It was cold outside but here we were in the queue, warm now in the welcoming space of the coffee bar. There were only eight or so people in front of us but already the queue behind was extending out towards the door.
Looking around the place we could see that it was pretty busy. Tables and chairs, sofas and tables, comfy airchairs… all seemed taken. Yet in the low bustle of the place we were sure we’d find a place to sit and sup our drinks.
Time passed. We shuffled forward, peering at the cakes and muffins through the glass cabinet stocked to bursting before us. Inside I felt my stomach stir and my desire for sustenance arose… and I marshaled my will to suppress it.
We shuffled again. Ahead we could see the staff working, almost team-like: one to take the order; another to receive the payment; a third and fourth to fix the beverages.
A smooth system for serving drinks factory-style.
We shuffled into position for ordering.
“One tall hot chocolate with cream and a tall cappuccino please,” said my wife.
The server busily scrawled the order onto to post-it notes, stuck them to her hand, and informed us that Richie would take our payment.
We shuffled along to the payment guy, Richie. He waited patiently for my wife to repeat her order, somewhat odd it seemed to me given how close she was. As I mused over the reasons why the first server didn’t simply pass her post-its to Richie my wife passed over her gift card as payment. The card was swiped, payment accepted.
We shuffled along to the delivery station, the small chest-height table around which several other mendicants waited in silence. I watched as the two chaps working the coffee machines and other gubbins fumbled around in over-stressed haste. Within seconds it became clear that they were some four or five orders behind schedule.
My eyes drifted once again around the room, seeking a space for both my wife and myself in which to sit and sup and chat. Many tables were in use, some by avid coffee-drinkers busy in conversation. Others were being populated by eager and nervous persons clearly awaiting delivery of their beverages from companions further back in the queue; each looked away as my eyes scanned over them and the seats besides them, stuffed with shopping backs to mark the territory taken.
Back at the delivery station the other customers had all changed, now with us as the next in line. My wife’s chocolate arrived, my own cappuccino still frothing in the milk jug. Uneasily she set off out into the room to find a place for us.
I shuffled my feet as I waited, tracking the movement of my wife as she slowly circuited the room. Eventually my drink was delivered, a steaming mug of hot coffee and frothing milk not quite sloshing over as it was unceremoniously plonked before me, “One tall cappuccino!”
The guy next to me, oblivious to my own order, looked straight at the server as he raised two fingers, victory-V: “TWO tall cappuccinos?!”
I picked up my mug, noting the hostile frown from my neighbour as he realised his mistake. Turning back into the room I noticed my wife, having received a shaking head from another seated and non-drinking customer, walking back to me.
“There’s no place to sit,” she informed me.
I set out to tour the place, noting the many empty seats clearly marked, through stuff and body language, as taken. Then, as we passed a woman discussing with her six year old daughter reasons why the girl should wear her coat outside, I spotted two seats on a table where two young women were talking. Asking permission to claim the unused chairs, we took our places.
Nervously, I supped my coffee.
The Non-Communal Community
Sitting in that Starbucks (and, folks, it didn’t have to be a Starbucks for this to happen) with my wife I felt something that, frankly, stunned me.
I felt isolated. I felt unwanted. I felt alone… until my wife’s hand found mine, my eyes found hers and we connected.
That made me think.
When I was growing up, so 25 years ago perhaps, coffee shops were rare but they were community places. Like pubs and restaurants, the coffee shop was the place where people went with friends or family to share a drink and talk. They were communal spaces in which the smiling and genuine staff would converse and engage with the generally relaxed visitors. Here in 2011 the coffee shop has changed.
In an environment where people are treated as factory-line animals, made to wait in turn for their place in the semi-automated system, those same people are devalued.
As they experience the self-accepted isolation of only conversing with the people they entered with, and then only in the hushed tones of the queue conversation, they are dehumanised.
As they have to challenge the territorial claims of those customers too selfish to wait until they have a drink to take a seat, they are forced into a hostile and unfriendly sense of competition.
Cramped up against their neighbours, forced to tune out the conversations around them lest they be accused of eavesdropping, these are human beings who are experiencing the subtle yet powerful force of a world that has little place for their inner emotions and needs.
Humans are social.
We humans of the 21st century are as much a social being as those humans who we can imagine sitting around the camp fire, huddled for warmth in the cave or forest, and sharing the stories of our days.
Today our camp fire might be the heat from the cappuccino and our cave might be the Starbucks. We are re-enacting the same ritual of story and sharing… but we are being limited by our desire for efficiency.
There is, I am afraid to tell you, little value in making ritual efficient.
We are not ‘mere animals’.
Animals we might be… but ‘mere’ does not apply to human beings.
There is nothing ‘mere’ about your partner, your child or you. You are more than ‘mere’.
Every one of you who crowds around the communal place, and huddles from the cold with your hot drink and slice of food, is a human being with a complex web of emotion, imagination and intention to share. Your story is part of my story, even if we are simply passing strangers at the camp fire.
Each of us needs to belong. All have their story to share. Ask Maslow if you don’t believe me – go on, Google him.
Where, oh where, is the belonging at Starbucks?
Sure, you just want a coffee. You want to move on to your busy, efficient day.
But you still need to belong.
Will you stop and share?
