It shouldn’t matter if I’m a stranger straight off the bus from Atlanta, Georgia or a longtime neighborhood fixture - I just want my caffeine buzz without the shot of condescension. Don’t give me that “you don’t look like a regular” or “we make sure to question tourists” jam just because my hairstyles change too much for you to remember me. A barista can’t pick and choose when to give a coffee explainer. (Finally I’m a regular!) We had an engaging conversation, an exchange full of coffee geekdom that skirted around my core issue.Īll the while, inside my head I delivered my own lecture: Sir, I understand beverage styles shift, but customer service is about consistency. The same barista greeted me a little warily and acknowledged he remembered me from last time. So I decided to return to that same indie coffee shop and try again. Maneuvering through 2019 requires sitting in one's feelings and dissecting your issues. So I asked, “You do this thing with everyone who orders a macchiato, or just the people who aren’t your regulars?” Sheepishly, he fumbled his reply, leaving me to wonder, are my feelings valid, or am I being sensitive? May I enjoy my afternoon retreat without the chilly condescension-laced discourse on the difference between Starbucks and “real” coffee? “Especially if you’re not a regular.” Not a regular? I was in there at least once a week. One time, I asked the demure white barista, why the lecture? He looked puzzled, almost if I shouldn’t be asking a question. Every time I sucked my teeth! My anger rushed to the bottom of feet and through the tips of my toes.
#Coffee buzz nicole how to
My first impulse was to call coffee profiling: They're thinking a Black woman with a southern accent in a fancy place doesn’t know how to order?!? Then it happened a few more times: at a popular, forever-crowded Nolita and SoHo Manhattan neighborhood establishment, at a Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn cafe, and at a Instagrammable Adams Morgan area hotel lobby in Washington, DC.
0 kommentar(er)
