Maggies speaks on Empowerment

Favorite drink: It used to be a cappuccino. And now I almost exclusively drink filter coffee. I make myself a Chemex every morning at home. Espresso drinks feel like more of a treat than an everyday thing.

Favorite album to play at work: I really enjoy music, but I am not super into music, and I always worked with baristas who were. At my shop in Colorado, one of my business partners was super into music, and he would get judgy about the music I would play. He would send me passive aggressive emails about how I should play better music. I have a little bit of fear about playing the wrong music in a café, so usually I just let whoever else is on shift pick the music.

“I have been working in coffee 11 years this month. I had gotten a design degree at the end of 2007. I tried to get a job in interior design in 2008 at the beginning of the recession, and I couldn’t get one. I was kind of desperate for a job and I while I was handing resumes out around town, I stopped for a coffee at one of my favorite shops. I had hung out there a lot doing work and I would overhear people coming in wanting to drop off resumes, asking if they were hiring, and they would always say that they were not. It was a really amazing group of the cutest, most adorable all female baristas. So when I stopped in for coffee that day and the barista asked that I was doing, I said ‘oh I am handing out resumes, trying to get a job.’ And she said ‘well do you know that we are hiring?’- I had no idea. I wasn’t planning on trying to apply there because I didn’t have previous coffee experience. She vouched for me and in my interview with the owner, who was really reticent to hire me because of my lack of experience, I said ‘Give me a chance- give me a two week trial and if I don’t work, if I am not a good fit, I will leave. No hard feelings. But just give me a chance because I know that I can do this.’ And she agreed to a month trial. So it worked- I ended up becoming her assistant manager and buying her out when she left.

I was a barista for two years there. She was the managing owner and at some point, her and her husband decided to move away. I had become her right-hand person- I helped make things run- and she asked me if I wanted to buy her out. I thought about it for the next three weeks while I was on a trip to Argentina- I left for that trip right after she made me the offer. And I ended up deciding that that was the next step.  I was at a place where I was ready for something different. I had two bachelors degrees, I had been out of college for 5 years, I didn’t know what I was doing with my life- I had all kinds of personal crises around it- and it felt like a really amazing next step. To be able to buy in, run the shop, and learn what it’s like to run a business.

There were three other business partners, but I was the only working owner. I did all operations, I worked shifts, and tried to advise on bigger picture business decisions. But two of the original owners were very resistant to change. They didn’t want the business to be anything other than this funky little café that they saw and knew years ago. And I really wanted to grow the business, make it go, try to maximize it. But they just didn’t want to change. I think they loved the idea of the coffee house as a place where they could show up and just go behind the bar and make themselves drinks whenever they wanted. It was a nice luxury for them that they didn’t want to let go of control over, or the dream of what they fell in love with originally. But I wanted to move it forward and make it really successful. I wanted to help it realize all its potential. We did all our own baked goods, we had a good food menu with salads and sandwiches and soups- we had so much potential. We had an amazing ethos, but it was also hard to make money sourcing all these high quality ingredients, so I wanted to maximize on that and look at other ways to bring in revenue and build on the community we had already created, like after-hours supper clubs. They weren’t totally opposed to the ideas, but I also definitely didn’t get any support. It felt like I was banging my head against the wall. So after two years of that, and making very little money, I was like ‘what am I doing with my life, why am I doing this?? As much as I love the café, I am torturing myself. Where is the benefit to me here?’

I sold my share and moved to Portland. I knew I wanted to stay in coffee, and I was ready to live somewhere other than Colorado. I didn’t have a job when I moved here, so I did a ton of networking and volunteer events in order to make connections. I applied for a job as a barista at a local coffee shop, and had what I thought was a great interview, but then I never heard back from them! Later on though I ended up speaking with them, and they told me they didn’t hire me because they thought I was over qualified.

I ended up eventually getting a job at another local Portland roaster, to work their farmer’s market booth. Right after they hired me they needed emergency coverage at a new café they had just opened up, and they asked me to step in and help out. I covered a closing shift for them with almost no training. I did a good close, left the place spotless as you do, and the next day they said ‘um, so when can you work more barista shifts?’ I ended up picking up many more barista shifts for them, but they only had part time hours, so I was still applying elsewhere. I finally heard back from that first roasting company where I applied because they were hiring for a manager, and they wanted me to apply. I had an interview with the ownership and other managers, and I got offered the job.

