Baubos Coffee

“Hi, how are you doing?”

“I’ll have a latte.”

This is not a conversation. This is not how human beings should be interacting. People who work in customer service roles are members of the community, and are so much more than the conduit through which customers get whatever good they’re purchasing. Similarly, customers are members of the community and so much more than the conduit through which business owners gain profit. Sadly, customer service is a fucking nightmare and the arbitrary line that exists between service provider and service receiver becomes reinforced with every thoughtless interaction.

Customer service is such a fucking nightmare because of, no surprise, capitalism. Under capitalism people who need goods are seen as some kind of ripe fruit that business owners can squeeze to a pulp to get revenue, meanwhile employees are being absolutely pummeled in order to extract every ounce of productivity that they can in order to maximize profits compared to whatever hourly wage they are paid. Small business owners especially are not exempt from this critique. While large, faceless corporations make headlines for worker mistreatment and union-busting, small business owners exploit their employees by the same mechanisms and do so knowing their employees’ names, families, and struggles. Being a member of the petite bourgeoisie [Yeah I had to look up how to spell it, fuck you] does not make you a valuable member of a community, it simply makes you able to exploit community members for profit while smiling at them. 

Speaking of Marx, customer service interactions are fantastic microcosms of the alienating nature of capitalism. We live in a society [I say unironically, in full Joker cosplay] where we cannot have certain interactions take place without monetary exchange. We both serve and get served under the rules of monetary exchange, which dictate the behavior of both parties of the exchange– it is not just the purchase that has a price, but the interaction itself. We smile at the customer because we are told to, because that is how we cultivate the type of atmosphere where money is spent. We go to the cafe because we want to be seen in a particular atmosphere. Both the smiles and the atmosphere have a price; no one is enjoying the interaction without paying a price. For the employee that price is bending over backwards for every shithead that walks in the door, unable to say no to or even correct a customer no matter how wrong they may be. For the customer, the interaction costs however much they’re willing to spend that day, that week, that year– we call people willing to pay for a lot of interactions regulars. 

After working so many years in customer service, it’s hard not to be as cynical as the above statement. Myself and my co-workers have had to manage really irate customers while maintaining happy faces all for employers that don’t even care enough to provide us with healthcare or paid time off. Yet it is important to be fully aware that the divide between customers and employees is more of a value chain designation than a social one. Regardless of what side of the counter you find yourself on, you are more likely than not members of the same community. While you are my customer today, I could very well be your customer tomorrow. It is the interconnected nature of these customer service interactions that makes me believe that they can be something beyond what capitalism dictates they are, and can be an effective form of community building under the correct circumstances.

We may not be able to abolish capitalism [yet], but we can work on being kinder human beings to one another. Acknowledging each others’ personhood and creating communal ties beyond where we fall in the value chain are important factors in making life a bit more bearable for ourselves and the people around us. So, what does being kinder look like within a customer service setting? I’d like to approach this question from both sides of the counter.

Currently, the onus of creating the guise of a communal experience in any customer service interaction is completely on the shoulders of the employee. Customers are expected to be served and have all of their desires met as they are paying for their experience. Therefore, if we are to shift this paradigm in any sort of positive direction, it is the customers that need to learn to be better to the people serving them. 

Customers need to accept the parts of the interaction that are dictated by monetary exchange (i.e. the purchase itself) while rejecting the parts of the interaction that should not be dictated by the exchange. For example, you are there to spend money on a cup of coffee. You are purchasing coffee. You are not purchasing a smile, a friend, or a pass to berate a fellow human being. While you may be entitled to your goods that you are buying, you are not entitled to any person. 

In addition to rejecting the preconceived notions of what a ‘good’ customer service experience looks like under capitalism, it is also important for customers to acknowledge when employees are going above and beyond to be kind to them. When you walk into a shop, and someone asks you how you are, answer the damn question. Don’t just interject with your order or whatever you might be looking for. Your request can wait the 5 seconds that it takes for you to answer the question and ask how they are doing in return. This may seem like a small, obvious thing but holy shit is there an inordinate number of people on this godforsaken planet that cannot seem to get this right. 

Something as simple as asking the employee their name can also be an important part of building community ties. When we acknowledge the small gestures of humanity that others are offering, we act as a mirror to reflect that act back at them. 

There are far fewer things that employees should have to do in order to better establish community ties, as they are the ones laboring to provide the service. One of the core things that we as customer service employees can do is unlearn the desire to treat regulars better than customers that come through with less frequency. If we’re only warm towards regulars we are feeding into the idea of purchasing relationships. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t get to know regulars and that your bond to them won’t be closer simply based on frequency of interactions, however it is important to remember that each new person that walks into the shop is as much of a member of the community as the people that we see everyday. 

Employees can also disrupt and discard policy in order to build community. Customers only bathroom? Fuck it, give ‘em the code. No outside food allowed? Let my guy eat a sandwich. I’m not saying get fired to give one person a more communal experience, but I am arguing that many policies that work places enforce are anti-poor and therefore antithetical to building up the people in the community around us. If a policy denies someone dignity, can you be moral while upholding it?

An aside on eye contact from both sides of the counter

When I got my first coffee roasting job I worked with a fantastic roaster who came from a blue collar background and didn’t take shit from anybody. Additionally, he had a large burn scar on the side of his face from a childhood accident. As the manager of our shop he would often talk about the humanizing experience of eye contact, and how difficult it was to feel like a person when no one wants to look at you. He described his difficult experiences, both as an employee and as a customer, of people not wanting to make eye contact with him based on his appearance. He was the first person to instill in me that communities are built across cafe counter tops, and it’s everyone’s responsibility to make those around them feel like a person. I can still hear him yelling at me when I was an above-it-all 22 year old shit head, “I don’t care how tired you are. Work is stressful. Life is stressful. Someone who walks in that door might be having the worst day of their life, and you’re gonna make them feel like a fucking person!”. As harsh as that sentiment is, it is one that I feel more and more as I get older and come to the realization that I should never be too tired to make someone feel human.

While there are many small things that can turn customer service interactions into acts of community service and community building, there are many boundaries that need to be set in order to make these acts of building meaningful rather than one-sided and exploitative. Community service is not paying people to tolerate your disrespect. Employees are people and make mistakes, and they don’t deserve to be scolded by customers for their mistakes. Trust me, their co-workers will remind them of whatever fuck up they have made. Additionally, neither employees nor customers owe each other any additional interactions outside of the shop setting. I don’t care if you follow them on Instagram, know where they hang out five days a week, and know their tastes– if someone isn’t interested in deeper interactions with you beyond the small acts of kindness that they display during a customer service interaction, accept that and let them live and be nice to you in the capacity that they can.

There aren’t a lot of things that we can do to make capitalism feel good, and there isn’t much that we can do to make work feel good, and there isn’t much that we can do to make each other feel good. I don’t mean to be too cynical or critical, life is just exhausting and so much of it is so miserable. We have to start treating each other with more humanity, and we have to go outside of the bounds of our own selfish exhaustion to do it. We’re all tired. We’re all overworked. We’re all doing our best. We’re all in the same community, and I’ll reach out with my hand if you reach out with yours.