Alice Lin
/ Daily Bruin
Students and professors look to campus coffee shops for their daily dose of energy to make it up all the UCLA hills. Their minds are often on their mocha lattes and double espressos, but have they ever stopped to think what it’s like to be behind the counter? Join prime as we explore a day in the life of a student barista.
The sun has just begun to rise.
A little groggy, Michael Adia walks from his dorm to Kerckhoff Coffeehouse for his opening shift. He collects the cash for the day from Ackerman Union, switches on the cash registers and begins brewing the first batch of coffee. When the coffee shop opens at 7 a.m., Adia is immediately swamped with a line of customers that trails out the door.
“Coffee makes their world go round,” said Adia, a second-year civil engineering student.
Amid the morning rush, a man who works at Counseling and Psychological Services comes in, asking for his usual tall soy mocha. He specifies – as he does every morning – that his name is Bryan with a Y and asks for a receipt. Adia draws a smiley face on his cup.
Later, Adia and his co-workers greet another UCLA employee who frequents the cafe. Adia has already prepared his piping hot grande Italian coffee, with room.
“After you give it to him, he’ll always say, ‘Terrific!’” Adia said. “I remember one morning when I didn't see him and to me, that was odd because he’s been coming here longer than I’ve been working here.”
As the minutes go by, Adia hands out cup after cup to student after student. He said he dreams of becoming an 80-year-old barista at his very own coffee shop.
Daniel Leventhal, wearing a baseball cap, ambles toward UCLA’s smallest coffee shop: Terasaki Cafe.
Leventhal, a fourth-year Portuguese student, is the only employee on shift. He prepares the usual tea bags and bagels at a coffee stand no bigger than a golf cart.
Students, researchers and even firefighters trickle into the courtyard throughout the morning and patiently wait for their coffee and pastries. Between customers, Leventhal finds some time to do his homework.
Among the usual crowd of students and professors, the UCLA mariachi band, Mariachi de Uclatlán, approaches Leventhal, asking for some coffee.
Surprised by their arrival, he asks them to sing for him. They put on a show right there in the courtyard, the upbeat sounds of guitars and trumpets carrying into the nearby buildings.
And then it’s back to work.
“Terasaki never gets awfully busy,” he said. “But since I work alone, I have to make things happen by myself.”
After a couple of hours of brewing, waste water accumulates in the stand’s tank. Leventhal collects a pipe from the storeroom, attaches it to the receptacle and allows the liquid to drain out. The pipe leaks a little, and he quickly cleans it up to avoid a sticky floor and an angry building manager.
Mariana Loza gathers up her books after studying at Young Research Library and rushes to change into her navy work polo and cap.
Loza, a fourth-year fine arts student, begins work nearby at Cafe 451, located on the first floor of the library. The cafe is named in honor of Ray Bradbury's famous novel "Fahrenheit 451," which was written in UCLA's Powell Library.
“Most people are there in the afternoon to study or to meet,” Loza said. “The cafe is busy in a quieter sort of way because it’s in a library.”
Throughout the afternoon, Loza restocks snacks, throws out the old coffee and makes fresh hot and iced coffee – a schedule with little room for anything else.
But then a student worker tries to plug in a phone charger into one of the coffee shop outlets and it suddenly sparks up, creating a miniature fire. Loza and her coworker, in a state of panic, run to get the fire extinguisher from the room next door, rushing back just in time to put out the flames. “The funny thing is the customers saw us freaking out, but they didn't react at all,” Loza said. “They just kept studying.”
Students napping on the lawns of the Murphy Sculpture Garden in the lazy afternoon pick up some coffee to recharge themselves at the tiny and secluded cafe next door – Stage Canteen.
From behind her counter in MacGowan Hall’s courtyard, Hashwini Ganesh, a fourth-year economics student, watches people sing and recite film scripts. Occasionally, they break into a dance if their part involves choreography.
“People in the film school are always very loud, and I like it,” Ganesh said.
Ganesh’s favorite customer, a graduate student, comes in. She steams the milk and mixes powder into his tall chai latte. “He always complains it’s hot in LA, yet he always gets a hot drink,” Ganesh said.
While designing some latte art in his drink, Ganesh and him have conversations about their countries of origin, their lives and sometimes the weather.
“We were just talking and we found out we have the same kind of heritage,” she said. “He’s Sri Lankan and I’m half Sri Lankan as well. I don’t know why it was interesting, but I just remember that moment all the time.”
Ganesh hands him his cup, waving goodbye as he leaves.
Customers slowly start to drift away from Music Cafe and head back home as their need for coffee diminishes with the sun’s rays.
However, student barista Lauren Kean’s work shift has just begun. A fourth-year atmospheric, oceanic and environmental sciences student, Kean makes herself a quick cup of coffee to get through her closing shift at Music Cafe.
Five minutes after the cafe closes, a woman comes in and orders a decaffeinated coffee. Kean has already cleaned out the coffee tumblers, so she apologizes to the customer and explains the situation. The woman is persistent and approaches Kean again, hoping to change her mind. In order to appease the customer, Kean brews the decaffeinated coffee again and ends up staying overtime.
“I was annoyed at how demanding someone could be, and I still think of it from time to time,” Kean said. “I saw her at Barney’s (Beanery) in Westwood one time and ... all the feelings came back.”
Kean gets over the negative experiences at work by laughing about them with her co-workers.
“I usually remember the bad customers more than the good customers,” Kean said. “(But my co-workers and I) manage the stress of the day by drinking lots of coffee, eating pastries, complaining a lot and playing music."