022: It's All Fun and Games Until Someone Calls You Stupid
Hi friends,
It’s been a uhh… tough (?) couple of weeks, huh? Frankly, I don’t think there’s anything I can say that’s smarter or more insightful than what other people have said about *gestures widely* everything, so check out the Things I Read And Loved This Week section for more on that.
I don’t have much of an intro this time around. I hope you’re doing well, wherever you are. Let’s jump into it.
You might have heard the debates about raising the federal minimum wage to $15/hour last week.
For me, learning about Biden’s plan to raise the Federal minimum wage came at the same time that I (finally) noticed my employee classification on my paycheck—I’m an “unskilled laborer,” according to my employers.
My face flushed. A course of heat and adrenaline and shame ran through me. “Unskilled laborer.” That’s what they think of my 8 years of experience behind bar, managing coffee shops, training other baristas. That’s what they think of my certifications in adult education. That’s what they think of me.
It echoed in my head for hours: As I made them all drinks none of them know how to make; As I diagnosed and fixed a sudden problem that came up with the espresso machine; As I explained how inventory systems work for the nth time to the person who probably marked me as ‘unskilled.’
Unskilled laborer. Unskilled laboerr. Unskilled laborer.
Later that same day, the CEO himself asked me to teach him how to steam milk. We worked together for 5 minutes, the amount of time he thought he needed to learn this non-skill. He came back a week later saying he still couldn’t get it right on his home espresso machine,* which I’ll note is not your average Bed, Bath, and Beyond purchase but a several-thousand-dollar one that many cafes balk at the price of. He was shocked! Appalled that he couldn’t get it! And I get it—he’s a literal, certified genius with patents to his name! How could he not get this?!
Because it’s a skill. Because it takes days, sometimes weeks, of practice and coaching to learn how to steam and pour milk correctly. Because it can take months to go from steaming milk correctly to consistently pouring beautiful latte art. Because I wouldn’t expect anyone, no matter how smart they are, to learn the chemistry behind a 6-step process in five minutes. And I especially wouldn’t expect them to become good at it in that amount of time.
I had never given much thought to how my job is classified before that moment. I know it’s considered part of the service industry, which is interesting to me because in some ways being a barista doesn’t neatly fit into the definition of the service industry. In traditional economics, there are three industries: Primary, Manufacturing, and Service. Primary is about the collection of raw materials, so the planting and picking of coffee are primary. Secondary/Manufacturing is any business activity that takes those raw materials and makes them into a usable product: so processing coffee to get it to ready to roast, and roasting and bagging coffee is considered secondary or manufacturing. We’re left then with Tertiary/Service, which covers the actual customer interaction where they get their beverage.
But where does the roasted coffee bean get made into a beverage in that model? Every time I make a latte, aren’t I technically creating a product? Doesn’t the job straddle the Manufacturing and Service sectors?
For a restaurant, I think it’s much more clear-cut. The chefs who take raw food and make it into a dish are part of Manufacturing, and the waiters who take the dish to the table are Service. Their jobs are delineated in a way that doesn’t blur the line between the two sectors of the economy.
But baristas aren’t. We have to have to be able to accomplish goals from both sides. We have to be good at the technical creation of beverages, not to mention the nuanced upkeep of expensive and complicated machinery, but we also must excel in customer interaction. We do both.
(I’m not the first, by the way, to criticize this economic model based on the difficulty of defining the service industry.)
In a lot of ways, I think of baristas as being very similar to craft beer brewers. There’s a lot of crossovers not just in palette development/skill and in the hand-created aspect of the beverage, but in the way that a lot of breweries expect their brewers to also be able to serve beer. This isn’t universal, but I find in my own anecdotal experiences of visiting craft breweries that it’s true. A lot of brewers split their time, or at least are expected to be able to do so.
And I don’t think there’s anyone in the US who would label brewing craft beer as an unskilled job.
Maybe it’s because breweries have done a better job of publicizing how much work their brewers put into creating these drinks. Maybe it’s because of America’s deep-rooted love for beer. Maybe it’s because of the way we’ve contextualized coffee as a means to an end, not a thing to be enjoyed for itself. Maybe it’s because of the way we’ve spent over a century demonizing the people who serve us.
Craft brewing is not an unskilled job.
Craft coffee is not an unskilled job.
Frankly, I’m not really convinced ‘unskilled’ jobs exist, especially in a developed economy that is primarily the Service industry. Customer service is a skill. Cooking food is a skill. Making coffee is a skill.
Maybe we need to do a better job of differentiating specialty coffee from what you can make at home with your Mr. Coffee. Maybe the answer lies in better advertising.
Or maybe the answer is bigger than that.
Maybe people use ‘unskilled labor’ as a label because they don’t understand the job. Maybe people use ‘unskilled labor’ because they don’t want to admit that with all their degrees, they couldn’t do the work we do. Maybe the answer is that people use ‘unskilled labor’ as an excuse to not pay someone a living wage.
There are a lot of intelligent economic arguments to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour. Maybe you agree, maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re caught somewhere in the middle, worried that $15 is too much in Mississippi, the state with the lowest cost of living, and too little in Hawai’i, the state with the highest cost of living.
But I hope that before you use the ‘unskilled laborer’ argument against raising the minimum wage, you’ll actually look into what or who you think is unskilled. Maybe you’ll find that, actually, every job is just as hard as yours, or maybe harder. And that many jobs that you think are ‘unskilled’ actually require a great deal of training and education, it just may not be the formal education from an accredited university that most people think is a pre-requisite to becoming a ‘skilled’ person.
After all, if my CEO can’t do my job, am I really an “unskilled laborer”?
*For my fellow specialty coffee workers who know what this means: He has a Slayer at his home.
Things I Read And Loved This Week:
Sometimes Bridges Need to Be Burned, by Lyz Lenz — a well-written take on why “unity” is a terrible idea
Top 5 Rat Movies I Made Up, by Hola Papi! — something to calm down with
A Reader Survey
When I was blogging more, I used to do an annual reader survey. I’m doing one again because I’m interested in what you like about Collected Rejections, what you’d like to see more of, and what you want less of. If you’ve got a couple of minutes, I’d appreciate it if you filled it out! It shouldn’t take more than five minutes.
As always, thank you for reading. If you want to respond just hit reply. Your message will get to me (and only me). If you like this and think your friends might too, feel free to forward it on.
Last week I published an article in Calibration Notes, the monthly publication Go Fund Bean created. It’s about prosperity gospel and the way we treat service workers. You can check it out here.
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Stay safe, friends!
Valorie