“Hi there, Jazzy Jaz!” said JP, the nine-year shift supervisor who had learned my name the first time I went in to inquire about a job and who made sure to comp my iced coffee each time I came back.
“Is Patty in today?” I asked, making sure to smile behind my mask.
As JP went to get her from the back, I watched the baristas bobbing behind the bar. The hiss of steam from the espresso machines mingled with the sound of their voices calling out drinks and the sputter of a spent cold brew keg. Their motions were smooth and constant: The espresso machines were never idle.
I could feel my heart rate climbing. Was it even possible that Starbucks would hire me? I wondered. One Google search and I would be found out as a union organizer, my cover blown.
I rehearsed my carefully crafted narrative. Before even submitting the online application, I had scrubbed my social media and set all platforms to private. I had pried the rusty solidarity, y’all! tag from my car and crafted a narrative that hid my prior union work without lying outright. Patty emerged from the back, an energetic figure wearing a green apron. “Hi, Jaz!”
Due to Covid, the café furniture was stacked by the front windows.
Patty gestured for me to pull down a chair, and we sat down at one of the unused tables, where she began looking over my cover letter and résumé.
“Rhodes Scholar, that’s nice.” Then, looking down my cover letter, she murmured with approval, “‘People-facing position,’ I like that.”
She told me that she had hired a few other people and wouldn’t be able to start me for a few weeks, and that she would call me in a few days to follow up.
She didn’t.
I began thinking that Starbucks had found out I was a union organizer and that Patty was ghosting me accordingly.
“Keep following up,” Josh Armstead told me. “Keep playing the role. They’re not that bright, they don’t know.”
It took two months for me to actually start work—two months of constant second-guessing. I don’t think I would have gotten hired without Josh as my salting coach. He had helped prep my résumé and cover letter, sharing examples of his and giving advice (including reminding me that it was pretty much impossible to be too enthusiastic about the company when I began questioning whether my exuberance had been a giveaway).
Josh believed I would get hired and made me believe it, too. Gary and Richard had their doubts. Would they google me? Was my lack of barista experience an issue? (It wasn’t—Starbucks likes hiring people they can train their own way.) Why did Patty keep disappearing? Was this really a good use of time, or was there other organizing work I could be doing that would be more productive?
After each visit to the store or meeting with Patty, I would call Josh to debrief what had happened. He helped guide my next steps: how soon to go back for another coffee, when it was appropriate to follow up by phone, how to get an email address. He was always encouraging, always supportive, always providing reminders of management incompetence (hadn’t they hired him, a union vice president, into what should have been a highly guarded food service target?) and, more important, of the mission and reason for salting.
