Accompanying Songs:
• Dern Kala by Khruangbin
• Laughter Is The Best Medicine by Cass McCombs
A love letter to the world of coffee.
“Woah, that’s a lot of orange,” remarked the man beside me on his laptop, cheating a glimpse at mine inside of Greater Goods Coffee in east Austin.
I had pulled up my Google calendar, a kaleidoscopic array of carefully color-coded entries for social plans, release dates and work meetings.
Blue was my designated color for work, because blue is steady, committed, and most times, solemn. Salmon for release dates, because salmon feels to me like joyful anticipation. And finally, orange for social plans, because no other color comprises as much vitality and excitement.
“Ah, yeah,” I answered awkwardly, in light shock someone was exploiting my chaotic color wheel to start a conversation with me.
“A bit of an eyesore, huh,” I said studying it, as if taking a glimpse for the first time like he was.
“What do you do?” Mystery Man asked. My all-time favorite get-to-know-you question.
I improvised some quick hodgepodge about “consulting” and “project support” and “expert network firm”, knowing the job I had was uncommon and explaining it properly would snag fifteen minutes of his time that he didn’t agree to be snagged. However, he did start this conversation remarking at all the orange, you know.
In retrospect, I wish he would have asked what I was there working on, so I could tell him I was there to write. “What do you do?” can be a confining question, where the answer often is your means of survival, how you spend most of your time throughout the week—presumably, one’s job. In reality, we do much more than sit in front of laptops or teach children or design buildings or accompany store registers, but our hobbies don’t pay the rent, nor do they generally do well answering that question.
In the 10 minutes that we chatted, I learned that Mystery Man moved to the US from Russia in 1991, that he’s not a spy, that he works in the VR space producing educational videos for medical students, that his name was Nik, and that he had a friend meeting him there soon. I should have asked him what his least favorite color was, and if it was orange. After his friend arrived, we exchanged “nice to meet you’s” and a fist bump, and I dove back into deep focus mode.
Coffee shops are my favorite “third place”, a term coined in the 1980s by sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe any physical location other than work or home, where conversation with friends and strangers is among the primary reasons to visit. These interactions happen all the time in third places.
My interaction with Nik was memorable and significant in how fleeting and insignificant it was. Though we roam in the same city, we may never see each other again and yet, the chance is there to pick up right where we left, on all that orange.
~
In June of 2019, I took on my very first job out of college as a barista. The previous summer, I had met a fellow named Jarrett who worked at a local shop called Craftwork Coffee in Fort Worth, Texas, who mentioned when I was visiting family that they were opening a coffee shop and coworking space in Austin, a few miles north of the house where I was living, and were looking for eager folks to help launch the shop.
Coffee has a funny, radical way of bringing people together. In a cafe, there is rhythm found in routine and familiarity found in regularity. Make someone 100 drinks, and you’ll know much about their spirit; where they put their hope, and where they source their optimism; what books have changed their life; where they draw their strength, and what they’re working on; their original birthplace, their full name, and their children’s names. The list goes on.
Information is shared over time, prompted by curiosity, but often prompted simply by the willingness to share. Brick walls built by formality and internal, mechanized scripts are broken. What begins as business blossoms into kinship and benevolence. Regulars bring homemade cookies, Christmas cards, and handwritten letters from their 6-year-old sons. Newcomers turn into family. Life is shared.
I applied to Craftwork because I experienced this phenomenon as a regular in their Fort Worth shop on Magnolia Avenue, and when Jarrett mentioned the launch of a shop a few miles north from me at home in Austin, I leapt at the opportunity.
What I found in a job that I thought might last a few months were 21 of the best months of my life.
~
First, let me set the scene.
Back in 2015, my first year at The University of Texas at Austin was defined by isolation and loneliness. Most nights were spent in my freshman dorm room playing guitar, distracting myself with Netflix or YouTube, and staring at the wall.
I was riddled with routine, guided solely by an outstanding academic performance. Wake up, make it to class, take notes like hell, get juiced on coffee, go down YouTube rabbit holes to fill time, accept nothing but perfection, and mostly, wonder what all the hype surrounding the college experience was about.
