How to Choose a Café

In a city that has a lot of options.

I’m one of those people who has about four offices. Sometimes I work from home. There are two shared office spaces I use for my two different jobs throughout the week, but my favourite in many ways …

is my local café.

I know the price of coffee means we are starting to choose between eating out and buying a house, but look, there is something about changing space that keeps me going and I’ll tell you about the science behind it:

1.    Physical distance from our usual environment enhances our capacity to engage experiential reflective practice. We see things more objectively. No joke, this is real.

2.    The man who makes the coffee at my local café is a saint.

Well, he’s not. In fact, I don’t know him very well, and every now and again he tells me that he partied too hard the night before. To the naked eye, he’s just your average Aussie with the average amount of tattoos, but I see beyond the obvious.

The way he treats people is outside of what’s average.

He is one of those people who gives care and attention to every single person that walks through the door. This is what I noticed the first day I went to this café, and this is why I went back.

I noticed that this particular space is a little oasis for people who spend a lot of hours alone. Elderly people frequent this café, because it’s a place where they are not just respected, but seen.

People go there to work, think, catch up with friends, but it’s also a place where people seem to meet for catchups they aren’t completely looking forward to. I regularly notice important but hard-work relationships between daughters and mothers-in-law, coworkers who are talking through some conflict, even couples who aren’t in a harmonious place. Something about the warm atmosphere helps, and I’ll tell you what it is …

It's the guy who makes the coffee.

The other day I watched him stop to encourage a man who had recently moved to Australia, to say that his English skills were really strengthening. It wasn’t racist or condescending; it was loving. I watched the customer’s spirit grow taller as he received the compliment from a long-time local that had taken the time to say, in his own way, “Keep going, you’re doing really well.”

What Damian doesn’t know is that even I, in the time I have now been working away in this café, have been doing so in a season of facing some of the hardest and bravest decisions of my life. There’s no doubt, the space has helped me along the journey. Every day that I go there, I watch him stop and honour the humanity of every single person that comes through the doors. He does it no matter what kind of day he is having; no matter how he is feeling.

His leadership is priestly.

I just know that one day, on the other side of this life, a lot of people will be clapping their hands in gratitude for his service and his presence. He will probably be surprised at the difference he made in the lives of so many hundreds of people.

Find places that do this for people.

That’s how I choose a café.

This is a photo of me and my husband in a cafe.

I just like it better than me sitting at my laptop in the cafe this story is actually about. Plus I didn't have one like that.