February 2020 Membership Update
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By Hylan Joseph
Nothing works without support from others. At some level, almost everything we do requires help or effort from another person. My son always argues that you don’t need any help going to the bathroom. I duly remind him that someone had to buy the roll of toilet paper, transport it and put in on holder. “What about number one?” he says. Well, someone must pay the water bill and install the toilet. This battle can go on forever until we hit the stalemate of peeing in the forest. Ultimately, he gets the point and we move on to something else like arguing about episodes of The Twilight Zone.
It also goes without saying, but people are important. Think of every person’s involvement that goes into that one cup of coffee purchased daily. By my count, there are over thirty people involved in the process of producing one cup of black coffee. I suspect if I look deeper I can find more people involved in this process. Does your average consumer understand this, do they care?
Our mandate in this process is, as techs, to make sure that our customers’ equipment is working and that we’re doing it in an expeditious manner. Part of our role in the chain can also be to just stand there and let the customer take out their frustrations out on us because they are losing money.
We have a tough job. Our roles vary as techs, owners, and managers. We succeed in what we do because we have people to support us, teach us and guide us.
Over the next few months, the Coffee Technicians Guild blog will be focusing on how people work in our industry, tricks, and takeaways. We will be adding more articles on running your operation, starting your operation, and better ways to train and manage your crew. Don’t worry, there will still be plenty of cool technical articles as well.
Among this month’s blog posts, I interview Shad Baiz. We went back to how the guild started, we look to today, and then to where we’re headed for the future. I was reminded that one of the key reasons we founded this guild was to create a community, a community where people involved in our industry had a place to go, like Slack, and be a part of a larger community. This community succeeds within the SCA because we have the support of an organization that has the means to drive our success. We have the potential to grow our community with the Coffee Roasters Guild and the Barista Guild.
We know people are important. We know success is hard work. We – with great care and perseverance – pursue that success through hard work and tenacity. I’m constantly reminded that success, true success can only be achieved with the support of the communities that we are involved in.