I took the hardest class of my academic career that spring semester. It was a first-year course called Green Cities, taught by a brilliant man named Dr. Young, a behemoth in the world of sustainability who used a prehistoric Nokia block as a phone and publicly berated any student who was a minute late. Every student revered Dr. Young.
Every Friday, we were expected to hash out a 10+ page paper summarizing what we had learned in our assigned readings, which ranged from 100-250+ pages of technical writing about the relationship between urban cities and the natural environment. The readings were fascinating at times, of course, but the papers destroyed me.
As our teaching assistant Jolene had said at our last reading discussion, “After this course, every other course to follow will feel like a piece of cake.” And she was right.
It was not uncommon to plant myself in the 24/7 quiet study lounges inside my dorm until three or four in the morning, agonizing over every word of my Friday paper. In pouring my entire soul into this course, I had neglected to develop any semblance of a social life. I left freshman year lonely, defeated, and seriously evaluating options to transfer elsewhere.
The summer I went home to Fort Worth following my first year, I was met with unmerited love, interest and investment from the staff at Craftwork on Magnolia, the shop I frequented when I wanted to knock out summer school assignments, edit photos, journal, or mindlessly scour the web.
The baristas there—Emma, Jesse, George, Libby, Matt, and Jarrett, to name a few—went out of their way daily, halting their busy workflows, to offer me their full attention, to ask meaningful questions and to care deeply about my responses. What a special thing it is to dismantle the procedural nature of a business transaction, recognizing a patron as a real, conscious human being rather than a walking bag of money.
I had come home wilted and shattered, and in some strange, beautiful way, I was built back up by my time with those people by the end of the summer. August came around and I decided to give UT one last shot with newfound confidence. And thank the heavens above, my second year was like night and day. I met several of my best friends that year, found my place on campus, and experienced a true 180 from the despondent college experience I had come to know intimately.
Without the sense of belonging and the ability to show up as myself, fractured, within those walls on Magnolia, I’m not positive I would have been encouraged in the same way to give it another go. To Emma, Jesse, George, Libby, Matt and Jarrett, I am so grateful for each of you and how you received me that summer. Witnessing you serve and treasure your community in your own masterful ways was a major inspiration that catapulted me into yearning to do the same.
Few places function as a vessel for cultivating communities better than a cafe. Craftwork on Magnolia is a testament.
In light of my college experience, this was something I knew I wanted to be a part of: bringing people out of isolation, and into a sense of belonging. Building others back up through drinks and questions. My suffering made way for my purpose.
My time working in coffee began by summoning the courage to make a friend, and that courage translated into a spellbinding series of relationships. Drinks and questions undoubtedly make the world better.
Enter: Craftwork at the Domain.
~
Built on the ground level of a luxury apartment complex, Craftwork at the Domain was picturesque. In the mornings, gigantic window panes gave way to bountiful natural light flooding the cafe, supported in the evenings by the vast orange glow of clustered lamps hanging overhead. Lining the perimeter of the walls were sizable wood tables, an abundance of leg room and power outlets underneath. Behind the bar was a giant, beautifully self-indulgent golden wall with the Craftwork logo, along with our menu etched into wood panels and an assortment of shelves holding mugs, plates, and coffee bags.
There was a sacred, pulsing magic to be found in that space. Over that year and a half working in the shop, I had hundreds of wonderful conversations with all kinds of brilliant people: designers, writers, engineers, scientists, musicians, actors, businessmen, poets, retirees, influencers, e-sports managers, new parents, and seemingly any other kind of person you can imagine.
A cafe is a window into the world, reflecting all of the joy and worry and unprocessed emotion felt towards the state of things. Conversations at the bar ranged from artificial intelligence to the presidential election, from finding the right partner to being a good parent, from writing songs to experiencing paralyzing loneliness. Kindling connection seems to come easier with a cup of coffee and a golden wall.
So many come to mind when I think of the very best people who frequented the shop—people that restored the instinct in me that most people are good, an instinct I had lost before then somewhere along the way.
