Most mornings my day starts at 3:59 a.m., but don’t let that deceive you; I am not a morning person. As Karl Marx, in his essay on Estranged Labor, would have it, my labor is already “external… it doesn’t belong to his intrinsic nature” (para. 21)*. The intimate hours where night is almost ready to slip into day are when my workday begins. The night before I make sure my apron and work attire are stored in the same area because when I first arise, I am more on autopilot than fully functioning, and am hardly aware of my surroundings. I have been known to arrive at my place of work, and immediately question how I drove there. Fortunately, I don’t have very far to drive.
The first half hour of work is without customer interaction, and involves general opening tasks such as brewing the first rounds of coffee, steeping iced teas, calibrating the espresso machine, and stuffing newspapers to place on the stand. It is the part of my day I like to refer to as “pre-caffeine”, also known as the only part of my day I can manage to make it through without throwing back some form of caffeinated beverage or another. After all, I am that embodiment of the service sector, and without first world problems, my occupation would not exist: I am your friendly, neighborhood barista here to take your drink order and listen to your ever so intimate, and incredibly too close for comfort, relationship details as I pull your shots and wipe away both your negative early morning thoughts and latte spills.
The division of labor at work is clear from the start, those who are “just baristas” are in charge of caring for customer’s immediate needs, whereas the shift leaders and managers immediately deal with money, orders, and any new information and promotions currently circulating through our system. The irony is that when things start to fall apart or dangerously escalate with a customer, it is up to those with the least required customer interaction to smooth things over. Admittedly, performing emotional labor throughout the day can be tiring and sometimes any given individual barista’s friendly demeanor can slip and a snarky response or two isn’t entirely surprising. After all coffee shops, like every other service sector, consist of humans dealing with humans. Our actions may appear robotic and coded into our DNA, but they were learned in much the same way you learn a new trade, carefully and with many mistakes on the way to success. The division of labor is not very gender specific at work, but it is slightly more common to have an all female group on the schedule than an all male. Whether or not this means more females are likely to become baristas than male, I do not know.
When the doors open, the entire atmosphere must change from focused, almost automated actions to a welcoming, warm atmosphere. So, I turn on a designated playlist for that specific time of day, flip on the cafe lights, and throw back my first round of espresso shots. The first few customers that come through are usually “regulars” that have the exact same beverage every morning. More often than not when I present them with their beverages, before they ask, they nod or wink and make some oblique comment about training their significant other to be as efficient. The first few times a comment like that was directed at me, I felt incredibly uncomfortable. After awhile, I realized it was a side effect of the service sector industry. During my interview, I remember being asked if communicating with strangers was something I felt comfortable with, and I answered thinking that basic interactions were what they were referring to, but they were not. In fact, every few months, the upper management reminds the baristas as a whole that a part of our job description is creating a welcoming environment, specifically, a third place (outside of home and work) where the average consumer can feel momentarily carefree. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes the random interactions with customers offer insights into worlds I would normally know very little of, and that in and of itself is rewarding. However, being regarded as a human vending machine of warmth and happiness with an ever ready ear is both an unrealistic expectation and a false presentation. It is, essentially, an act one must maintain.
Regulars aside, I encounter close to three hundred fifty customers a day. Slightly more than your average barista because I work eleven to thirteen hour days. Some require a coffee, black with nothing more than a few brief, polite comments. Others require a 12 oz., half caffeinated, nonfat, ⅓ of a splenda latte with a heaping dose of emotional labor. The latter often are going through a new form of relationship crisis each week and treat me like their therapist, even my lame “I don’t know, man” responses don’t seem to deter that preposterous belief.
For the first few hours the store is open, I brew gallons upon gallons of coffee. Dark, blonde, and medium roasts ground for various humans via french presses, pour overs, and gigantic, commercial urns. There are at least three timers going at any given time because coffee is best when it is made hot and fresh, teas only last so long, and that cafe won’t clean itself. Marx runs through my mind as I think of which position could be considered the least alienating to my nature. I try and not get overwhelmed when I am there with lines like, “If the product of labor is alien to me, if it confronts me as an alien power, to whom, then, does it belong? To a being other than myself” (Marx, “Estranged Labor”).
Regardless of how busy the shop gets, Marx looms in the background like the sample on a trip-hop track. Marx murmurs things about wages, capital, estrangement, and private property. As I restock the espresso beans and an uncaffeinated, emotional terrorist asks why I’m not helping the barista on bar make beverages, I calmly tell them we couldn’t possibly hurry up the production of beverages without the beans. The beverage making barista’s eyes are exploring new depths in the back of her skull and I hear Marx loud and clear, as if over the speaker, “The alien being, to whom labor and the product of labor belongs, in whose service labor is done and for whose benefit the product of labor is provided, can only be man himself” (“Estranged Labor”).
This occupation, that is a job that occupies my time, does not hold the glamour indie films like to lend it. It is, like so many other jobs available, another aspect of labor. It is emotionally and mentally taxing at times, but it can be light-hearted and fun. However, it reminds me, with every highly pressurized shot pulled slowly and deliberately, that this is not where I want my life’s work to be. I ache for something more and can only hope that finishing school will allow me to move on to labor I value. Labor that doesn’t result in samples of Marx playing throughout the day. Labor that has value to myself. However, who isn’t in an increasingly complex relationship with their work? Who amongst us feels properly compensated for the emotional labor we must undertake? The barista is hardly the exception to the rule. Am I just hoping for a metamorphosis that doesn’t exist for humanity?
*Estranged Labor copy https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/m...
