A Nation of Queuers Cannot Stand

… They also serve who only stand and prate

By Cedric Trevelyan, K.C.B.

 

I am not usually of a humour to give consequence to the middle classes taking their leisure, nor indeed am I even likely to encounter such creatures, given my more rarified social circles. But occasionally of late, whilst standing in line to procure my afternoon libation at one of the trendy coffee shops that have begun to dot my adopted homeland, I find myself rubbing shoulders with those beneath my station, and I cannot help but wince as I perceive how passively these humble folk, our good proles, endure the abuse dished up to them by certain surly concocters of caffeinated refreshments who, despite being only a missed paycheque away from penury and usually of a lower class than that of those upon whom they wait, nonetheless feel it their birthright to banter and visit amongst themselves at insufferable length before deigning to sullenly acknowledge the presence of their customers patiently standing before them. When confronted with such intolerable service and criminal usurpation of my precious time, I needs must summon up all my self-mastery lest I throttle the churls with manoeuvres learnt in the Northumberland Fusiliers or deliver some unpleasant epithet (hop to it, you nattering jackanapes). But I endeavour to resist this temptation, for I daren’t get banned from these establishments, as my caffeine addiction will soon have me seeking them out, as it were, in extremis.

I am sad to report that America is fast becoming -- not unlike her socialist cousins across the pond -- a nation of queuers, willing to stand in line for trifles. More’s the pity, for it bespeaks of the decline of a once-great national character. Time was when no self-respecting American gentleman would be caught dead in a queue. Alas, no more. So, gentle reader, the responsibility for this sorry state lies not only in the poor breeding and low estate of our baristas, but in us, for tolerating bad service and thereby perpetuating it. May I be so bold as to suggest that a nation of queuers cannot stand.

I can only imagine how terribly difficult it must be for the middle classes to negotiate contemporary American life with any significant measure of grace and dignity, and to insulate themselves from the noise and effronteries that constantly beset them. And that is precisely why these tony new coffee enterprises need to take a cue from the Old World: What these businesses fail to understand is “genteel poverty”. To wit: If one cannot afford to dine in a fine restaurant, then one can at least have a cup of decent java, and sit outside on the veranda, and pretend one is somewhere else, say, Tunbridge Wells. But no, fair cousin, we are denied this humble pleasure and are made to endure the aforementioned queues, the dirty dishes left un-bussed, and the surly servers whose idea of sophistication is the obligatory nose ring, and other even more outre body alterations that decorum forbids me to dilate on here. Civilisation is surely at the end of its tether.

I concede that our society is long past the point where a business could require of the help that they adhere to any grooming code. But surely the supervisors in our new coffee emporia can understand the need to train the help in how to deal with the public, so that they can recognize their betters, know their place, and do what's demanded of them. It would be such a pleasure to be served by one of these young popinjays who knew enough to show the proper deference.

Perhaps their most irritating failing is their inability to update the signage when they rotate the “coffee of the day”. For those who actually like the taste of coffee, who drink it neat, i.e. black, and don’t savour the twee adulterations of schlag and flavourings (from bottles that look for all the world like they contain hair tonics), it is important to know what “varietal” (if you’ll permit me to appropriate a wine term) that we are in fact drinking. Ergo, if the sign says Kenya AA, but our taste buds say not, and we suspect lesser beans, probably from the nether slopes of the Andes and lacking in nobility, it annoys us and ruins the ritual. It's very like an oenophile tasting Châteauneuf-du-Pape when he ordered Château d’Yquem, intolerable and quite beyond the pale. Is it too much to ask that the signs correctly identify the beans and their provenance? Apparently it is. So now I disregard the signs altogether and ask what’s brewing, and invariably this necessitates that my server ask a co-worker.

So, at long last one is served, and having secured refreshments one repairs to the veranda to muse about life here in the colonies, or the wisdom of the Mother Country electing a Labour government. But one cannot do this, for what the deuce does one hear but the argy-bargy of the help as they prattle on ad nauseam about their latest nihilistic popular entertainments or what part of their bodies they plan to next pierce or stain.

I am not so curmudgeonly that I would bring up such unpleasantness if I thought that these failings couldn’t be ameliorated. One simple innovation that would expedite the processing of coffee addicts would be to have an express line for those, like myself, who want simple pours, i.e. a cup of honest coffee from the urn sans all the additives and complexities that the feminine gender requires and which take considerable time to admix. This reform alone would go far in shortening the vexing queues.

I am not sanguine about the service in our bustling new cafe society improving anytime soon, as the help has us in a sticky wicket. In short, they're devilishly difficult to recruit and retain, and will therefore do as they jolly well please. Perhaps a recession would serve to put them in their place and improve their performance. So have compassion for our baristi as they likely haven’t had the advantages of Tory habitués of ULTRACON OPINION.

E’en so, one does so wish that the middle classes would stand up on their hind legs and demand decent service, instead of timidly enduring the abuse and contempt of millennials. But let us not stiff the baristi of their gratuities. Rather, treat them with all the noblesse oblige and good manners that you can muster. Maybe it’ll rub off.

But as for me, I henceforth intend to carry caffeine tablets on my person at all times. That will enable me to turn tail at the very sight of a queue.

Cedric Trevelyan, K.C.B. is a nom de plume of Jon N. Hall, a regular old American, born and bred.