I think about David, a UX designer who spent his full workday in the shop while his two boys were at elementary school down the street. Always the first customer in the morning, he would set up his laptop, order a cup of joe (no room) with a grin, and chat with us until the next customer appeared. Having both grown up in evangelical spaces, we wrestled with similar questions about the intersection between politics and God and faith and the church and all the difficult, messy ambiguity found within it. Having David around to work through those questions and hear his perspective as someone nearly a decade older, even at 7:15am in the early morning, was properly cathartic.
I consider Brenda, a brilliant professor and researcher at UT Austin who was deeply interested in speaking with all of us, nearly to a suspicious degree. A natural mentor, she sought out our strengths and encouraged us any chance she had. If it was a slow day, it wasn’t uncommon for Brenda to spend 45 minutes at the bar asking us about our upbringings, worldviews, and aspirations. She would usher us into thought experiments for fun, which I found to be a blast. Being paid hourly to chat with a professor about the implications of machine learning is dream job territory for me. My favorite thing about Brenda was her kindness and simultaneous commitment to the truth, and more specifically, her willingness to push back on our opinions about the world or about ourselves that weren’t grounded in honesty. Brenda was refreshing.
There was Andres, who I learned within minutes was as big of an enthusiast for John Mayer’s guitar playing as I was, joining me in spelunking down every rabbit hole related to his career and discography. Those were the most effortless thirty minutes I can remember behind bar. After that day, we met up to play music, grabbed beers every so often, and eventually bought tickets to a Mayer show together two years later. To meet Andres was to feel understood.
There was also Errol, an older fellow with a personal coffee mug for his drip coffee and an obsession for writing extravagant Yelp reviews tracking his escapades around town, declaring “Ciaooo!” as he waved with his back turned as he walked out. He rated us 5-stars.
Within the Craftwork lore, there was no shortage of regular faces. Among the other notable names, there was also drip coffee Joel who worked for Microsoft; soft-spoken Golden Yunnan tea Nick; vanilla latte Haley with her gentle early morning chats; bookish Wes who ordered an espresso without fail (“a Wespresso,” we’d call it); private equity Carl who was kind, outspoken and often difficult; fitness instructor Julia who brought warmth and energy; sweet Adam from IBM who sauntered in each afternoon with a note card full of song recommendations for us; therapist Margarita who left us feeling brand new; iced mocha John who always brought a fresh conspiracy theory ready to present; “two papas, egg and cheese tacos with three cold brews, no ice and a shot” guy Ben.
Among the most extraordinary interactions in the shop, I recall Stephen, who is one of my favorite people I have ever met. The day Stephen walked in, I was working alongside two others at the tail end of a difficult Sunday afternoon shift, and morale was low.
“Hi, you guys!” he exclaimed as he glided towards the bar, beaming ear-to-ear over who knows what. “Wow, this place is beautiful!”
While we were wallowing in our lethargy that afternoon over the day’s troubles, within seconds our energy levels lifted because unfortunately, Stephen’s energy was contagious.
“Can I get, hmm...” he trailed off, peering at the wood panel menu for a minute.
“Two quadruple-shot iced vanilla lattes? ... Oh my goodness, that sounds so wonderful,” he asserted, grin intact.
“Of course,” we said routinely, and we were on it.
“These are not both for me by the way,” he giggled. “The other one is for my fiancée, I promise.”
Oh?
Naturally, I asked him about his fiancée, and he mentioned they met on Bumble.
Oh?
Mind you, this interaction took place in the late summer of 2019, pre-COVID, when many held a certain stigma and skepticism about dating apps. And thus, as the three of us behind bar were single and desperate for juicy, vicarious romance, this dating app success story piqued our interest.
For the next 45 minutes, we orchestrated a hearty Q&A about the origins of Stephen and his fiancée, who we learned was named Mariah. The session began by asking what they were each looking for in a partner.
“I was looking for someone who was funny, and kind, and intelligent,” he listed off.
“Loving Star Wars was an essential nice-to-have. And what’s great is,” Stephen’s eyes widened, “Mariah loves Star Wars.”
