“A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.” — Anais Nin
There’s been a little disturbance in the force of the coffee world lately, with the mastermind behind the website Bitter Barista Twitter-blog being unmasked as Matt Watson, a.k.a. nerd-rapper Spekulation. Watson may not have the graceful words of Anais Nin on the subject of the dark brew, but this is somehow important to people.
A previously anonymous writer, Matt Watson would post trite and vicious comments about his customers, his work situation, and his bosses at Georgetown’s All City Coffee in Seattle, of all places. Watson described his comments as “satirical”, where many people would describe them as somewhat humorous or immature; certainly not the product of a nebbish gingery 30-something with a degree in philosophy who claims 90 percent of his content is purely fictional.
What did you put in my coffee? I cant feel my… You’re. That. Guy.
A few examples of the kind of material that appears on Bitter Barrista.
Please pour your coffee into the trash can so it can ruin my day later.
So, a guy grumpily walks up to the counter and says ‘Soy mocha.’ I reply, ‘Hi, mocha. Soy Matt. What would you like to order?
This guy just got mad because we don’t have a yellow-pages. We also don’t have an abacus or a sun-dial.
“I really liked my job,” Watson said. “That’s what I realized over the last week. It’s a shame you can’t have a job you like, but also complain about.”
In the wake of the headlines the made by a St. Louis Applebee’s waitress, who got fired for posting a receipt by a local Pastor who stiffed her co-worker on a tip and blamed God for her antics, this kind of thing is deemed newsworthy. Since CNN disbanded its investigative journalism department, there are unemployed wanna-be hard-nosed journoes trawling the ‘net for exhibitions of lower and lower common denominator stories.
This story made the ledes at Gawker, Good Morning America, the Seattle Times, and filtered it’s way to us here at Techcitement. (See, a coffee pun. We take no prisoners here!)
The story was originally leaked by Sprudge.com. Don’t worry, we’ve never heard of it either, until now. Started in 2009 as a coffee-related clone of the shit-brewers at The Drudge Report, Sprudge is run out of the stanky depths of hipsterdom — Portland, Oregon — by Zachary Carlsen and Jordan Michelman.
Being the purveyors of all that’s good and holy related to coffee, the second largest global crop after petroleum, Carlsen and Michelman saw the blog of the Bitter Barista – started on January 30th, and decided it was not good. The owners of Sprudge decided Watson’s style was no longer edgy, and instead, they deemed it unhip and played out. The snarky 30-something with a cooling degree and a sputtering career in nerd-rap, who stood there Twittering his brain-droppings instead of taking your order, was in Sprudge‘s sightlines “due to its unfortunate exploitation of the outdated snarky barista archetype” and they ran their snarky, exploitative piece on February 7.
This move is profoundly ironic, as Carlsen and Michelman appear to be the very image of the awful, hackneyed, outdated hipster d-bag cliche mocked by shows like Portlandia, and by pretty much everyone, everywhere. Carlsen occasionally works at FourBarrel Coffee in San Francisco. Below is an example of the level of humor at Carlsen’s workplace (which isn’t even the best coffee joint in San Francisco, so he clearly needs to up his game!)
Fixie riders can only loiter in this alley between dusk and dawn. Vir gebruik deur, non-hipsters!
The below video is Carlsen and Michelman’s take on the heavily worked over 2010 “Shit Girls Say” meme to give you a feel for their style. Although, it’s about a minute too long for it’s 100-second length.
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exH-Jmdav6g’]
The two also seem to think you turgid, two-legged cash-donors don’t know how to drink coffee. Don’t worry, the music is like, super obscure. You probably haven’t heard of it.
[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FXE8CLncYQ’]
Watson made little attempt to conceal his connection between his Spekulation persona and his authorship of The Bitter Barista, and Tweeted thusly, but the blog owner’s identity is somehow deemed newsworthy. In an industry driven by so much exploitation of everyone involved in it’s supply chain, it’s only seeming that one more victim is added to the heap. Admittedly, Watson isn’t being paid less than $3 a day for 100 pounds of prime roast, nor is he a 7-year old Guatemalan being forced to help his family, but he is being singled out for voicing his run of the mill workplace frustrations.
According to Sprudge, Watson needs to shut the hell up and get that 100 pound bag loaded up on the truck before El Jefe comes by.
“You’re in the service industry! Your job is to serve, honey. You need to tamp down all that shade grown.”
“I thought Sprudge would like my work, but I guess they didn’t,” said Watson. “They said only some satirical work is acceptable and they linked their own website.”
In case you haven’t heard, thanks to Sprudge, Matt Watson got shitcanned shortly after the story ran. Watson’s former boss told The Seattle Times that he couldn’t endorse the statements by Bitter Barista, even if they were humorous, and that was why Watson was terminated. Sprudge now receives death threats, no doubt from people who take their coffee way too seriously, but they’re probably more entertaining than Sprudge itself.
Sprudge wants Watson, and everyone else, to understand what great pride it takes in what it does.
We’re lucky to know and work with many baristas, and we’ll continue to advocate for them and their efforts in what we consider to be a special, valuable, vibrant, remarkable, and growing culture. You’re in the service industry! Your job is to serve, honey.
You can help Matt Watson Kickstart his coffee-based coffee-table coffee book here.
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