Managing felt like something I knew how to do, it was totally in my wheelhouse, I was excited about having a new shop, and I was excited about working for a fairly well-established roasting company in Portland. I had just come from a totally tiny, independent café, so this felt like a good place to land and really get connected into the Portland scene. I met really amazing people- the baristas that I worked with had already been hired, which was interesting, to not hire my own team- but everyone was really great. The rest of the management team was also really amazing. It felt like a really incredible crew of people working collaboratively. That was my initial foray into the business. But the café was still being built out. I was hired in May and we didn’t open until the beginning of August.

I was hired on and had a bunch of time to get to know the business and to do training. My next project was to help write a Café Operations manual. There was nothing in place at the time, we were about to open a new café, and I had just done that at my shop in Colorado, so I was excited to work with the office manager to create this manual. It felt like something I could take some ownership over, I felt like ‘ok, I can really be super effective.’ I came in with some steam.

However, once the café was open for a couple of months and it wasn’t making as much money as they wanted it to make from day one, I started to get the pressure. I was undermined by ownership- one of the owners in particular would come in and tell my baristas what to do, and my employees would then tell me about it. I said to her, ‘look, I really need you to tell me these things before you tell my staff,’ and her response was ‘it’s my business, don’t you tell me what kind of conversations I can have. I can have whatever conversations I want.’ And then they started pressuring me to fire people. And I said no - I am not going to do that. I will adjust hours, I will work with the schedule to decrease labor, but I am not going to just haphazardly lay someone off because you are not making as much as you thought you would within the first month. It is totally absurd.

It became pretty clear that I didn’t get to be in charge or empowered. I was consistently undermined to my staff, and all the other café managers with in the same place. We all knew it didn’t work, and people started leaving. A lot of it seemed like a desire for total control from ownership. It seemed to be about asserting power and making sure people knew they were the ones in charge. When it comes to money and finances, they were they ones who spent an exorbitant amount of money opening this café with super fancy, crazy equipment that didn’t work, and crazy build outs- so sure, they had spent a ton of money and I can understand why they weren’t willing to relinquish control. I can understand the desire for total oversight, but I think most of it was about not wanting to actually empower anyone to be able to try to help them. It was more ‘you are my pawn, and I will direct you however I see fit.’ And I think this mindset is driven by fear and insecurity. It takes a lot of courage to empower someone to run an element of your business, and to give them the freedom and space to do it well, and to misstep occasionally. It takes a lot of courage and self-awareness to hold that space and to be able to hold that fear-based meddling back. With me, I felt like they were trying desperately to control the discomfort of opening a new business and not finding immediate success, rather than being collaborative. I got the fear side of it.

This has been my consistent story through coffee. And of course, I also recognize my role in this. It takes two to tango. It’s different manifestations, but to my determent, I can see the potential in things. In my first shop in Colorado, in managing of this café, and then most recently in the job I just left, I can see the most amazing version of what something can be. And I take it upon myself to try and make it get there. Because it would be so amazing! But without the space or freedom to actually do that, I end up totally disheartened. It’s probably also a little bit intimidating too for a business owner or a business partner to see somebody come in and say ‘let me take your baby and make it this amazing thing. Just give me freedom to do that.’ And the response I have generally been met with is ‘no, it’s mine!’

Something that I have learned over my years of management and crave as an employee, is the importance of really clear and direct communication, creating a culture of feedback, and communicating very clear expectations. Also important is having open dialogue around any project, or work, or anything that is trying to drive the business forward and having really clear and collaborative communication around that, but also clearly defined roles. The first time I was a café manager I desperately wanted to take care of people. I went to every extreme in trying to make sure my crew felt supported- I bent over backwards trying to take care of them. I wanted to make things really collaborative, get their feedback, and try to implement it. But that also meant there weren’t clear roles or expectations around who does what, and that is something that I have learned since then. I want the environment to be really collaborative, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone does everything. When roles are set and clearly communicated, then that’s when you can have your best version of success. Employees know what they are supposed to do, as a manager I have the ability to give them good feedback, and then they know how they are doing. As a team we are moving the business forward, because we aren’t stuck in a dysfunctional non-communicative, frustrating space with owners thinking ‘I’m frustrated because employees aren’t doing the thing I want them to do but have never said out loud.’ It creates a dysfunctional culture in which employees are worried about their performance, and they don’t know why. I have come to understand this now after eight years in management roles. I sure as hell did not understand that eight years ago.”

