Interview with Samanta Janssen
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Hylan Joseph: Why did you choose coffee as a career?
Samanta Janssen: I had many different plans for a career when I was younger. I actually started school working on an art degree, with plans of pursuing social work. I quickly realized that working in coffee would personally give me so much more. I'll save you from my long sad story, but I think I wanted to do social work because it could give me something I wanted: connect with people in a totally non-superficial way and help them find happiness. As it would turn out, working in coffee did that for me, but in a way that I am way more cut out for! Coffee connects people and is an awesome non-judgmental community to belong to. It blows my mind when I think about how many miles and hands my coffee has passed through to get to my cup. From the farmer to the roaster, the tech maintains the machine that will brew my coffee to the barista that hands my cup to me. And that is happening all over the world. And to me, that is absolutely amazing.
HJ: Why did you choose to start as a barista –
SJ: Like most people, my first barista job kind of fell into my lap. I liked the early morning shift and tips. I chose to continue being a barista because I was good at it and genuinely enjoyed it—way more than any other job I had in the past. I taught myself how to do latte art, which at the time was not huge in the town I live in, so I definitely lived for the oooohs and aaaahhhs when I would hand a customer their latte with a tulip on top. I just loved the lifestyle. And no coincidence, I met three of my closest friends while all were working as a barista at the same shop. Fast forward to my mid-20s, and I realized I was making more money than a lot of the people I went to school with because of my tips (with the obvious exception of the ones that went on to be doctors and lawyers). Working as a barista never got old or boring, and I met so many great people.
HJ: What lessons did you learn as a barista that helped you become a service tech.
SJ: For starters, to make a kick-ass cup of coffee. More importantly, to quickly identify if the problem is user-error. It's really surprising (or maybe not) how many calls we get that lead to a simple user error. Like the grind just wasn't dialed in, or they are pressing the wrong button, or the hopper is closed... Also, I learned how to train others to make coffee. That skill has led me to work on my SCAA certification to become an Authorized SCA Trainer.
HJ: What was your path from barista to service tech?
SJ: We can pick up from when I said I was making good money. Making money was great, but I knew I didn't want to be a barista for the rest of my life. To me, money didn't matter. I wanted to learn more and had hopes of being able to travel and meet other people with the same deep appreciation for coffee. Since I had worked at a handful of cafes around town, I was pretty familiar with Hero Coffee Works, our local espresso machine tech company. So, I had always known my now boss, Bob, but really started a professional relationship with him while managing the last cafe I worked at. I often dropped hints that I was interested in learning more about how the machine worked and would watch when our equipment was being serviced. I had a lot of great conversations with him about the coffee community and really looked up to him for making a career out of something I was also passionate about. While I was still working full-time managing, he invited me to check out their shop. That's when I sat down with him, one of his head techs, and his business partner (I also had a relationship with him from being a regular at my cafe) and had a serious conversation about me joining them at Hero Coffee Works. We agreed to try out a short internship to see if I would like it, which was one day a week for a couple of months. I was working 50 plus hours a week and my cafe job but still looked forward to my shop day every week. Doing the tech work was a way different place for me that I really enjoyed. My internship was a lot of rebuilding steam taps and stuff, but it gave me the confidence to know I could do it and want to do it. I was hired on after the internship and left my draining management job shortly after. I have always been pretty mechanically inclined, so it really is not surprising to me that this is where I ended up. Even when I told my dad that I was leaving my job to pursue this, he was like, "sounds about right, you've been taking things apart and putting them back together your whole life". What is more surprising is that Bob saw the potential in me and actually wanted to take that chance.
HJ: What hurdles did you encounter moving into a career as a tech?
SJ: I really had no formal mechanical or electrical training when I started. I didn't even know how to hold a wrench properly, and I couldn't have told you the difference between metric and standard sized. A lot of people expect me to say that being a woman in a predominately male field has been the hurdle, but personally, for me, it really hasn't. Maybe I just work with awesome people, or that truly is what the coffee community is all about. I have been mistaken for the "secretary" or "office person" more than I'd like, but that comes from people outside of the business and not the people I work with. I am better educated on tools these days, so understanding electrical stuff will be the biggest hurdle of them all. You can't see it, but you can sure feel it...
HJ: What could you have used help with when you first started?
SJ: I would say more formal training with electrical components. But that definitely falls on me. Something that I had when I first started, and still do have, are non-judgmental people I can call and message when I'm in a jam or just need a quick boost of confidence before sticking a multi-meter into a live socket. So, I guess what I really could have used help with was dealing with my own pride and asking questions until I had the full answer I needed.
HJ: What do you wish someone would've told you when you were first starting out?
SJ: I love to learn because the unknown makes me uncomfortable. I wish someone would have told me that I would have new and unusual situations pop up almost daily doing this job. I live in an area with a ton of different equipment brands, and a lot of it is pretty old. And we service all of it because there are not many qualified techs outside of the company I work for. I live in western Montana, and we have a 500-mile service area due to the lack of techs around here. It keeps things exciting, but I will never really know exactly what I'm walking into. I have learned to handle being ok with that, and I even think it has made me more laid back in my personal life as well.
HJ: Name three tools you couldn't do without.
SJ: 2 adjustable wrenches and a screwdriver with bits. And a bonus tool would be a scale!
HJ: What advice would you give a person just starting out in this industry.
SJ: Don't be afraid to ask questions. Join tech and barista forums. You will get as much out of this job as you put in. Working in the coffee industry is a lifestyle. If you don't want to think about coffee when you clock out, this isn't the job for you.
HJ: What's the weirdest service call you've ever had.
SJ: I once went on a call for a leak coming from the espresso machine (real vague). Once I got there, I realized the exhaust tube from the group head was clogged, causing water to leak from the top. So I pull the tube off to find that a small part of a rubber glove was the culprit. It took a while to realize what it was because there is no way something that large could have traveled through the group head to end up where it did. I wish the rubber glove would have been a snake, and it would have made this story much better. But it was just a glove, a glove I thought about for days. Wondering how it got there.