A Woman Of Color Existing With A President Like Trump

When people ask me what it’s like to be a barista, my immediate response is simple, but symbolic. It’s fun, until it isn’t. Two years ago, when I was fresh out of college with my Bachelor’s degree in English, becoming a barista was the best option I had for making my own money after being flung into the adult world. Unfortunately, but with love, I have been stuck in the industry ever since. I know all there is to know about coffee. I pour latte art, I can recommend different roasts to fit people’s taste, I know what temperature to steam milk at by feel; to be honest, I know more about the craft than I’ve ever wanted to know. Hence, with that, I’ve experienced more than I ever could’ve prepared myself for. I have my horror stories. I’ve had customers tell me to hurry up. I’ve had someone accuse me of microwaving their coffee instead of giving them a fresh cup when the store I worked at didn’t even have a microwave. I’ve had someone tell me at seven a.m. on a Saturday morning that I looked tired that day. I’ve had people expressively explain to me why I didn’t deserve to be tipped. I’ve been yelled at, threatened, scolded, ridiculed, bothered, and bullied. It’s fucked up to admit, but after all this time, I have learned to accept all of the above behavior. I’ve even learned how to navigate those interactions to my benefit if need be. If someone is bitching and moaning for no absolute reason, there are three tactics I can use to get out of the situation: play dumb, act deeply hurt, or pretend that I didn’t hear what they said. When I succumb to one of these strategies, it’s because it’s the only way I can protect my emotional health and simultaneously be good at my job. The truth is, no matter how kind, polite, or friendly I am, it never guarantees that a customer is going to treat me the same; and you’d hope that that would be it. Working in customer service sucks sometimes, the end. But, although I am not special, it’s about more than that for me. On top of being a customer service worker, I am a young woman of color. This doesn’t make me stand out from all of the other women, people of color, or women of color, but collectively we could all agree that we experience existing significantly differently than other folks do.

A few days after the infamous re-election of Donald Trump for President of the United States of America, I was at work. With all of the tension that the election had been causing and all of the division that came with it, I was slightly on edge in regards to what kind of interactions I was going to have with customers because being a barista also comes with being forced to have conversations you don’t even start, let alone want to continue having, and when it came to Trump winning the election, it was something that I did not want to discuss while I was at my place of employment with the people I was meant to be serving with a smile on my face, especially when the majority of my customers were of the upper class, working in tech for Amazon, Facebook, or Google. When it comes to serving people as a woman of color, I am hypervigilant, always. I have to be. With women being randomly punched in the face on the streets of New York, or Asian Americans being targeted during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, or women being assaulted and then gaslit about it daily, in the back of my mind, I am always prepared for the fat chance that one day something like that is going to happen to me, and there is not much I can do to prevent it. I carry pepper spray, I know where the panic button in my store is, and I am always aware of my exits and entrances.

The saturday after the Presidental election, I was hypervigilant, like usual, and composed with all of my personal safety protocals, like usual. In the early morning, I was working the cash register when a group of four walked into the shop. Nothing unusual. All four of them were white. Nothing new. The older looking woman and man seemed to be the parents of the younger looking woman, and the last man appeared to be her partner. Nothing strange. As they entered the shop, I waved at them. They gave me a split second of eye contact as acknowledgement. Typical. The person who appeared to be the mother of the family walked up to me and ordered. I took it. I asked if they’d like anything else. The husband, without looking at me, muttered, “Americano, large.” I asked if he wanted any room for cream in it. His stare hardened, and a little louder and slightly slower, he repeated himself. “Americano.” In return, I repeated myself a little louder and slightly slower, “Do. You. Want. Room. For. Milk?” He grunted, “No.” Then he turned to the pastry case, which is really just a plastic dome with a bunch of baked goods piled under it. He said, “I want that thing with the almonds on it.” I asked if he wanted it warmed up, but he interrupted to say, “Do I just grab it myself?” Out of cordial patience, I sternly replied with a simple, “No.” Not necessarily in a mean way, but definitely not in an extremely polite barista way. The same energy flowed through the rest of the group’s order. None of them smiled at me or looked at me in the eye. When I finally took the last order from the daughter’s partner, I felt like a marathoner almost at the finish line debating on whether or not the pain of what I just went through was worth the victory of completion. At the end of it all, I asked, “Anything else for you today?” He turned away from me, and as he walked away, said, “I’m good,” to no one in particular I presume, since he also didn’t pay. As the mother paid, I went to grab them two out of their four drinks. I set the cups down on the counter in front of them and said, “Here’s your one medium drip coffee, and one large drip coffee.” As I put the drip coffee down right in front of them, after I said I was putting the drip coffee down right in front of them, after two of them just ordered drip coffee from me, the father who ordered the americano goes, “Is this the americano?” As I sighed internally and verbally responded, “No, your americano is coming out in just a second,” he turned away from me without saying another word (thank god).

