Baristas, Precarious Labor, and again, FU NYT
…the point to my previous post being: most of the baristas I know aren’t fucking around while they get their PhD’s or trying to supplement low-paying but “glamorous” creative careers that will probably eventually pay off. They’re high school dropouts, college dropouts, arty outcasts from blue-collar backgrounds, weirdos and queers alienated from conservative rural or Midwest families, and other such precarious laborers, in places with few other job opportunities and resumes that list only a decade or more of coffee shop experience.
And most of them are either fast approaching or past the 30 mark, and privately wondering if working at Starbucks wouldn’t be such a bad career move, because at least they offer health insurance to long-term employees.
If I hadn’t gotten out of the Bay Area 6.5 years ago (where the only jobs available are either customer service or tech industry jobs requiring specialized degrees,) made a batshit-crazy cross-country move to a place with more opportunities (Chicago,) taken two internships (at Punk Planet and Bloodshot Records) at the age of 30 in addition to working nearly full-time at a Chicago coffee shop and taking any scraps of freelance writing work I could scrape together, put in over half a decade of hard work working multiple jobs both paid and unpaid, and gotten a few lucky breaks, most likely I’d be a 35-year-old barista secretly coveting that Starbucks health insurance plan myself.
Good response from Paul. That NYT piece is missing the point entirely.
