So I’m reading this article in the New York Times by an ex-barista lamenting how now that he’s a big-time writer, people still associate him with making their coffee.
I have a friend I like to avoid because when we go out together, he tends to introduce me as “a writer that used to make my Americanos.” Another tenant in my building recognizes me as the surly barista who habitually ignored her if she was trying to order while squawking into a cellphone. Last year, I went into a second interview for an editor job I thought I had on lock. But when I met the publisher, he stopped midsentence to ask, “Hey, didn’t you used to work in the coffee place near the Lorimer stop? You did the best cappuccino!” Then he wondered why I had left the barista job off my résumé. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he beamed. But he didn’t give me the job.
The truth is, these encounters are certainly frustrating, but I’m not ashamed. There was a certain romance to the hardships and the hustle of the job — getting up to open at 5:30 a.m., spilling scalding water on my hands, chasing a dream. Sure, I would rather have paid my rent a different way, but I don’t regret those years. Many of my best friends are still baristas, slinging coffee to support Ph.D. habits or supplement glamorous art director wages. And while I may always be more recognizable on the city streets for my great steamed milk than for my killer prose, there are worse things than having a legacy, even one so strange and aromatic.
So Jason Diamond spends almost all of his essay relating shameful anecdotes and then concludes by saying he’s not ashamed.
I’ve learned that when people say things that are unnecessary, such as “I’m not ashamed”, it is only because they are ashamed.
Just like with the person who keeps telling you, “You have to believe me,” you’d do well not to believe him.