Last week I was talking to the acclaimed teacher and educator, Sue Phillips, about the first steps in making Religious Education meaningful. We used words like ‘belonging’ and ‘sharing’ and ‘squishing bits inside’. As I talked to her I realised that in so much of our lives there is rarely time to gather around the communal ‘fire’ and share our stories.
As I sat in Starbucks a part of me yearned to have the courage to turn to the two young women next to me and involve them in the conversation my wife and I were sharing. Despite being strangers on the road, it would have been interesting to hear their stories. Of course, they would have likely labelled me ‘pervert’ and ‘odd’ and ‘scary’ had I but turned to engage with them.
Looking around the room, noting the crumpled flyer bearing some petition to speak up against religion, I could imagine the far more exciting conversations that might have been shared. Would that atheist not have relished the chance to engage the group in dialogue about their convictions? Would it not have been exciting to hear his or her ideas?
Next time you are in Starbucks, or any similar place, will you do be a favor? Will you look out for me?
If you see, huddled around a mug of steaming coffee, a bemused looking and bearded chap in his forties, perhaps alone, will you consider saying “Hello”?
Are you prepared to share your story?
If so, I’d love to listen to you.
I think the first thing that comes out of this is how great you and your wife are together, and how much you register each others feelings and needs.
I think that there are so many things that go into the explanation of your observations, its difficult to get any coherent comment together. However aside from the inevitable reflection of the americanisation of the capitalist approach to our society, I think what you have observed is unfortunately an almost natural evolution of our hugely varied and expansive lives. We have been pushed and prodded to inclusivity and multicultural behaviours that many fear to have a controversial thought about another person; not everyone is as social adaptable as you mate 😀
As a consequence not only have we begun to parcel or fence off certain areas of our social lives, making them small and easily manageable, inevitably such areas become fenced becoming pseudo communities within themselves. I think the break up of large family groups and the wider dispersal of those group members haven’t made the country more integrated, but less. Whereas now you probably keep in touch with a handful of friends, family and a few neighbours, pre-WW2 you would have lived near a vast extended family of several generations, would have depended on your non-familial neighbours and known their close family as well. These days we are surrounded by people and yet increasingly isolated.
I find your comments quite challenging; while I am not the type who would put off or refuse someone to sit at the same table (without very good reason) I am terribly unsocialable, both emotionally and socially incompetant. I recently went to a party at a friends house on my own – I felt terrible, almost pariah like despite the fact that there was nothing wrong at all with the party or its members. I am just naturally rubbish in such situations. So technically, what you have described should almost be a haven for me; yet I can fully appreciate and empathise with how you feel.
I couldn’t agree more.
The failing social interactions of families, friends and strangers is certainly a root to many cultural failings in 2011. A slow insidious shift to isolation from not only others but ourselves.
Only through those meetings around the campfire do we share and learn real life skills. Not computer skills, or work skills, but the skills that form communities, binding them with shared behaviours, morals and respect.
Without those same interactions many are beginning to feel alone even in the company of friends, not sharing as much of themselves as they might have done, which would allow them to relax more, without the need for alcohol etc. The myriad of socio-psychological illnesses and disabilities and inadequacies stemming from this lack of real contact is quite shocking.
In 2011 there are very few families left by the definition of ‘family’ that existed only 20 or so years ago. I myself have experienced a very slow development of social skills making progress difficult for me and even now I commonly feel as if I do not know me.
So next time I’m on a bus / train / in a cafe / coffee shop. I’ll hopefully be reminded of the ‘Strabucks Tale’ and turn, and say ‘Hello’. Maybe the other will be as open as I and instead of sharing that time / journey in solitary silence we both might share and grow a little larger in spirit.
Thanks
There is nothing as lonely as being alone in a crowd :).
If any of you watched the series ‘Rev’ the most painful episode for all clergy to watch, and the one most openly described as being very painful by all the clergy I know, was the episode in which the Vicar stood in a bar looking for companionship in utterly splendid isolation. This wasn’t the companionship of a wife (he had one) but the companiosnhip of friends with whom to socialise outside of the parish situation. being the Vicar is incredibly isolating for people who are naturally very sociable by definition of needing to look out for such things as those who wish to latch on to the Vicar as their ‘special friend’ or similar. Parish politics are simply splendid!!
However, I am guilty of using the ‘coffee’ outlet for a bit of down time just becaus I know that I can get the chance to drink it in peace without an interruption – especially if I’ve had a horribly busy day. or a particularly emotionally intensive pastoral visit (such as a funeral prep visit).
I will certainly be rethinking my decision there in the light of this article.
But do have a thought for the Vicars you know and give them a friendly nod. we’re not a bad bunch really! 🙂
Do I hear a little of Daniel Pink in your blog. As he would say we have seen human thinking dominated by the left hemisphere in recent times. Logic and analysis rule our lives and there is little room left for emotion or connection. Happily there is increasing recognition, inspired by the likes of Pink, that humans are emotional creatures with a need for the nourishment of connection and community.
Thankfully there have always been people like yourself Che who have recognised that need and kept the sense of community alive. Many times we have spoken about the connecting potency of stories and their ability to influence and persuade. Let us hope that those of us who care are able to encourage a sense of community to revive and flourishaaq