I love all you challengers. But I’d like to reiterate in this third month of the challenge: Be nice to your baristas.

Yes, trying to get a fair trade cup of coffee can be frustrating — much more frustrating than Starbucks headquarters makes it seem. But as you know, baristas often have NEVER been told to immediately offer a French press of a fair trade blend, as the corporate policy states. In fact, they’ve often been trained to name the other blends on brew, to try to discourage French presses, and to employ other tactics that challengers may see as fair-trade-unfriendly.

Despite that, at least in my experience, many baristas have gone out of their way to give me my cuppa fair trade. In fact, some wish they could do more for fair trade, BUT HAVE BEEN TRAINED NOT TO! Certainly I’ve had to deal with a lotta failed challenges, which I’m not happy about. Still, this is not the baristas’ fault.

In fact, baristas could be our greatest allies. Many embrace fair trade principles themselves. Seriously — Check out these posts by concerned baristas (along with my 2 cents) :) Some have been taught to believe that ALL Starbucks’ coffee is fair trade — If they really knew the truth, as opposed to Starbucks’ spin, I’m sure more than a few baristas would push internally to up Starbucks’ fair trade commitment.

But as you can imagine, a fair trade advocate who acts like an asshole will — be remembered as an asshole who demanded fair trade. Now that does nothing for you or for the fair trade movement.

Meaning: You can imagine how stressful it would be if someone comes in demanding something you’ve never heard of, then gets all huffy when you just do what your manager’s told you to do — then publicly blogs about the “idiotic” barista that didn’t follow policy.

It’s easiest to take out frustrations on the barista. After all, they’re right there, while Starbucks execs are far far away. In fact, I’d say corporate has played a bit of a role in pitting activists against baristas, making the baristas feel like (and in some cases, become!) scapegoats in this issue.

So please please please — unless you come upon the rare barista who actually IS unkind to you — be kind and patient.

We WILL demand changes from corporate, and hopefully one day, store action actually can consistently match official corporate policy. But for now, give a lil time for the French press to happen (one barista recommends 15 mins). The coffee isn’t taking a long time cuz the barista’s trying to get back at you in some way — It’s taking a long time cuz corporate hasn’t given baristas the training and resources (sufficient staffing, etc) to make sure its fair trade promises are carried out adequately.

Meaning: If a challenge fails, please, DO BLOG about it. Blog about how long it took. Blog your frustrations with Starbucks corporate. But blog with a goal in mind. And the goal here is not barista misery –

Let’s stay focused on what we’re trying to achieve here: To make sure Starbucks’ corporate actually takes the time and effort to educate its partners on its fair trade friendly policies, and to show Starbucks’ corporate that the demand for fair trade is larger than the mermaid claims it is.

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