Neil Serven

[I wrote this in 2022 as I was attempting to send around commentary pieces. This one never got picked up but I figured I’d archive it here.]

When Senator Ted Cruz of Texas spoke in response to President Biden’s decision to forgive debts of up to $20,000 on certain student loans, he expressed concern that the move would help prospects for Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections.

“If you are that slacker barista who wasted seven years in college studying completely useless things, now has loans, and can’t get a job, Joe Biden just gave you 20 grand,” the senator said on the August 26 edition of his podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz.

“Maybe you weren’t gonna vote in November,” he added, “and suddenly you just got 20 grand, and if you can get off the bong for a minute and head down to the voting station …, it could drive up turnout, particularly among young people.”

The remark generated predictable outrage on Twitter, not just from baristas, but anyone who is alert to the continuing Republican assault on working-class Americans. In choosing baristas, many of whom are indeed college-educated, Cruz decided to target a job that is an extremely visible part of the working sector.

The job is not just about pouring coffee. A Starbucks barista must have memorized the recipes of over 40 menu beverages and be able to adapt on the fly any beverage to satisfy a customer’s request. Extra sugar? Skim milk instead of whole? An extra pump of caramel? A puppy face sculpted into the foam? A Blond Vanilla Latte, to take an example, can have up to seven ingredients. Under the pressure of demanding customers looking for their daily jolt, there is a lot that can go wrong.

As Starbucks and similar coffee companies proliferated through the 90s and 2000s, offering consumers a high-end and higher-priced alternative to regular coffee, the occupation of a coffee server became more complex. With the addition of Italian-inspired espressos and cappuccinos to the menu, the industry borrowed the Italian-derived noun barista to help sell with the idea of giving customers something European and exotic. But as those drinks became ubiquitous, the specialized skill once suggested by the job title became easier to forget. Even Dunkin Donuts, a chain that has long tried to distinguish itself as a regular-Joe coffee chain that wasn’t Starbucks and touts itself as a fuel source for the American worker (“America runs on Dunkin”), uses barista in its job descriptions.  

As just about anyone who has ordered a cappuccino knows, to prepare a drink with multiple ingredients quickly for a demanding customer isn’t just about the drink—there’s an element of performance on demand. Baristas—women in particular—must mask high stress and balletic movements in a tight kitchen area with a veneer of politeness and gratitude as they get chatted up, flirted with, mocked, and tested to no end while simultaneously having to avoid getting scalded by hot beverages and steam jetting from pressurized appliances. And unlike jobs that take place in a cubicle, factory, or even a fine-dining kitchen, there is nothing to shield the demands of a barista’s job from the public audience, many of whom are en route to their own jobs. In short, baristas, in a very visible way, make work look like work.

Baristas will share stories of absurd customer demands and fussy drink orders, all while finding themselves on the butt end of juvenile antics, like the tired stunt of ordering drinks under a fake name like “Spartacus” or “Trump” for the theater of a barista calling out those names in a crowded house.  

Social media has opened more opportunities for forcing service workers to turn their jobs into performances. In December, a TikTok user went viral for sharing a “monstrosity” Starbucks order (a Vanilla bean crème Frappuccino with 12 bananas, 12 “affogato-style” shots, caramel brulee sauce, among other ingredients, plus four different toppings) and asking his followers if he should place it, which he eventually did. The reactions from baristas were mixed, with one user saying “I’d quit on the spot” and others suggesting the order might be fun to make on a slow day, or that it might “give the baristas a break” by crashing the ordering system.

It is hardly a new thing for service and retail workers to find themselves on the receiving end of abuse from customers who thinks their wallets—or follower counts—give them an upper hand in how they treat other people. The dehumanizing treatment is, sadly, what a lot of customers think they get with their money, as they have been indoctrinated by capitalist ethos: make it properly, make it quickly, and show me gratitude. Don’t make me feel bad for what I want.

In the mindset of Republicans like Cruz and their wealthy donors, the world is divided into those who exist to serve and those who exist to be served. The exploitation and disparagement of service workers is mentally justified by the ethic that you aren’t supposed to be satisfied being the one doing the serving, and if you are, then you are derelict in fulfilling the American idea.

Cruz’s choice to call out baristas in particular—using a lazy 90s-tinged word, slacker, to paint servers as underachieving, unappreciative, and snarky—is based on an outmoded image that Republicans are long used to having Americans nod along with. It is perhaps no coincidence that it comes at a time when baristas are amassing bargaining power: since December 2021 over 200 Starbucks stores in the US have unionized with Workers United, with dozens more stores awaiting union votes. A profession once thought of as disposable is emerging to become a vocal segment of what is left of America’s middle class. 

For Cruz and wealthy Republicans, resentment and abuse of those you deem to reside below you is considered healthy, a way of ensuring that one’s social capital remains tied to one’s financial capital. To that end, the last thing they want to see is a barista who doesn’t feel shame that they haven’t amounted to something more—or, worse, one confident enough to take a chance on furthering their education with a loan. A service occupation that can solidify its bargaining power and establish its place as a critical sector of the economy can also help to deflate the idea of laziness on which Republicans rely, while rewriting the idea of what it means to do good, hard work.

Tagged: coffee