Man, working at this coffee shop is really starting to reawaken my inner uber-liberal-environmentalist-whateverthefuck.
I have never felt so strongly at a job like I am catering to people's wastefulness and greed.
Now, I'm sure my mother could click on "comments" and write a novel about my own wastefulness. There are a few charming anecdotes from my adolecence, including the "phase" I went through (not sure how many years it lasted) where I kept trying to throw perfectly good and useful belongings in the garbage just because I wanted them gone. Clothing, toys, you name it... I threw it out.
I remember distinctly doing this, and I remember why I did it. Because, before the wonderful day I learned how to drive, I "knew" (read: felt) that if I put this stuff in a box marked "thrift shop" that box would never get taken there, but just sit there gathering dust, and eventually reincorporate itself back into our household. My parents, bless them, are definitely pack rats. So I always figured, it's hard enough to get this cleaned up with all this extra stuff lying around. Let's get it gone, gone! And, being cut of the Veruca Salt cloth (I want it [clean] NOW!), my solution was to just chuck it all out.
Luckily, I soon grew up enough to realize that throwing out useful things is bad... reduce/reuse/recycle and all that jazz. And, I soon grew up enough to get a driver's licence and take my stuff down to the thrift store myself. I still have my bouts of wastefulness, I won't deny it. But you can ask my old roommates: I do root through my garbage to make sure nobody's thrown out recyclables. I do make big box donations to the Salvation Army. I do use a travel mug (when I remember it) instead of paper cups.
So what does this have to do with my coffee shop?
My coffee shop has a big list of rules they like to call "standards". For example, it is "company standard" that coffee shall not be served if it drops below 165 degrees. When brewed, our coffee is 185 degrees. Now, according to these company standards, coffee must be thrown out after one hour because it cannot be guaranteed above 165 degrees after that time.
Now, first of all, none of our coffee is fair trade, but I'm not even going to delve into that one today. So just think about this. It is also "company standard" to have at least five coffees on brew at all times. Decaf, medium, dark, flavour and house blend. These each must be rebrewed once an hour, and the old pot thrown out. This means that, if nobody's buying drop coffee, we're brewing and chucking, oh, about 15 litres of coffee ever hour.
The thought of that makes me sick. Especially thinking of all the workers who are likely NOT being paid a fair wage, despite our training video that claims we're so good as to give them medical benefits. If we're so fair, why don't we get certified by an objective third party? The fact that we haven't makes me a little suspicious. So, thinking of those workers, out there picking those stupid coffee beans by hand in tropical heat... and we're just brewing it and chucking it because it doesn't meet some stupid "standard" designed to satisfy demanding, greedy consumers. And, let me add, that I have been witness to the pouring of two hour old coffee, and it's still STEAMING, piping hot. These are industrial caraffes we're using.
Of course, the same goes for the cream on our condiment stands. And yes, I realize that it's a bit worse of a situation if dairy has been sitting around for too long. But, it's not like you wouldn't notice if your cream was a bit off, and it's not like the 1/2 ounce you're putting in your coffee is going to make you sick. Besides, you cannot convince me that fresh cream, put in the thick thermos containers that we put it in, is going to go off after four hours on the condiment stand.
Oh, but this one gets better.
When I first started, we had cream, homogenized milk, and skim milk on the condiment stands. Now we've gone corporate and "company standards" dictate that we must also have 2% milk on the stands. Now, first of all, who the fuck is so lazy that if they REALLY want 2% they can't just mix homogenized and skim together? And second of all, that's one more jug of milk on the stand, meaning the other two get used even less, meaning that they're all relatively full when the four hours are up. Now, bear in mind that we have two condiment stands. So, if nobody's using the cream and milk, then every four hours we're pouring up to eight litres of dairy down the drain.
So yeah, yeah. I get that is probably all "foodsafe" and whatnot. But just because it might be foodsafe to chuck the milk after four hours (is it? does anyone reading this have foodsafe), that doesn't mean we can't offset that waste by putting less milk out on the stands. Or, god forbid, only have one condiment stand. And I'm fairly certain that if there is a foodsafe temperature on brewed coffee, it isn't 165 degrees -- and as I've already stated, I think it takes way more than an hour to drop to that level anyway.
Seriously. Even the reformed "throw out everything she doesn't want in her bedroom and hope her mother doesn't root through the garbage" girl realizes how disgusting and wasteful this is.
And I'm not even going to get into the "company standard" of putting a java jacket on every cup (which I refuse to participate in, and have refused to let my boss implement), or the american tourists who refuse the java jacket and insist on "double cupping" (which uses twice as much paper), or the number of drinks I've been forced to throw out because "oh, sorry, i wanted nonfat. i can't possibly drink 2%" (which, by the way, is not really the problem when your drink is a mocca with whipped cream on top -- a small mocca including almost 2 oz of chocolate syrup, and whipped cream having a fat content above 30%).
Gah.
I really do like my job, in many ways. I like making coffees, I like that there's always something to do. It appeals to my anal retentive side, oddly enough. Always something to clean up and make perfect. But I'm glad I'm leaving in a month, because participating in the nonsensical waste and greed is becoming a little too much for me. And I'm not going to lie, I totally re-label the coffees so that we keep them around for two hours instead of one. And I'm not going to apologise for that, either.