He bowed at us with outstretched praying hands, as if publicly expressing his gratitude to God, fate and the universe above at once for a Star Wars-loving life partner. We all laughed.
Stephen is the kind of person that gives you the feeling that you share a 10+ year history together after only 10 minutes spent chatting. As if lifelong friends with each of us, he openly dove into the story of his first date with Mariah, their shared interests and values, and the qualities they found attractive about each other. He even mentioned they were both people of faith, in the most tender and unassuming way.
Every sentence of his seemed to alternate between poignant and hilarious, and somehow, every word dripped with sincerity.
Stephen left a great impression on me, primarily because I think he is the spitting image of who I’d like to be when I’m older. Open, honest, available, and kind to all. Contagiously optimistic. And hopefully, making strangers laugh.
It is worth mentioning that he reciprocated just as genuine an interest in us as well. He inquired about our own journeys, who we were and where we grew up, and how we landed at Craftwork. In the following months, he continued to follow up and check in about those same things, recalling details just as you shared them. He remembered our names and belly-laughed at our jokes. Had he not held a senior-level position at his company, he would have been a great addition to the team.
Almost an hour flew by, and he noted he should best be going to deliver Mariah’s iced vanilla latte. He floated out the door and we waved goodbye to who felt like a presence we always had, a friend who never left; an indispensable addition to the lifeblood of the shop.
I want to acknowledge that I’m hesitant to present every facet of working in coffee as wholly joyful, fun, or enviable. Nearly every day is certain to include a few arduous or unremarkable interactions, and the low pay, unceasing upkeep of a shop, and daily small talk with strangers can grow to become tiresome or monotonous work if that isn’t your thing. During the pandemic especially, the shimmer of the cafe dulled in noticeable ways thanks to the pivot to exclusively online takeout orders and minimal customer interaction.
I mention this all to say that this reality only underscores how exceptional it is when someone, like Stephen, subverts those brief, routinely automatic dialogues in service that tend to be the norm. The service industry can feel thankless for such a large majority of the time that it feels like whiplash when someone stops for a minute to see you.
After our encounter with Stephen, I recall the three of us behind bar laughing about how we almost wanted to cry. Who was this gem of a man who decided to give us this much of himself on an ordinary Sunday?
We felt indebted.
Though I left Craftwork about two years ago upon writing this, I recently had coffee with him and heard about his wedding, how much he loves marriage with Mariah, and every plot hole in Avatar: The Way of Water, of which, he pointed out, there are many. And of course, he asked me many questions about what has happened in my world since our last time together. It was the best time.
The bar was a space founded on questions, curiosity and attention. I am stunned at the number of folks in passing who have remarked that it had been ages since someone had asked how their day was and also meant it. And yet, this is the simple question that opens the door to a relationship past the transaction, the question that paves the way to belonging. The purpose of the third place.
~
The experience of working in coffee is unlike anything else. It is the early morning drives beating the sunrise to set up for the day. It is the unnoticed scene change from a quiet, empty room to a bustling cafe filled by the sounds of hissing espresso machinery, clinking glasses, and the steady thrum of conversation. It is hearing the same Khruangbin songs on the speakers, singing along to the intoxicating guitar melodies with your companion behind bar while you crank out cappuccinos. Having intermittent conversation between rushes about therapy, home and childhood, or the rhyme structure of a Phoebe Bridgers song. Betting money on what you think your kookiest regular will say that day.
Speaking of which—once, there was a guy who lived upstairs named Matt, who told us that at his previous residence, he “invented a religion” and created a shrine in his basement so he could file it as a “place of worship” and avoid paying property taxes. Considering how many vulnerable admissions like this were offered over my tenure in coffee, especially from Matt, I am still contemplating a career in clinical therapy.
I think back to my first few weeks, starry-eyed, when the words “dirty chai with almond” were gibberish and the idea of milk coming out of almonds was incomprehensible.
It wasn’t long before little recurrences became meaningful rituals. Staff hangs, coworking space happy hours, fist bumps and hugs from your favorite regulars, the New York Times Mini Crossword, visits from friends and family, and the knowledge that you will see the same faces each day were spokes on the wheel of my excitement for waking up each morning.
