Put a pin on/in it

Going to a coffee shop can feel a bit like spending time in an equally well-aired submarine — from start to finish, every order is being yelled out loud and eagerly acknowledged by the next handler down the workflow that ends somewhere close to lids, stir sticks and sugar replacement packets. Not that it ultimately matters — No Sir! — the only reason why processing your explosive caffeine fix won’t require 2 red keys turned simultaneously counter-clockwise is that even when served at weapons-grade temperatures, fit to sterilize your intestines ‘lips-to-anus’, its recognizable primarily by its decidedly average taste. Still, I picture the ideal “barista” as the suave, bearded guy from the Dos Equis commercial who throws you a ‘You mean, venti?’, with noticeable Latin disdain, when you ask for ‘large’. In reality, this job title likely is not referring to the World’s most interesting Mexican but to the only person at your overpriced corner coffee shop that can reliably operate the big-ass espresso machine, that is after the crew lost the “gebruiksaanwijzing” (Dutch for ‘instruction booklet’) while romanticizing about what’s left of the American dream @ minimum wage. He or she is often just a month out of puberty, has largely unfounded aspirations for earning a PhD in something that’s not marketable but promises a solid work-life balance, just as long as it’s online, considered gluten-free and definitely fair-trade. In one word: GenZ-ish.

Members of such younger demographics, coveted by every marketer not presently on CBD, jump entry-level jobs so often that they rarely encounter any of the following: “Years Svc”. It stands for “Years (of) Service” which is a tiny bit different from Years-in-Service that refers to, for instance, a bridge or a dishwasher, or said coffee machine. I know this because I just received my 25-Years’ Svc pin, for being an employee at a local hospital, big on brand, short(er) on loyalty. The pin was sent by mail, of course, since the official dinner was moved, complete with a somewhat embarrassing note from the hard-working HR Department that they apparently had calculated people’s service years incorrectly; consequently, the award ceremony was promptly rescheduled to an even less convenient date & time, perhaps to proactively de-densify the room to account for any resurgence of another pesky Covid mutant. I know they are trying in earnest and I don’t want to sound even more ungrateful but between pin and ribbon, it’s difficult to decide which one looks cheaper. To be sure, it comes with a laser printed note, that is unaddressed and, with a nod to bygone class, facsimile-signed by the president himself, emphasizing in passing that if I didn’t pick out a ‘gift’ last fall, I should do so now (meaning: ‘Don’t get 2’, we know where you live …). I had, hence know that the link provided transports you seamlessly to a gift-outsourcing site that, completely free of human emotion, works directly with mainland China so that you can pick your cheapo automatic watch directly from the supplier — who knew that child-labor can produce such beautiful knockoffs? If you like, it comes with the institution’s logo so that everybody in your party knows who you owe this otherworldly generosity to. Speaking of going long on retention strategies, if not even ‘full circle’: I also get the announcements when someone on the faculty has died, after say 10, 25 or 40 years of service, courtesy of the IT Department’s efficient ‘all-faculty’ listserv. Those ever so impersonal blasts center around the factual statement citing the loss of yet another ‘giant’ in the field, pulled at random it seems from a carousel of 3 slightly different grief wordings. The whole thing is stamp signed by the dean using a visibly different font type & size just to make it abundantly clear to the younger folks that everybody is replaceable and that consequently, the grief-stricken admin colleagues really couldn’t give a bigger sh*t about putting in another 10 sec to making this note look any classier than it absolutely must.

It’s not that I don’t love the place — I don’t. It’s more like a détente, courtesy of gaining perspective through ‘maturity’, the one that comes with wrinkles, not financial instruments. Let’s face it — all — these large places, in any industry, are pretty much the same, and if you stay long enough, it takes a very special idiot not to realize it. Unless you got the Nobel, an Oscar or equivalent, what remains from your time spent at work are a few, often interchangeable banalities that feign human interest — too long for an epitaph, too short to be meaningful. You want to make a difference ? —yes, it’s a valiant effort to try to have impact beyond the longevity of a tweet or even a TikTok post. But from where I sit, at the end what counts is the time you spend outside the grind, the lives you touch - it’s family and friends, and they don’t get or give pins for ‘Years Svc’.

So, perhaps GenZ already knows something that we didn’t when we started out.

Non-fat latte for “Tom”!?! — Neeexxt …