MEMOIR
Second Cup
Life school of a mentor at heart
Once upon a time, I worked at Second Cup, a Canadian coffee chain. Earning money was so important that, several days a week, I went in to open the store at 5 am and worked till 8 am to get to my university class at 9 am.
Nose bleeds, falling asleep on the bus, total disconnect with the topics covered in class, completely “done” by afternoon, all to repeat the following day. This arrangement didn’t last very long, but long enough for me to learn something from this classroom of sorts, taught by a quiet and patient boss-turned-mentor.
I didn’t ask to be mentored. And she didn’t offer. She just did it because she was a good boss. She mentored me like I was the future CEO of Second Cup and committed to making me a better employee and person. She’d wave me down and teach me little things here and there. But she would book meetings with me for things that she felt were important.
I am talking about a cafe at a subway stop. Hourly shifts. I was a first-year undergrad. Meetings? With me? I could have left the next day and never showed up again. That happened frequently at cafes. At best, people gave a week’s notice.
My boss and I didn’t know each other, and there was no time to get to know each other during morning rushes. During the morning rushes, everyone wants their cappuccino pronto. So, all I had time for was to show up, do my part, and storm out to class. But she — the one who woke up at the crack of dawn, managed a revolving door of sort-of-adults, procured supplies, managed shipments, did paperwork, figured out how to fill no-shows that had the “courtesy” to call the night before — always found the time to welcome me politely at 5 am and throughout the day, warmly and thoughtfully teach me everything she knew.
What a contrast to another Montreal-based cafe where I worked one summer. There wasn’t a day I didn’t get yelled at, sometimes for “anglicizing” pronunciations of blueberry muffins but primarily for not unsticking gum from the floor fast enough. Why was there so much gum on that floor, and why did I have to do it? That was the cafe where I learned another life lesson — to study so hard that I never have to do this work again. No one should for too long.
At Second Cup, I was groomed slowly into “executing” the morning rush. I had to watch others do it for weeks before being added to that team. The morning rush was not the time to go to the bathroom, forget which design goes on top of a latte, or mix up day-long versus week-long opened packages of coffee beans. From 5 to 8 am, I was either actively watching others work or tidying up or standing in the back room with my boss counting, smelling, and learning the order of deliveries, and all things coffee (old versus fresh, spoiled versus damaged, packages to keep versus packages to-be-returned, back storage versus front storage, etc.).
One day, my boss pulled me aside and told me she’d like me to come in earlier and help her. Were there earlier hours than mine? Yes! The boss’ hours. The hours when it all comes down to business. The hours you get work done so that people like me can have a job. 9–5 is for those who can, and 5–9 is for those who must. I took her up on her offer and unexpectedly became an apprentice.
I learned about coffee residue in machines, which I can pick up to this day even when the coffee is pretty good. Dirty machines, old coffee beans, re-heated latte milk, foam instead of froth in cappuccino, and the common mistake of using caffeine for a decaf are just a few examples of what might go wrong in any cafe.
The complaints can be instant (out loud so that everyone can hear) or when the customers are heading back home and take the time to walk over, call the Manager, and quietly share their “bad” morning rush experience — that they waited too long, that the coffee was so cold, that we are understaffed or just plain incompetent. Dear customer, thank you. We welcome all comments and will be sure to do better next time. We are so sorry for your discomfort. Sincerely, boss. That was the expression on my boss’ face.
My face sent a different message. Did it look to you like I was doing nothing? I was doing my best, you ungrateful… Well, you get the idea. I would never say that, and I wanted so badly to convert these mental rants into humor, but my English wasn’t good enough back then.
I also wanted to lean on someone’s shoulder, like this older girl who seemed to be a master at rush hour lattes and cappuccinos. I’d imagined she had been through a lot and would understand my growing pains. All I got back from her was a glance saying, “It’s your fault we were so slow. You should learn faster and maybe even consider what you’re doing here in the first place.” Her looks said it all, but one day, she didn’t shy away to make sure I heard her loud and clear. I heard her, not knowing that my kind, quiet, patient boss-turned-mentor also heard her.
That is what I thought when, after I’d had enough, I told my boss I needed to talk to her. She didn’t let me finish and instead organized one-on-one meetings for the whole staff. I wanted to go first, but that girl got called in before me. After she came out of the boss’ nook, she stormed out like she usually did without saying goodbye. I went in second, and there was my boss, patiently waiting for me to sit down. Her calm disposition was painfully out of sync with my racing heartbeat after another unpleasant experience with my work enemy. I sat down, and she smiled and asked me.
“Do you know why I called you in second?” she asked me.
“No,” I answered.
“Because I don’t want her to think I talked to her only because you complained,” she added.
I had to pause to make sure I understood that one. So, if you are re-reading that, I understand. Also, I can stop writing this story because you already know how it ends. It turns out that my boss didn’t hear anything that time when that girl snarked at me. It turns out my boss had been picking up body language between that girl and me for weeks and knew everything long before I finally complained. She coached that other girl and asked her to think about her leadership skills, but made sure that it had everything to do with who that girl was as a person and not just about me.
“You have your own lessons to learn from this,” my boss told me. She believed that while we might not know each other, we must harmonize our personalities at work because things will go wrong, even if we do our best. That complaint box will always have someone’s note inside it, but we must know who we are no matter what someone says.
My boss asked me what I thought about my abilities during the morning rush. Of course, that girl was right about everything, but I didn’t appreciate her approach to dealing with me and still don’t. It ate at all my ESL immigrant girl insecurities, which I came to that cafe to work through.
Ironically, her looks and condescension made me a fighter in those days. But the mentorship of my kind boss made me a winner for life. Maybe my boss was also an ESL, shy immigrant girl once. Maybe, but as a boss, she’d always seemed like a gentle dragon in total control of her firing capabilities.
My boss’s wise and kind words blew a steady, reassuring wind into my 19-year-old sails. She was happy for me when I told her I must focus on my school, knowing she taught me timeless lessons. That job had everything and nothing to do with coffee. Now that I have left my career to pursue writing full-time, I miss and reminisce on the extraordinary bosses I’ve had throughout my life. Like my boss at Second Cup, they were all mentors at heart.
© 2024 Jill Blinick. All Rights Reserved.