In light of the issues coming up with her authority as manager being undermined by ownership, Maggie considered leaving the position. “I realized it was time to start looking elsewhere, but it wasn’t really dire. I had been teaching at the American Barista School for a year, super part-time, and it had sparked a passion for me in training and education. It fed my soul way more than managing. So the role I applied to and got at another roasting company was for Coffee Educator. It was a salaried, M-F position, there were consistent hours, benefits- it was this whole other world. It was totally different from working at independent cafes which I had done for years. There was something so enticing about working in an office and having normal hours. And being able to expand my skill set in teaching coffee full-time was so exciting.

I held that role for a year and a half. It was great. Then the company I worked for won the contract to build a set of cafes at the airport. At that point in time I was approached by the VP to start a retail training department, since we were about to open a slew of retail stores. So then I was the training and education manager, and I developed our entire retail training program- before that it was basically only wholesale training. I also consulted on build out design for the cafes, I helped hire the director of retail operations, and worked very closely with her in every aspect in order to get the cafes ready to open. She and I were putting together shelving back-of-house, stocking product, until all hours of the night, right before open. At the airport! It was so incredible to get to see how the airport works, to see the underbelly of the airport, and to go through the whole process to become a badged employee. The support from the port for their concessions team is phenomenal. Their expectations are really high, but it is such a community- I would have never thought. It was an incredible place to operate.

I was maintaining wholesale training, developing and honing retail training, and figuring out a whole new on-boarding process. We opened about three cafes in the span of like six months. I was working so much and so hard- basically I threw my entire life into it. It was insane, totally crazy, but we had an amazing team. And I loved what I was doing. I had total freedom to create the training department as I saw fit. My boss admittedly knew nothing about what needed to happen to make it go. He had a general idea, like we need to be able to train baristas and we need to do a good job, but what that looked like and how to get there, he had no idea. I had proved myself to him, so he put total trust in me to do it as I saw fit.

I was ecstatically happy- I felt like I had made it, like I had finally found my place in coffee, and I am doing the thing that I moved here to do. It was working. Sure there were frustrations, but I got to have command of my domain and, generally speaking, I felt valued and appreciated. I had to fight for that some, but for the most part I knew that my boss was really happy with what I was doing. It was great for like a year and a half.

At some point I started dating someone who got a job offer in Japan shortly after we met. I was talking to my father about this opportunity the person I was dating had, so my father said ‘that’s great- what are you thinking about for the next step in your career?’ And that got the wheels turning. It wasn’t that I was ready to leave at that point in time, but I started to think about ‘ok I don’t want to be the head of the training department for the rest of my life.’ I knew that I loved training, I felt pretty competent as a manager, but at that point things started to feel more dysfunction within the company, the dynamic within the company just started shifting. The dysfunction started to show, and that paired with my musings, yeah- it just got me thinking.

Then a few months later the company lost a huge account. It was a huge hit and around the same time we lost our director of coffee. They came to me within a few days and said ‘we want you to be the director of coffee.’ So I said ‘well, what does that mean for the department of training? That is my first love.’ And they said that I would manage all of it. I would manage the trainer, the green buyer, and they talked super big. They said I would be managing the roasting team, and that I was an incredibly skilled manager, and that they would give me a whole team- they talked a REALLY big game. I had very little time to think about it- like basically a day, because they wanted to announce it at the holiday party.

So with very little time to think about it, I decided to take it on, and made that decision over the holidays. I started the position in January, we went through a few rounds of layoffs, total downsize, and that’s when all of the cracks really started to show. It was at that point that the owner got very involved, because things were no longer just humming along. I started interacting with him much more. I had developed a really great working relationship with the VP of operations, and when he was my boss, it really worked. He gave me free rein. In this new position, however, I was given projects to take on, but wasn’t actually empowered to project manage. I was totally undercut and undermined at every turn by the owner.

