We know how it is, dreaming the dream: you enter your favorite coffee shop or café and you think, “Wouldn’t it be great to work here!? I can chat with customers about politics, life, poetry. I can work during the weekly poetry slams or acoustic jam sessions we would host. I’ll meet like-minded people, maybe even get to date one or more.
“What a perfect job that would be!”
Yet while coffee shops and cafés are terrific places to relax while sipping your favorite brew, it can be a far different experience working behind the counter.
Let’s discuss the pros and the cons.
First, the positive aspects:
- As mentioned above, you’re working in an environment you’ve come to love, surrounded by like-minded people and customers.
- You’ll become an expert of “all things coffee.” You’ll be able to tell the difference between an Arabica bean and a Robusta simply by smell.
- You’ll learn how to create latte foam art. If you already know how, you’ll become an expert.
- You will get to know some of your regular customers really well. You’ll know their favorite drinks and blends. You’ll come to know their occupations, their families, their politics. They’ll recommend new bands, movies and books – and you’ll do the same.
- You’ll save money on your favorite drink and you’ll be able to drink as much of it as you like throughout the day (not in front of the customers, of course).
Now for the cons:
- Working as a barista is….WORK! Especially during Monday-Friday morning commuting hours, when it’s quite easy to constantly have 20 or more people in line waiting for their coffee for one to three hours or more. They may be impatient and touchy.
- Which brings us to: people. Playwright Jean Paul Sartre is said to have written “Hell is other people.” (Although a few say his true meaning was lost in translation from French to English, but we digress.) It’s not the many coffee orders that will get you down and stress you out as much as it will be cranky, nasty customers and you will have your fill of them.
- The pay: baristas earn an average across the country of $9.55 an hour, which really isn’t much to live on, even when working full time. Most baristas, therefore, work at least an additional job, or look at their work as something to do to help pay for college, while they look for a more professional job, etc. Tips don’t help increase pay much: tips range from 23 cents/hour to $3.35/hour.
- Chances are you will be asked to clean the floors – and the bathrooms. Bathrooms may not be clean after a few hours.
- Your hours may be erratic. You may be asked to open one day and close the next. Or close one night and open the next day. Very early in the morning. (This is known as a “clopen.”)
- Nitpicky coffee snobs. They are out there. They are never satisfied with the cup you make for them. And they will tell you so. Vociferously.
- You will receive burns from hot coffee. You just will. Some of them will leave scars.
But what if you could have all of the perks of being a barista (the friendships forged with people who love coffee, gaining detailed knowledge of coffee, lots of free coffee) without the cons (erratic hours, irate customers, low pay, back breaking work)?
You can! Consider becoming an independent distributor of Ubean Coffee. We don’t sell our premium, specialty coffee in stores: we only do so via our network of distributors and we’re looking for people who want to start a small business that allows them to make a decent part-time, or even full-time, income on a schedule that works for them, not a café’s manager.
Learn more about our independent distributor opportunity at Ubean.info. Meanwhile, if you’d like to purchase some of our great coffee, find the distributor nearest you.