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SEXIST CULTURE HAS NO PLACE IN COFFEE INDUSTRY

An ex-employee of Four Barrel Coffee tweeted yesterday how seeing the company back on social media still overwhelms her with damaging negative emotions. If you don’t remember the story, you can read it here.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/Four-Barrel-Coffee-founder-Jeremy-Tooker-accused-12476911.php#photo-14797418

I bring this up at a time when someone I know confided in me that as a female barista, they didn’t know how to deal with being constantly hit on by her male colleagues. She wasn’t dealing with the kind of harassment allegations against Four Barrels, but it did make me wonder how prevalent or insidious the issue could be at the retail end of the coffee industry.

An investment bank famously used to pay women to walk around the trading floor seductively eating a pickle (from the book on bond trading – Liars Pocker). That was her job, and all she was paid to do.

In the gaming industry, Brianna Wu is smart, runs a successful gaming company, and is a woman – something of a rarity in the industry. When she dared to voice her opinion about the gaming world she was harassed to the point were legitimate death and rape threats, along with hackers revealing her personal address online forced her to flee her home. Brianna has now run for Congress twice and we’re sure she’ll get there eventually.

Don’t even get me started on Uber.

I consider myself quite macho. I have manly facial stubble, used to box and do martial arts at an International level, ride a large motorbike and eschew any coffee drinks with milk and flavouring. But what I consider really macho, is being mature enough to know the difference between funny and offensive, being smart enough to value people smarter than you, and wise enough to know how to employ all those smarts in your organisation.

I love the coffee business for many reasons, and at many levels, it is actually a more inclusive industry than others I have worked in. Which is all the more reason to ensure it stays that way! Bullying whomever the target is, should not be tolerated, and companies can do something about this by setting the culture of the business which has to come from the top.

This doesn’t mean pandering to over-sensitive political correctness that sucks all the fun out of life, it means having carefully considered policies that match your principles, and then communicating them so everyone understands. It’s worth having safe consultations with your employees every 3-6 months to find out if there’s a problem before it gets out of control.

These are the basics of good governance which ensure your company can be thriving in years to come with a solid brand value. I hope we, as an industry, never let the ugly cancer of racism, sexism or ageism – in fact, any of the ‘isms, infect our beautiful world.

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Author

  • Nick Baskett

    organisation:

    Nick Baskett is the editor in Chief at Bartalks. He holds a diploma from the Financial Times as a Non Executive Director and works as a consultant across multiple industries. Nick has owned multiple businesses, including an award-winning restaurant and coffee shop in North Macedonia.

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