I got to the same story all over again. Ultimately got to a place where I didn’t feel like I mattered. The owner’s actions, in so many ways, told me that I didn’t matter, and that my work there wasn’t valued. And because I was working on all these other projects, and had this broader reaching focus, I was training way less. When I did get to train, I was so exhausted, it didn’t feed my soul any more. I was still doing everything I had already been doing, and I took on a whole other full-time job.

The owner was completely unable to express direction, communication, or expectations. Literally he was unable to answer a direct question. But the management team needed direction from ownership, as things started to change, and we moved away from former company ethos. We as a management team very clearly, pointedly asked the owner: where are we going? What is our direction? What is our vision? It doesn’t seem like it is what it used to be. So what is it? Just tell us what you want, what you are thinking. Just anything. And he couldn’t answer the question. If he had a vision, he couldn’t articulate it. We would talk about desire for clear communication, and communication down the chain of command, and we would talk about how that was so important and necessary. But the owner wouldn’t do that. He had his pet boys, who were all actually managed by women, and he would go to those guys, and give them direction and projects, without going to their managers first. I would hear about things from my employees, as opposed to directly from the owner.

I decided it was time to go. Six months in I realized, I can’t do this anymore. I started to look elsewhere, but again, I still didn’t know what the answer was in terms of what to do next. And also, we had worked with a strategic planning consultant, so I did want to give it some time to see how everything would shake out. I did what I felt like I could do in terms of strategic planning, and being really clear and open in meetings in terms of what I wanted to see, and the structure that I thought we needed as a company to be able to grow. I was in that role for exactly a year. Six to nine months in I realized that I had given it a good try, and I am not seeing anything change. They kept saying things were going to change, but nothing was actually changing- like, the words are good, but there is no action following it up.

It got super clear that I had to go, and I so I gave my notice. I was miserable and in tears on a regular basis in meetings with my manager. And he saw it. He was able to hear me and see me, and he got it. But he also said to just keep persevering. And I couldn’t keep doing that. I wish he could have effected more change, but I think he gave me all the support he was able to give me. He made me feel valued, and like I mattered. When push came to shove, he advocated for me to the owner- but at the end of the day, there was only so much he could do. He was able to hear all my frustration and dissatisfaction, and he was able to totally meet me in that. For me, that was all I could ever ask for in a manager. I felt totally heard and totally seen, and valid in all of my frustration. And again, there wasn’t anything more that either of us could do.

At the end of the day it came down to the fact that the owner didn’t want to change, and didn’t want to hear anything about change. He is stuck in his space and didn’t want to do anything different. And didn’t want to be challenged in it- didn’t want to deal with the discomfort of what it would actually take to effect change.”

After over a decade in the industry, the advice Maggie would give to a barista starting out now: “Advice I would give to a barista starting out now is two-fold. There is part of my lesson in taking off my rose-colored glasses, recognizing where I am falling in love with the potential, versus seeing the reality. I think that is some of my own work. To really look at things as they are and being really honest with yourself about the reality versus the dream. Every business has its challenges, every person has their shadow side, there is no person or business that is perfect. Being able to not expect perfection, but also finding the business that has the challenges you can live with. It’s like the relationship advice: just find someone whose baggage matches yours. That is part of it. But then also, ask the questions in an interview. Of course, there is only so far you can get in terms of assessing in an interview, but ask about the structure that exists. Ask about the structure for communication, ask about when reviews happen, what do they look like, how does the manager or the owner provide direction to the team? Do as much due diligence as you can to learn what the dynamic is, what the culture is, what the environment is that you are stepping into. That way you can go in with eyes wider open, and it allows you to make an as-educated-as-possible choice about employer.

The last thing I want to say is that the coffee community is really an amazing community to be a part of. This has been such a fun journey, and it continues to be. I don’t know that I can distill into why the community is so great, but I know, for me, when I was a young barista and I saw a window into this world, I wanted IN. It felt super intimidating to break in, and I didn’t feel worthy because I didn’t work at a super uber specialty café. But thinking now about the sort of advice I would have given myself for that kind of fear- there is no Oz behind the curtain. We are just a bunch of people and getting to know people and going to events, and participating in the community, just takes the hype out of it. Because then it is much more accessible than it seems. Like any other community, it takes work to connect with it. But also like with any other community, find points of connection, find your people- that is the doorway in. It was for me.”