During the first 90 days the shop was open, working or not, I visited every day. A beloved ritual that summer.
Found in my journal from December 13, 2019: “Here I am again at Craftwork [on my day off] writing this. I just talked to the guy who works at IBM who watches weird YouTube videos and is currently moving places. He always gets a cappuccino. We just talked about Nathan For You.
“I love this community so much. I love walking into a place that is familiar and comfortable. We were made for investment, in places and in the people who make those places. It is incredibly rewarding to invest my energy into people. Being known is all a human really needs.”
Jarrett and Emily became two of my closest friends because of our time together. We did the math one day, and found out that we had each spent upwards of 800 hours behind bar with one another—slinging ‘spro, surviving morning and afternoon rushs, and chatting in between. Through and through, a blood bond.
As much core purpose as there was in taking interest in those who visited the shop, our team found it to be just as vital to take interest in one another. Not for “team-building”, or “synergy”, or some other hokey, corporate reason, but because we were enamored by the mission of bringing others into a sense of community from day one, and that began with us.
Jarrett is a long lost brother to me. Kind, curious, and experience-driven, he was the best person to meet first in the vast coffee world. He initially moved to Austin to lead the launch of the shop, but having traveled much of the globe by this point, he and I frequently exchanged travel stories on our shifts together.
In the first few weeks, he afforded an abundance of patience and generosity to those of us learning the ropes who were not baristas beforehand (nearly all of us). He spearheaded the majority of our staff hangs outside of work, which proved invaluable to the tight team culture of the shop.
Jarrett may also be the most naturally inquisitive person I have ever met. I marveled daily at how wide, specific, and distinct his questions could be—questions that scratched a certain conversational itch, designed for tilling soil on new ground. It was a joy to watch how quick he could win someone over.
A leader by nature, he was also impeccable at handling any situation thrown our way. Lightbulb out? Espresso tastes suspiciously shoddy? Irrationally angry customer? Jerry’s on it.
In one fabled episode that now comes close to legend, one woman duped us for weeks on end. Her strategy:
Walk into the shop asking for a cappuccino
Taste it in front of us, and criticize a very specific part of it (too much foam, not enough foam, espresso is off, etc.)
Ask for us to remake it, to which we would oblige
Walk out with two cappuccinos for the price of one
But Jarrett caught on. After weeks of fleecing the shop, Jarrett politely confronted her in private and asked her to put an end to her master plan.
Unfortunately, she went bananas. A scene was caused, fingers were pointed, and an angry Google review was left after storming out.
Her legendary Google review goes as such, unedited: “Sorry, I put 1 star, because I can’t put 0 stars. Not only you have ridiculous prices, but you treat customers with disrespect, starting with Jerry the manager. You urgently need a class on how to treat customers. There are plenty of places for excellent coffee in the Domain, so no need to beg you for decent service and respect.”
Becky may have deprived us of some revenue and scared our clientele out of the shop, but she forever gave us “Jerry the Manager.” Naturally, when he was accepted into the University of Texas at Austin later that year, I immediately texted him, “Jerry the Manager, you urgently need a class.”
Jarrett’s approach to life, founded on inquiry, openness, and vigor, remains infectious. Getting to know Jarrett was learning how to say yes.
Likewise, Emily is a diamond in the rough.
After I graduated college, I thought there was a real chance I might never meet someone again that I could call a best friend. But after an incredible first conversation in the shop, which ranged from songwriting to music production to mental health, I was reassured by the possibility.
These conversations continued in the shop in the months to follow, accompanied by a barrage of insiders and longer dialogues about art, childhood, and our near-identical faith journeys. We clicked instantly, and it was a bit of a shock to meet someone who so quickly felt like home.
Emily and I have sat with each other in and through a large range of emotions. When she moved into her first apartment, left her job teaching music to high schoolers, and released her first song after graduating, we absorbed the highs and lows of those feelings together. When I moved out of my college house with eight roommates and into my 1-bed apartment, endured difficult conversations with close friends, and had an awful Thanksgiving that fall, we did just the same.
