I’m thinking about buying myself a coffee pot. I’ve been resisting doing so, not because of the expense but because I think of coffee drinking as a social event. I live alone, and the idea of getting up in the morning and pouring myself a cup of coffee just has no appeal. To my mind, drinking your AM coffee alone in the kitchen is the first step towards drinking your evening scotch alone in front of a TV.

So instead of a coffeemaker and hermitude, I frequent coffee shops—the ones with baristas, not diners with waitresses named Flo; and I like to be a regular because it’s often my first human encounter of the day and I like to start off my day with a friendly and familiar face. When I lived in Coeur d’ Alene, I used to frequent a little place on Main Street. The owner, a curmudgeonly middle-aged woman with marginal baking skills and, apparently, zero customer service skills, had the good sense to hire friendly, energetic front-of-house employees. The coffee was good, the food okay, but the staff was excellent. They engaged customers in genuine conversation. They didn’t wear name tags because we, customers and staff, were all on a first name basis. It was just friendly at first, then we became friends. To this day, years later and 100s of miles from Idaho, I’m still close with one of the former baristas (she’s moved on to bigger and better things). Coffee, you see, is a social event.

I sometimes go to Starbuck’s. I don’t really like the coffee so much, but the faux-coffeehouse environment is pleasant enough and they’re usually playing some decent music. But what I really like, and am almost ashamed to admit, is the false-sincerity of the staff. That is, I realize they’re trained to greet customers with a smile and feign interest in customer’s lives by engaging them in chit-chat. Some people dismiss this as a “tactic” and/or “fake,” and they’re right; it is. Interestingly, however, after a time, something happens. The false-sincerity born of profit-seeking customer service training becomes genuine interest in another human being. It turns out, interpersonal interactions, even fake ones, leads to human connection.  So not coincidentally, I’ve made some lasting friendships with staff and customers of Starbuck’s as well. We should all fake sincere interest in the lives of strangers more often. We’d have fewer strangers and more friends. Coffee is not just a social event. It’s a social phenomenon.

Recently, I’ve been a regular at a Panera Bread bakery near my apartment. The regularity of my visits increased the nearer the end of the semester came. The urgency of essay deadlines sometimes demands the focus and speed of caffeinated composition. Add free Wi-fi to my bottomless cup of dark roast and I can make my laptop sing. I’d never heard of the company prior to moving to Arkansas last year but it’s a popular place in these parts. Good coffee, great food, and, well… what can I say? …a de-humanized staff.

It seems the company geniuses initiated a new customer rewards program. Present your “My Panera” card at checkout and build-up points good for “free” bakery items. My libertarian-streak tends to make me a non-joiner of such programs—besides, customers are paying for all those free pastries (that new bulge in your back pocket isn’t from your wallet)—so when the barista asked if I’d like to become a member, I politely declined. The next day, the same girl asked if I had a My Panera card.

“No,” I said.

“Would you like one? It’s easy to sign up.”

“No, thanks.”

And it’s been Groundhog Day here ever since. The same conversation, and I mean the EXACT SAME CONVERSATION, repeats itself daily. After the first few times I stopped simply saying, “No,” when asked if I had a My Panera card, and added “…and I don’t want one,” just to move the conversation along. That didn’t help. I began to think the staff was utterly clueless. Why couldn’t they remember that I don’t want to participate in Panera’s &#$%@ customer retention program? So after the umpteenth time of repeating this unwelcome morning ritual, one day, before she could speak, I just said, “Please don’t ask me if I have or want a My Panera card.”

The girl looked up from the register somewhat surprised. She apologized, explained that it was policy to ask, and that the cash registers had been programmed to remind her to do so. She showed me. There it was. The bane of my morning social was a digital readout that robbed my barista of her humanity, had turned her into a robot, and left me feeling like I’d just stepped off the curb into an ankle-deep puddle of ice-cold water. I asked her if the cash register told her to jump off a bridge, would she? She just stared at me like I was crazy. All she really wanted to know is if I wanted a My Panera card.

Now that I know the problem, I’m making some progress breaking down the digital barrier between me and my baristas. The other day, after asking me if I had a My Panera card, the girl stopped herself before I could speak and said, “Oh yeah. You don’t want one.” I smiled and she added, “But you get free stuff.” I told her that I didn’t really want free stuff. What I wanted was somebody to say hello, or good morning. What I wanted was to be seen as a human being, not a piece of plastic with reward points. What I wanted was to share a cup of coffee and maybe some brief genuine conversation with a friendly and familiar face. Short of that, I’d welcome some false-sincerity; at least that has some potential for future meaningful conversation. It was the first real conversation I’d had with a staff-member at a Panera Bread…maybe there’s hope.

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Jay Baldwin

Mr. Baldwin is a doctoral candidate of comparative literature and cultural studies at the University of Arkansas. He is a self-described free-market anti-capitalist harboring anarchist utopian fantasies. The best that can be said of him is that, presumably, his mother loves him.

Latest posts by Jay Baldwin (Posts)

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