You Might Just Fall In Love

At some point, most of us will have a job we don’t love. A job we see as a pit stop between points A and B. Our first job. The summer job. A job that’s purely functional.

Here's the story of mine.

A Detour

When I was 21 I had back surgery. At the time my whole world revolved around skateboarding. I worked at the skateshop, I skated all day, I made skate videos, skateboarding was everything.

After about 6 months of recovery I could move but not well enough to skate. I was tired of playing video games and felt like it was time to get back to work.

I didn’t want to go back to the skateshop. Well, I did want to go back to the skateshop but the thought of being around a culture I felt so strongly about while not being able to participate in felt painful.

One day I was chatting with a friend of mine who worked at the coffee shop down the street from my house, talking about my job hunt and he said:

“Dude, why don’t you just work here? You kick it here all the time — I’ll put in a good word and we’ll make it happen.”

Now I always loved and drank coffee. My friend Josh and I used to keep a thermal carafe of coffee in our high school locker that we could sip off throughout the day. I mean, it was Folgers but this was the late 90’s.

Despite loving coffee, I’d never thought about working at a coffee shop or being a barista but I remember thinking: “Fuck it, I can do this for a few months until I’m super healthy again and then move on.”

Then something very strange happened. In between making paninis, chicken wraps, and 16oz white mochas, I began to fall in love.

Espresso seemed so magical, so mysterious and intriguing. I had to figure it out. I didn’t exactly know why but I just had to.

When Scott the espresso machine repair dude came through I always hung out after hours and peppered him with questions.

I started disassembling the grinders and putting them back together.

I would buy gallons of milk and come in after-hours to practice milk steaming and latte art.

I bought my own tampers and brought them into work.

This escalated into buying my own grinders on eBay.

In a pre-Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube world, I would scour obscure corners of the internet looking for any coffee knowledge I could find.

Everyone I worked with thought I was nuts and they were right.

Showing Up

Part of this was my personality. I have a hard time having a casual relationship with anything. I’ve always had the attitude that if you’re going to clock in for 8 hours, you might as well make it count.

I’ve always felt the need to do my best work even when I didn’t care about the job. That my work was representative of who I am and because I respected myself, simply doing an average job wasn't an option.

Almost 20 years later my entire professional life revolves around something that was supposed to be a pit stop. A summer job. A detour that turned into its own path.

This speaks volumes about what can happen when we show up. When we respect the work and respect ourselves.

We constantly have the opportunity to open the door to the possibility of discovery, surprise, new beginnings, and growth, but only if we’re engaged.

So if you’re phoning it in right now, do yourself a favor and give it your all. Worst case scenario you build your work ethic and reputation, best case scenario you might just fall in love.