The joys of working in coffee shops

The sun is shining and the spring that broke the back of a lingering winter is itself feeling the looming summer. Shorts on, slide your laptop into your backpack, and head into town. Roasted arabica beans beckon. Air-conditioned luxury and a tall oat-milk latte. ’Tis the season for working in coffee shops.

“Want to try the new Costa Rican?”

“Sure,” you say.

But what they don’t tell you is that it’s going to cost you 30p extra and the taste is indistinguishable from any generic blend.

But what about the pandas?

They look at you blankly.

In Costa Rica? Or the wombats, you say. Or the orangutan? The point is: is this coffee ethical and does it contain palm oil, whatever the hell that is?

They don’t know but you don’t need to be as wise as a Socrates or Attenborough to know it’s the hidden extras that get you.

“Want a spoon with that?”

You catch yourself before you say “yes” and have to swipe away another 30p. Poverty by a thousand additions. Destitution as a subscription model.

Warrington’s Costa was crowded. Starbucks cramped. Nero is busy but here I am. The staff are underpaid and highly qualified if we’re to believe their t-shirts. Only in the world of retail coffee do qualifications come in the form of apparel. What is a “Master Roaster” anyway? You want to ask but fear the answer. Might they be trainee insult comics, learning the ways of Don Rickles circa 1962?

“The last time I saw a face like yours, it was fleeing the Red Army…”

And is this really what the future looks like: everybody defined by a corporately branded shirt?

“Hi. I’m Mal. MA Media and Communication (Manchester, 2020). Incapable of finding love. Interested in steam trains.”

Yet here we are in one of those coal faces of British industry you rarely hear spoken about. It is to 2023 what the open plan office was to the ’80s, the serviced office space to the ’90s, and the virtual office to the ’00s. We’re talking about a work environment where you’re charged by the cup – small, regular, or grande.

This is working out of the office but it’s not “working from home”. We’re in the hinterland. The Twilight Zone. It is the migratory instinct of part-timers, zero-hours contract workers, and freelancers everywhere. Work has escaped the anaemic out-of-town industrial estates and come here where everything is faux leather and the discomfort measured.

The guy at the next table is working in telesales. He’s dialling a number on his phone.

“Hi. Is that Becky?” he asks with the confidence of one gifted in the art of cold calling which means the same as being without a soul. “Hi Becky. My name is Daniel and I have it written here that you indicated an interest in our Career Development Programme. Have you got time to chat? Excellent. So, Becky, what we offer is a 12-month college education with on-the-job training…”

Daniel is selling it hard. He must be aware of the looming reality that AI is coming for his job. Maybe this is where mankind makes its last desperate stand. In coffee shops.

One table over, a pan-European job interview is taking place in the median language of English. A young woman speaks eloquently about her life growing up in Romania. She explains how she speaks five languages and is currently at college studying psychology. “But are you hard worker?” asks the job interviewer, a whiskery man bespeckled with gold. He clearly hasn’t been listening. Five languages. Currently studying psychology. She’s a hard worker.

But that’s not what he means. He explains how he expects his staff to start at 7am in his cafe. He dreams of becoming the next Ronald McDonald (the clue was when he said, “I want to become next Ronald McDonald!”) He talks about opening shops across the country. World domination is implied.

Over on the double sofas there’s a group of businessmen thrashing out their latest strategy.

“Damn it, Neil! Why are they still haggling over a lousy 2%?” They all have beards nearly trimmed under their chins. Cultured bohemia on a six-figure salary. They spend a lot of time talking about cars.

Sitting in the middle of Britain’s thriving economy are a group of women discussing Jane Austen’s significance to the lives of their grandchildren. It’s the kind of semi-formal group gossip session that used to take place in libraries when we had libraries and when libraries did that sort of thing, instead of functioning as gladiatorial arenas in which former paratroopers can go to beat up transgender authors.

“What are your ten-year plans?” asks the greasy spoon operator to the woman studying psychology and speaking five languages. Her answer is muffed by a roar from the group of businessmen.

“Faaak me, Ken!”

“It’s irony, Karen! I don’t think Jane Austen really believed in marriage counselling.” The ladies laugh like it’s still the 18th century.

Among all the debate about virtues or otherwise of WFH (which still sounds like the acronym for a particularly juicy curse), there’s little recognition that it’s not an absolute quantity. There is no one rule that applies to all. Musk complains about his absent workers as others celebrate their absence. 

For others it’s closer to a necessity. This coffee shop on this average weekday in an average town is indicative of that. Those of us working here are the other economy that fills the space where proper careers end and unemployment begins. It’s a lively mixture of grifters and strivers, idlers and obsessives, workaholics and those who simply like to drift. It’s an office-less culture that’s becoming all too common. Business as organised homelessness between the hours 8am to 5pm. There is no comfort but there is no discomfort. Chairs comfortable for as long as it takes to drink a coffee but not so much as to settle for an afternoon. Or, at least, not without reordering.

After 20 minutes Daniel finishes his call and leaves but is soon back for another 50-minute work session. £4 (30p extra for the Costa Rican) buys you the hour, which is considerably cheaper than most office space in town, though the bathrooms are closed. They’ve been closed for a month as they’re being repaired. But there are other places to nip. Primark isn’t far.

Keyboards clatter and emails go out. There’s a built-in Nero WiFi but nobody uses it. Fly over to the WiFi tab on your instrument of choice and you’ll see the variety of private networks. People are flying on mobile hotspots with a variety of names and non-names.

Becky’s iPhone.

Marvin Dinglebutt

HP_48474X

Rio Brazilian Steakhouse Staff.

_TheCloud

ASKPOS

And all the hidden networks. A dark web above the dark web. Private servers containing the stuff of private lives, all protected by the thin wall of little understood encryption.

Working from coffee shops knows no beginning or end. Time is measured by the millilitre, seasons by the drinks with the exotic names, and more cream than is healthy. They have names like ancient Greek wars. The Frappuccino Isthmus Incident of 483BC. And already the signs are that the icy drinks are coming.

Summer is escalating like another government crisis and this year will be a hot one. We don’t so much feel the breath of AI on our necks but the breath of those that would adopt AI to turn an easy profit. Experts boast that any jobs lost by AI will be replaced by other jobs created by AI, but that logic operates on the macro scale. The guy hammering away at his laptop in the coffee shop is not reassured by the knowledge that somebody else will get a job thanks to those forces that will hasten his redundancy. Recession looms. Soon we won’t even have the coffee shops. It’s already becoming unaffordable, and the AIs are eyeing our tables.

@DavidWaywell

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