You Should Grind Your Own Coffee

A few anecdotes about the old neighborhood crowd and a plea in defense of snobbery

She just like me for real.

When I was a barista, I had a woman tell me one time that I should join the Army. She’d asked what I did for college and I told her I double-majored in English Writing and Philosophy. So she suggested I join the Army. Honestly it wasn’t as bad as you might assume. I don’t think there was any malice in it. Her son was in Ranger School at that time (as she told me) and I suspect she was just anxious. She loved the guy, you could tell. She was trying to convince herself her son was on the right path, the kind other people’s sons would be wise to follow. I hope he did okay, for her sake. I hear some nasty things about guys getting hazed in those sorts of special forces situations.

I don’t remember if she tipped. This was before COVID and so you could still reasonably expect cash tips. The owners of the local chain where I worked didn’t bother setting up card tips, so if you were a cash-first customer and regular tipper we always remembered you. Honestly that’s the main thing I miss about the job, the regulars. It was a quiet, neighborhood sort of place and so you got to know everyone. There was the balding eastern european immigrant who’d have an espresso and seltzer, sit in the corner, and watch kickboxing on his laptop. There was the bipolar woman who’d take no less than ten minutes at the register each time and leave me stifling a smirk at the expressions of the serious, professional sorts of people who’d get trapped in line behind her. There was also G. G was from New York and he and I are both Yankees fans. He was kind of like a New Yorker as conceived of by people who hate New York and a Yankee fan as conceived of by people who hate the Yankees. He’d talk your ear off, had a million weird little hangups and anxieties, very Larry David, but with that Italian extroversion. He’d sit out in front of the store alongside his buddy with the rabbi beard and the Padres hat and shout the scores in the window to me. I miss him and hope he’s alright. He was in that demographic, age-wise, where he would have been vulnerable to COVID. I didn’t see him after November 2019. I didn’t quit and they didn’t fire me. Was one of those deals where I just wasn’t on the schedule anymore. Never got a proper chance to say goodbye to the regulars.

Was a lot of vulnerable people around that little shop. We were cheap and offered free refills so a lot of men’s shelter types would come hang out. Very polite. None of the stereotypes you’d expect about those people really applied. They’d pay for a cup and hang out, as was their right. Didn’t leave any more trash than the average customer. G didn’t like it, was affected by that New Yorker aversion to the homeless. I remember one time they were in their little corner at the back of the place, it was small, real small, and they were having some sort of spirited discussion about something and G, in for a refill and chatting with me and my coworker, told them to quiet down. They did so, couldn’t risk the disruption, couldn’t risk having to find a new place. But when G went back outside and shouted in to me that the Yankees had scored, one of the fellas at the table in back, the little pale one with the lazy eye and the stutter, shouted back; “hey, you be quiet!” That shut G up good. Thought it was hilarious. He didn’t mean any harm, neither of them did. Was just healthy for him to get the ego check, I thought. Poetic justice.

The best, though, the very best regular I ever had was R. We all loved R. Retired postal worker, sweetest old man you’d ever meet. He’d come in, order a small hot chocolate in his water bottle at least twice a week, and tip ten bucks every single time. One slow afternoon we’d just got R squared away with his hot chocolate and, in the midst of a bit of neighborly small talk he announced to me and my coworker that he was the world’s foremost expert on The Zodiac Killer. He’d written books on the subject and seemed rather excited to show us where we could purchase them on Amazon. I think he’d just finished his latest one. Naturally, I got curious and did some digging. There’s endless forums on decrepit neocities sites about this sort of thing and our friend R was not popular in these communities, to say the least. I showed this to my coworker and he summarized his feelings (and mine) thusly: “look, when these people come in here and tip ten bucks every time, we’ll listen to what they have to say on the matter. Until then, R’s the only expert on the Zodiac Killer I care about.”

It’s funny, really, I never had coffee until I became a barista. I was a tea guy in college on the rare occasion I needed stimulants. I’d brew a big pot of Earl Grey and spend all night on an essay. The essay was just an excuse, really. I love being awake and alone at like 3:30 AM in a big drafty old house. Just me my weed and my words and the mice and silverfish. Pacing around, talking to myself, gaming, procrastinating. I miss it. I drove myself half mad one time and thought the silverfish were stalking me, plotting revenge for an earlier encounter. One ran across my keyboard and was batted off the desk and into parts unknown by means of frantic flailing. Later, collapsing into bed, another, presumably unrelated silverfish crawled up onto the whitewashed drywall beside my bed. “Ah.” I thought. “I’m dead.”

