Could I get a normal coffee, please?
What a thousand different coffee orders taught me about culture, human connection, and discovering different kinds of "normal."
A couple days ago, a friend of mine reached out to ask me about my experience as a barista, and it made me feel a little nostalgic for those days, took me back to the frenetic pace of making coffees in the airport, and also, to the amount of times I heard “could I have a normal coffee” meaning countless types of “normal”. So grab your cafezin, that we’re about to dive into one of my favorite life’s seasons.
Let me start by saying that one of my all time favorite jobs was as a barista, and the environment has a big influence on the overall experience. It’s a mix of art and hospitality. Crafting coffees, placing the right cups and plates for each drink, the small talk, the news, it’s almost therapy to me.
I’ve had from non stop, thousands of customers from different nationalities to the slow paced, neighbors, usual customers, live music routine. Somehow, I loved both of them. Where I come from, preparing a coffee for someone, is one of the utmost forms of care, sort of THE business card as well so we take it very seriously to have it fresh whenever someone shows up for a good and old conversation.
Translating this to a broader perspective, it’s very challenging to understand what is the perfect coffee for each person. After a while at the airport, I was able to give better suggestions based on the nationality on how they preferred their coffee but I’d always do some alterations here and there to adapt the coffee to each customer, even in a fast paced routine there was room for “stronger if you can, more water, more foam, less milk” etc.
One thing that would happen with some frequency, was the famous order:
Could I get a coffee? Sure, which one? Just a normal one please.
Reaction to this after you’ve heard it for the 10th time that day can go to OMG I WILL KL SOMEONE to a simple breath in and out followed by possible coffees that they might be looking for.
And after this I had the answers go from a espresso (corto, lungo, double) to americanos, to filtered coffees, to “um café sem princípio em chávena fria” - in a literal translation, a coffee without start in a cold cup - but if you’re portuguese, you already knew it!
Either way, this became a deeper reflection on how cooler life gets once we discover different kinds of normal exist. Be it by exploring other places, learning different languages, experiencing different cultures expands our view of “normal” and that doesn’t necessarily need to be tied to actively going somewhere else, I didn’t take a plane to discover all kinds of different normal coffees by the counter, I was simply on a plural environment.
On the local coffee, instead, I knew not only their names, their stories but even the amount of cinnamon Tom liked on his cappuccino on Fridays when he showed up before his class. It felt like a common salotto in a big house, customers would greet each other, even when they moved to other neighborhoods they would come back to visit and it was always a great surprise - I’m unfortunately now part of these 🥲
Be it as a full time job or a hobby for weekends, at the right place, it doesn’t even feel like a job and allows you to get to know those around you, bringing the sense of community and also the particularities of each one. And that goes both ways, those behind the counter and those regularly joining for coffee, like a coffee club?
I don’t know, in my experience, it’s almost healing and it doesn’t require being in the other part of the world but can also be done there, you know what I’m saying? Are you a usual at some coffee shop? If not, I invite you to check for a nice coffee shop in your neighborhood :)
That’s it, see you next time!