Like Jarrett, Emily asks questions that unlock parts of you that you weren’t cognizant of, and listens to you only the way a great songwriter can: with an observant, compassionate ear.
We had significant overlap in our shared early-20s crises—where will we work after Craftwork, and is working in the coffee world our future? How do we handle the crushing weight of familial expectations? How do we define our sense of faith when it is so tangled up? What does it look like to lean into change? How do these questions feed into our art and creative process?
We cultivated fertile ground for solving these crucial questions, striving for fluency in our emotions through the tumult of young adulthood. Undoubtedly, we are better friends and better humans because of it.
That December for our team’s Christmas party, we hosted a Secret Santa exchange at the shop after we closed one night. I had Haley, an exceptionally talented actress on staff, so I wrote her a screenplay charting a day in the life at Craftwork, featuring a guest appearance from Santa Errol, who brought us presents, purchased drip coffee to be poured into his personal mug, and waved with his back turned as he sang, “Ciaooo!”
Emily had me. She decided to secretly ask everybody on staff, as well as our prized regulars and a few mutual friends outside of work, to film a video of themselves sharing their favorite thing about me, so that she could make a compilation. And this, I tell you, is one of the most Emily things Emily has done.
The whole team hovered around me as we watched it on her laptop, no context provided. As I slowly pieced together what this video was, spotting familiar face after familiar face offering tender affirmations, my eyes welled up. When I saw Stephen and Mariah’s faces on the screen, rivers flowed down my face.
“Hey Michael,” Stephen spoke in his warm, Stephen way as Mariah smiled and waved.
“We just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas, and we wanted to let you know that you are such a bright spot in everyone’s lives, and we wanted to thank you for being a part of ours.”
The video faded to black and I looked at Emily, my face flushed the shade of strawberries. In spite of the tears, I was grinning big as ever, infinitely indebted to know someone who found it critical to remind me how special I was to them, a reminder accomplished in the most special way. That video remains one of the kindest gestures I’ve ever received.
I gave her a hug, which prompted a group hug and a series of “I love you guys” thrown around the room.
I don’t know who I would be without Emily.
~
Jarrett, Emily and I have been best pals since the launch of Craftwork Domain. We have shared many days hiking, swimming, sitting in parks, grabbing drinks, and soaking up each other’s company for hours at a time, as if we were still behind bar, slinging ‘spro.
Since then, the three of us have departed from the shop—first Jarrett, then Emily, and then me. In the fall of 2021, the shop was sold and transferred ownership, just two years after launching. Through that period of mourning and beyond, we have stayed close.
Jarrett is moving to Denver soon, and this naturally has me reflecting on our time together. It has been a rapid four years since he moved to Austin and it has felt like no time at all. Hopefully that is because, as they say, there is no time like the present.
Greater Goods, the coffee shop I wrote the majority of this essay inside of, is also soon to transfer ownership soon. I’m grateful for the role it has served as a place for recharging, creating, and finding pockets of serendipity.
As of late, the sweeping changes, big and small, are a reminder of the impermanence of every good thing in my life. Indeed, there is no time except the present. I’m learning to look up every once in a while.
~
Enjoying the community of a cafe as a patron is one pleasure, but watching the community form as a barista is entirely another. To the regulars who learned my name and willingly broke the transaction barrier, I’m so grateful for you, and the world needs more of you. You all make the world go around with your kindness. I promise to keep the warm flame of generosity you were to me burning for others working in coffee and beyond. Cheers for twenty-one wonderful months.
To those I worked alongside and now live life alongside—Jarrett, Emily, Mae, Christian, Mary Margaret, Miranda, Sierra, Haley, Edward, Cooper, Fiona and Nicole, I love all of you and you deserve to have your names etched among the stars and immortalized for the impact you have had on me. You made a workplace a sanctuary.
On my last day, I said farewell to a long-time regular named Anna, who immigrated to America from Ukraine five and a half years prior. I thanked her for being so wonderful to know over the last year. She replied, “Thank you for making me feel at home.”
And so, I was a wreck.
Leaving the shop, I walked out the glass doors for the last time, strolled down the street to my car, and wept the whole way home.