Thanks A Thousand 1 The Barista and the Taster Thanks for Serving Me My Coffee I''ve decided to do this project in reverse, starting with my local café and working my way backward to the birth of the coffee. My coffee shop is a block''s walk from my apartment. It''s called Joe Coffee and has survived for twelve years, despite two Starbucks within a three-block radius. On a Thursday morning, I get in line, prepping myself to say the very first "thank you" of Project Gratitude. While waiting, I force myself to stash my smartphone in my pocket and actually notice my surroundings. The act of noticing, after all, is a crucial part of gratitude; you can''t be grateful if your attention is scattered. On the wall, there''s a photo of a pink Cadillac that, for some reason, is perched on top of a tower. There are moms pushing strollers, dogs tied up outside, the frequent hiss of the espresso machine.
Glowing indigo lamps the shape of doughnuts hang from the ceiling. That indigo light is lovely, I think to myself. You don''t see enough indigo lamps. I get to the counter and am greeted by my barista, a twentysomething woman with hair gathered in a ponytail atop her head. She hands me my order--a small black coffee, the daily blend. "Thank you for my coffee," I say. "You''re welcome!" she says, smiling. And there it is.
My first thank you. It''s fine, but no lightning bolts yet. I slide my credit card to pay the three-dollar fee. (Three dollars is, of course, ridiculously expensive. But in a weird sense, as I''ll learn, it''s also wildly underpriced.) I hold my cup of coffee and stand there, trying to figure out what, if anything, to tell the barista about my quest. I pause five seconds too long, somewhere on the border between awkward and creepy. I glance at the line of customers behind me and slink out.
A couple of days later, I''ve worked up the nerve to tell the barista about Project Gratitude. I asked her if she''d be willing to share with me a bit about what goes into making my coffee. She said she''d be happy to talk after her shift. "Thanks again for the coffee," I say, as we sit down at one of Joe''s small tables. "Thanks for thanking me," she says. I consider thanking her for thanking me for thanking her, but decide to cut it off lest we get caught in an infinite loop. She tells me her name is Chung. Her parents are Korean immigrants, and she grew up in Southern California before moving to New York for college.
"So . ," I say. "Um . What''s it''s like being a barista?" "It''s not always easy," she says. This is because you''re dealing with people in a very dangerous condition: Pre-caffeination. "You get some grouchy people?" I asked. "Oh, they can be grumpy." Chung tells me tales of customers who refuse to even make eye contact.
They just snarl their order and thrust out their credit card, never looking up from their smartphone. She''s had customers berate her till she cried for mixing up orders (which she swears she didn''t). She''s been snapped at by a bratty nine-year-old girl who didn''t like the milk-foam design that Chung created on top of her hot chocolate. Chung made a teddy bear. The girl wanted a heart. "I wanted to tell her that she did need a heart--a real one." And yet, Chung says the cranky customers are the minority. Most folks are friendly, especially when Chung sets the mood by being friendly first.
And man, Chung is friendly. She is a smiler and a hugger. She''s like a morning-show host, but not forced or fake. To give you a sense: During our half-hour chat, Chung got up no fewer than five times to hug longtime customers and former coworkers. "I first realized I might be good at customer service when I was working as an usher at my church," she says. "I saw that it takes a certain personality." And like at church, when she''s at Joe Coffee, she sometimes watches as people are transformed, their faces lighting up when they get their cups. "I see my job as getting them coffee, but also making them happy.
" I ask her if she''s planning on being a barista for the long haul. She shakes her head. "Actually, this is my last week." She''s moving back to California to take care of her parents. Plus, nowadays, she''s having trouble staying up on her feet her entire shift. "Let me give you a visual of why," Chung says. She takes out her smartphone and swipes to a photo. It''s a startling image of her left foot, bloody, bruised, and with more than a dozen metal pins sticking out of it.
