What Starbucks Taught me at 18.

Serving Coffee made me Smarter?

The pivot from youth to adulthood (if you still consider being 18 an adult) occurred behind the counter of the most powerful coffee shop in America, Starbucks.

I am the typical “he fell off” story.

Starting Football player, multi-sport athlete, club president, author, state record holder, to… Barista.

But how?

Taking a Gap Year is a fairly [I’ll say] uncommon path, that entails many unexpected slippery twists & turns, with objects in the mirror being harder than they appear.

You’d think, “I am just going to explore, travel, learn some new things, and meet some new people”

Exactly how travel vloggers and movies portray it; wrong, but not inherently wrong.

You will explore, learn, and meet new people, but it won’t be in French cafes in Paris, or Turkish cafes in Cairo, it’ll most likely be in the nearest franchise up the block.

You know how there are a million Fast & Furious movies with the same lesson, but some of them take place in… space and others in LA? Well, this is about the same.

Regardless of how the scene of the movie of your life plays out, or where it’s being shot, the lessons are about the same.

Here are the lessons that Starbucks taught me

It doesn’t matter what you do, it’s how you do it.

Never in my life do I ever want to hear someone say I’m too good to be working here.

If you’re so good… do the same job, with magnitudes more joy, kindness, and efficiency. (Also do better at networking and job searching)

I’ve met people who dropped out of college, far exceeding those who had their graduate degrees during work. On the days they weren’t scheduled, customer after customer would ask “Where’s xxxxxx?” When they called out, the supervisors would be swamped with work from the surprise of not having that key player.

All the people I’ve seen get opportunities from networking while putting four [brown] sugars and [light] half & half in someone’s coffee, were all young and vibrant, it never had to do with the exact topic of convo or someone seeing that they were too smart to be working at Starbucks, it was always how well they worked & how they made the customer feel.

If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.

-Martin Luther King Jr.

Every Person & Place is priceless

There is no person, place, or thing that calls for a passé attitude.

It is easy to view everything as pointless, you don’t even have to be a nihilist, you can just be logical.

Me serving an overpriced coffee with ice cubes and artificial sweetener & over-pasteurized milk is inherently pointless; you should not be intaking as many stimulants & calories as you are, I am not helping society in any obvious, both of us being removed from the situation doesn’t impact anything negatively.

But there is an unseen realm where all the value is stored.

Life is about relationships & experiences, that is all there is to our initial inherently pointless interaction, therefore rendering it priceless.

I am investing a portion of my finite daily allotment of energy to move the 13 muscles on my face that it takes to smile, deciding how I want to greet you, telling you your order sounds like it tastes amazing, doing the mental math to see how much change to give you, handing you your change, and declaring that today will be a great day.

You are receiving a portion of your finite daily interactions to receive a drink that will provide you with an array of neurotransmitters & sensations from the caffeine, smoothness, sweetness, and happiness from not only your cold brew but from our light & sweet interaction. You reciprocate and validate my joy for you with a smile back, and if you are feeling generous, you put some of your hard-earned money into my tip jar, for me to go out into the world and enjoy greater experiences of my own.

Life is a journey, not a destination.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every Person & Place can teach you

You have to look for the lesson in everything, not the value. Many valuable things and experiences can only be highly appraised down the line. Sports cards are only valuable when they are older. Memories are only valuable because they are no longer with us.

Every interaction that leaves you with bad taste, greater instills the value of kindness & patience.

Every place that seems hopeless and drains you, greater instills the value of gratitude & charity.

Every time you feel impatient, you get an opportunity to improve your acting skills.

Every conversation that bores you makes you more invested in those that intrigue you.

Every life is unique, every journey is different, and with each route comes different lessons, do your best to extract them from others instead. of having to go down that path yourself (which is many times necessary).

Everyone has something to teach you if you are humble enough to learn.

-Mark Driscoll

Systems [not Steps] get you to your destination

If you were able to truly understand how well each & every Starbucks operates, solely off of the systems put in place by the higher-ups, you’d be in awe.

Starbucks can hire anyone off the street, as long as they are willing to put a smile on their face and make them a hyper-efficient cog in the machine.

The scheduling, the amount of food, the exact expiration dates, the logistics, the farming of the beans, the shaking of the Brown Sugar Oatmilk Shaken Espressos, ALL OF IT is systemized.

The shift supervisors have about 5 apps that they constantly sift through in order to ensure productivity and efficiency, just follow the rules and you’ll have a multi-million-dollar coffee shop.

There is never confusion, there is never planning, there is never anxiety, if everyone does their job, the job will get done.

Systems run the business, and people run the systems.

-Michael E. Gerber

Closing

I am eternally grateful for my time spent at Starbucks [predominately at register].

I would like to thank my co-workers for the memorable laughs and lessons.

Thank you to my friends & fam that would stop by every once in a while and remind me that I have a life outside of this.