On paper, it seems stupidly dramatic to be hung up on the interaction I had with these people, who, just to be very clear, I have nothing against at all. Technically, nothing really happened. Technically, they weren’t even rude to me. Technically, I’ve had customer interactions like that a thousand times, with not only white people. The significant difference is the reaction I had and the process of thinking that I went through afterwards, which then turned on a lightbulb in me. As the group sat down in the shop to drink their coffee, I began to regret my slight misbehavior. It washed over me slowly, but surely, and initially I didn’t know why because technically, I didn’t do anything wrong either. But overthinking got the best of me. I rebuked myself for losing my cool. I reprimanded my mildly impolite attitude. I shouldn’t have acted so stern even though they were being avoidant and weren’t listening. If they were to complain about me to my boss, I’d have no defense. I shouldn’t have been blunt towards them, just because they were blunt towards me first. On any other day, I would’ve spiraled like this until the next customer interaction which had a fifty-fifty chance of giving me hope that there were still harmonious people in the world, or that this job is a never-ending scary movie, and I will always be the pittied first character to get murdered. But, with the devastating election seething on my mind, a bridge gapped in my head, and I had an epiphanizing question to ask myself. Why was I trying so hard to make four white people comfortable in a coffee shop when we are living in a world that is already built to their comfortability all the goddamned time? Especially when they made me uncomfortable first? Why was I punishing myself for reacting to the way they chose to treat me?

I know that this may make me sound dramatic. I know that I possibly sound crazy for obsessing about nothing that happened. I might even come off as a little bit of a bitch. I also definitely seem like a shitty barista. But, that’s the reality of being a woman of color in this country, especially under the operation of someone like Trump. People like me are always aware of white people, and how those white people might react when they see that I am not white like them. I wasn’t purposely trying to be exaggerative, impatient, or judgemental. I am fearful of how much power white people have over me, even in a scenario as tiny as the one that happened.

This type of fear is a feeling that I pinpointed as strong enough to move mountains, and if I could put it into a bottle to show to other people, I would, because it’s a feeling that millions of people were doomed with when Trump was elected to be our 47th POTUS. Watching Vice President Kamala Harris, a string of hope for many, lose to a convicted felon who actively puts the lives of women, people of color, and those of the queer community in danger was a deep, personal loss. No qualified candidate running for the position of POTUS will have clean hands, but there was an obvious consensus that we could at least choose better than Trump, which a majority of the nation actually didn’t seem to get the memorandum for. At least, as a woman of color, that’s how I feel about it. What truly stuns me though, is that there are people who genuinely can’t find the empathy to understand why Trump is a dangerous President. Somehow, they don’t understand the feeling of fear, that feeling that I tried so vigorously to bottle up when I found it so that I could explain it with more clarity, more urgency, more despair, so that they could see why it was a privilege to not have to live with that feeling in the back of your throat all of the time.

As a barista, people either see me as their therapist or their emotional punching bag. In all honesty, the very common experience that I had on that grim saturday shouldn’t have become so personal to me, but at this point in the progression of our political system, it was, because no matter how in the right I am in any situation involving white people, I will always lose because I am not like them, and this notion amplifies with Trump as a leader. Lots of people would rather engage in chit chat with my polite, charming, six foot two, white male coworker than converse with me. Lots of people would rather flirt with my blonde haired, blue eyed, white female coworker than talk with me. It’s subtle, but I notice it all of the time. Not only will I always lose, but I will always never have an initial chance of even being on the same playing field. But since my coworkers don’t have to live with that ball of fear like I do, I am in solitude with it, so I pour lattes and steam milk in silent reserve, trying not to take it personal because I have the rest of my life to get used to being ignored for not being white.

All of this to say, I can’t stop thinking about that ball of fear. That ball of fear that a lot of people don’t understand. That ball of fear that privileged people get to ignore. That ball of fear that white people have never felt before. That ball of fear that grows larger every day for people like me so long as Trump still has a platform, which he inevitablely will always have, especially now that he’s not only an essential part of, but has made, history.

To digress, I want anyone and everyone who needs a safe space in times like these to know that you will always have one, somewhere. Rely on your peers. Find support in your communities. Revel in love. Educate yourself. Don’t surrender your power. Do whatever makes you happy because time is irreplaceable. Everything feels unsteady right now, but collectively, we have enough endeavor to make it better, if not today, one day. To all of the people who don’t understand why we are so heartbroken by this election, I hope after reading this, you understand just a little more, or at least can acknowledge that it is something you may never understand, but can learn to absorb, protect, and respect, for the sake of your wives, daughters, persons of color, immigrants, the queer community, and anyone else who feels unsafe on a daily basis, like me, a woman of color existing with a President like Trump.