Someone Else's Ivy
“We could ask for a meeting to express our concerns,” I suggested. “Would you be interested in doing that? You would have to dress up and come in on your day off and practice beforehand what you were going to say. You would have to make a list of all the stuff—not just the music thing—that is bothering you.” They thought about it for a while and decided that they wanted to do it. I had created a beautiful, angry, young six-headed monster. I had created a labor movement. I had created a brotherhood of baristas. Oh, fuck that, who was I kidding? I had a valuable, fun group of young people working for me who had created their own way of doing things and sorting out their problems, and they were going to keep doing it no matter what I said. They had created a café in that specific permutation in that unique moment in time.
So I called Susan and told her the kids weren’t happy. I told her we wanted to talk, to express some of our concerns and “keep the avenues of communication open, so that we all fully understand the plan for the future so we can find a way to maximize the potential of our cafe.” She said, “No dice.” When I told my employees about the phone conversation, they were bewildered and angry. Clarissa drew a large line drawing of dice inside a circle with a line through it, and taped it to the ice machine.
“Look,” I told them, hating myself, “I think you guys are great employees because you’re great people. But Susan doesn’t care who you are, and that’s going to be her loss in the end. Well, and it’s going to suck for you too. What do you want to do?”
And a consensus was reached: the kids wanted no part of this, they wanted out.
“If you all just walk away, one at a time, you will be replaced in about a second. Have you seen the stack of applications on my desk? No one will ever know why you are angry, and Susan will not have to think about the actions she took that created this outcome. You have to do this like you did everything else so far. You have to do this together, and with style.”
So we sat down to write another letter together. When we were done, we faxed it to Susan and the CEO of the company. We wrote:
Dear Susan,
We, the employees of the café in Harvard Square, regret to inform you that we must resign from our positions. For the most part, and most of the time, we have enjoyed working at the café. We have worked hard here and were glad to do so. We hope you appreciate this as much as we do. Together, as a staff, we have decided to pursue other opportunities that better suit our needs.
In our time here we have learned many things. We have greatly improved our knowledge of coffee, customer service, the people of Harvard Square and the machinations of a small business. We have learned that it is important to try hard at everything we do, no matter how mundane or inconsequential, that it is beneficial for everyone involved to make our concerns heard in an intelligent and mature manner, and that it is better to work together with people we respect and enjoy than to stand alone. We have also learned that sometimes, when we act on this knowledge with the best intentions, it still does not matter.
Recently, many of us came to you with the intention of creating an open dialogue about a change in policy. The response we received was less than respectful. The tone and language of your note was dismissive of our needs and hostile to communication in general. The music that we listen to eight hours a day, the art on the walls, and the personal items we place out of the view of the public are important to us, even if these things are not important to you. It matters to us because when we had some control over these small things, we were proud of the café and wanted it to be successful because we saw it as a representation of our hard work and the way we choose to spend our time. We were willing to work for less money than we thought was fair because we worked in a place whose values, we thought, coincided with our own. What you have said to us and the way in which you have said it has shown us our mistake.
Your response to our concerns, in combination with the attitude of this company as evidenced by our compensation, opportunity for advancement, and ability to contribute to decisions regarding our working conditions has prompted us to leave before we would have liked. We understand now that our labor is more valuable to you because it is inexpensive and replaceable than because it is skilled and enthusiastic. We think we are worth more.
Sincerely,
James, Deion, Kat, Amanda, Clarissa, Andrew and Amy
An hour after I faxed it over I received an outraged phone call from Susan. Presumably, she was calling to see if there were any staff members working at the Harvard Square café. I told her it had been my idea for all of us to just walk out, but the kids had vetoed me, saying something about “being the better person,” and “two-week notice,” and “doing things right.” I didn’t listen very closely to what Susan said, because she was incoherent with fury, but I do remember this. She said, “The fact that you sent this to the CEO is just laughable. He is going to see this and laugh, and then he is going to throw it out.”