Illustration by Bkub Okawa

I applied to be a barista because I needed a job if I was gonna live somewhere that wasn’t my parents’ house after college. I got the job, did the training. I caught a burn from the little steam wand on the espresso machine, which left a scar on my finger that I still have to this day. Then I had to go. I was studying abroad. That’s actually where I had my first coffees. I was jet lagged and we were going to a castle or something and I wasn’t gonna have another chance to go and so I needed to be conscious enough to make it worthwhile. I had an Americano because it was the cheapest thing on the menu. I didn’t know what that was at the time. It’s espresso and hot water. They call it that because the American Expeditionary Force in World War 1 were unaccustomed to drinking straight espresso as most of their continental allies preferred, they were accustomed to drip coffee. So they’d get their espresso and cut it with water. Hence, Americano.

I tried a few things, cappuccinos and such, trying to feel sophisticated, but once I got home and got into the job properly I found the espresso was the real thing I was after. I didn’t really have a taste for coffee itself beyond a strict qualitative binary. Either it’s good or it’s bad. The main thing about coffee is what it does. I’m up and alert and doing things. We were told to make ourselves drinks so we could recommend things to customers. It took an embarrassingly long time to realize that having an espresso at 8 PM to power through closing was why I kept staying up until 4 AM. I had to set boundaries about it. I still don’t have caffeine after 7 PM. Not soda, nothing. Espresso expedites that process. If you’re especially lethargic or haven’t had caffeine in a bit, you can feel good espresso hit you all over as you take it. You pull the shot, let it cool, and then get rid of it quick. Then you’re good, off to go do things until the energy runs out. I explained the appeal to another co-worker at a later job and she just nodded and said “Ah, yes. Masculinity.”

I never buy coffee when I’m out and about outside of an espresso or maybe a cortado (Google it) if I feel like I can trust the barista to make it properly. I always tip. I hate Starbucks so much, more than it would be polite to articulate. I’m a coffee snob. I grind my own. You should too. It’s far easier than you’d think. It’s also a much better economic proposition than basically any other way to consume coffee. A twelve ounce bag of whole-bean coffee is six dollars at Trader Joes. Even the small batch, fair trade, farmer’s market, single-origin, two-bros-and-a-dream stuff rarely runs more than like sixteen bucks a pound. It’s shelf stable for like a year after packaging. The pre-ground stuff goes stale in like a week after you open it. Why are you keeping your coffee in the freezer? Have some self-respect.

I drink like 3 mugs a day, I bring a full thermos to the office with me. It’s my breakfast. The actual cost per mug has to be like fifty cents or less. My grinder is electric and does the job in like fifteen seconds or less. It cost twenty five bucks on Amazon, you can go even cheaper that that as needs must. I can virtually guarantee it will pay for itself many times over. Mine certainly has. The only way my habit could be cheaper is if I was using the freebies at the office and I will not do that. The Keurig is my enemy and one day I will kill it.

You need to free yourself from this idea that snobbishness is a position that should always be avoided. In some situations it’s understandable even if I (a snob in many respects) may disagree with the reasoning. Buying physical media can be expensive, especially before a neophyte consumer develops bargain-hunting instincts. Reading dense texts, watching a lot of films or TV, seeking new music, developing the cultural vocabulary to engage with foreign media, all of these pursuits are time-consuming and often lonely endeavors. There’s at least a value proposition at play there. I don’t see one of those here. I can’t be nice about this any further, if you’re spending like seven bucks every morning at Starbucks I won’t call you frivolous or irresponsible but I will call you a rube. Why are you letting these people pick your pocket like this? They suck! They’re union-busting gentrifiers who burn every bean they roast. Even Dunkin is well clear and I think they brew the most five on ten cup of coffee in existence. “Oh but I need my treat.” Then save the money and get a treat that doesn’t suck. Is that so hard? Or are so you degraded, demoralized, and debased that familiar treats are the only thing you aspire to? In an age where institutional contempt for the individual grows ever more apparent, sometimes being a snob is the only way we salvage dignity. Accusations of “doing too much” will always be a compliment coming from those who see it as an imposition to do anything at all.

Haters unite.

Grind your own coffee.

The odd thing about coffee is that I dunno if I even really like the taste. I know that’s the barrier for a lot of people. They don’t like the bitterness. This stuff isn’t like wine, I can’t give you tasting notes. Granted, I can’t do that with wine either. I can’t really distinguish light roasts from dark. I can say good or bad. That’s it. I drink it black. I always have. My old co-worker, the fastest barista I ever worked with, who was there when R was bragging about his Zodiac Killer expertise, he told me when I started, drink it black for two weeks and you’ll never go back. Some wisdom there, I think.

JW