was made by someone somewhere. All these different factories. To try to dissect your coffee is just impossible. It’s untraceable. It’s huge.”

“Does that make you feel overwhelmed, or privileged, or what?” I asked.

“Frustrated,” she said. “Where do you start? I had a conversation with a woman who was really upset because she'd bought some organic tea at Whole Foods--- but it came in a bleached tea bag. We started talking about organics and where you draw the line. If you’re going to buy organic tea, you need an unbleached tea bag. But: Do you also need to walk to the tea plantation? Because: You drove to the store. All those fossil fuels you burned because you drove to the store to buy the tea: You’re polluting the air that you’re breathing. The Valley has horrible air, so why are you drinking organic tea?”

I laughed. She took a swig of water out of her purple bottle. She'd written, "No Bush, No Cry" on it

“So how far do you go?” I asked.

“If I could,” she said, “I would love to grow my own food. But you can’t if you live in an apartment, here. When I lived in Berkeley, I was active in a lot of Urban Gardens. Just small community gardens, but people worked on them and took food, home. I think that’s slowly catching-on, here I think that’s sort of the wave of the future: producing what you can at the local level. And--- I don’t eat strawberries in December.”

“What do you mean?"

“Strawberries don’t grow in December.”

* All names are changed to protect the innocent, or guilty, or whatever.