"A year and a half ago, I got hit by a bus," she says. "I broke every toe, the heel, the ankle. The skin was gone." "Oh my God." "Yeah, it wasn''t pretty." Chung says it''ll be sad to leave the regulars. She talks about Nancy and John, who arrive every morning as soon as the glass door is unlocked. "I always say, ''How''s your day going?'' And John will say, ''Now it''s going well.
''?" She''ll miss her coworkers, whom she says always have her back. She won''t miss the occasional feeling that she doesn''t exist at all. "What''s upsetting is when people treat us like machines, not humans," Chung says. "When they look at us as just a means to an end--or don''t even look at us at all." I thank Chung, and she gives me a hug (her eleventh of the day, by my estimate). On my way home, I make a pledge. Though I probably won''t hug any other baristas, I promise to look them in the eyes--because I know I''ve been that asshole who thrusts out the credit card without glancing up. I''m not sure if I ever did it to Chung, but I know I''ve treated many others--waiters, delivery people, bodega cashiers--as if they were vending machines.
I sometimes wear these noise-cancelling headphones when running errands, so that just makes me look more aloof and unfriendly. And this is an enemy of gratitude. UC Davis psychology professor Robert Emmons--who is considered the father of gratitude research--puts it this way: "Grateful living is possible only when we realize that other people and agents do things for us that we cannot do for ourselves. Gratitude emerges from two stages of information processing--affirmation and recognition. We affirm the good and credit others with bringing it about. In gratitude, we recognize that the source of goodness is outside of ourselves." From now on, when I have an interaction with anyone else, I''ll try to affirm and recognize them. I''ll try to remember to treat them as humans--at least until robots take over all service jobs.
I''ll try to keep in mind that they have families and favorite movies and embarrassing teenage memories and possibly aching feet. * * * Chung served me my coffee--but who chose what type of coffee I drank? Who selected my daily blend from the tens of thousands of varieties across the globe? The answer to that takes me one step back on the chain to a man named Ed Kaufmann, head of buying at Joe Coffee Company, which now has nineteen stores in New York and Philadelphia. Ed agrees to meet me at the Joe Coffee Company headquarters in Chelsea. He ushers me into a back room with a round table. "Thanks for my coffee this morning," I say, making sure to look Ed in the eyes. I tell him I''d picked up a cup earlier at the Joe Coffee near my apartment and drank it on the way down. "Did you like it?" "Yes." "What did you like about it?" "Well, it woke me up.
And it tasted good. Bitter, I guess? I don''t have a very sophisticated palate." "We''ll work on that," he says. Ed looks a bit like a young Elvis Costello, spectacles and all. He grew up in Montana, where his parents owned a restaurant at a ski resort. It''s there that Ed first fell for coffee. "As a teenager, my friends and I would get caffeinated up and go snowboarding." He can''t snowboard here in New York, but Ed tells me he still likes the bracing cold.
He''s a fan of ice baths, which he says give him energy. And every morning, even on seventeen-degree January days, he jolts himself awake by biking to work without a shirt. "Actually, now I wear a T-shirt," Ed says. "I was getting too many stares when I went shirtless." But Ed''s true love is coffee. He''s smitten with it, head over heels. Some proof? He spent his honeymoon taking a five-day coffee-tasting course in Massachusetts. On his days off, he goes café hopping and "gets wasted on espresso.
" He talks about particular cups of coffee the way some people talk about long-lost girlfriends. "That was a meaningful cup of coffee," he''ll say, about a cup he drank in Ecuador. He describes coffee with elaborate metaphors, sort of like an antic sommelier. "There was this one coffee--I call it the Wonka Coffee because it was like an Everlasting Gobstopper, flavor after flavor, just exploding." It''s only been a few minutes, but I''m grateful that Ed is so passionate about this brown liquid. I may not fully appreciate the subtleties, but on some level, I know that Ed''s wisdom in choosing the best beans benefits me. The very fact that Ed thinks so deeply about my coffee is part of the reason I don''t have to think about it at all. It''s a key reason gratitude is.