Starbucks closing down 600 stores in 2008
My first experience writing computer programs was back in 2008. I was taking time off of college and working as a shift supervisor for Starbucks Coffee. In 2007, I joined the company at one of their busiest locations in the Southeastââa drive-thru store where everyone in Concord, North Carolina went to get their coffee beverages 1-3 times per day. After six months with the company I was promoted and sent to a new location where I would fulfill my new commission as a shift supervisor. The new store was a sleepy cafe in a business parkââa far cry from the fast-paced store Iâd come from that sat on a great corner location beside a shopping mall, movie theater, and hospital and just a of couple traffics light down from I-85 (in fact, this prime location was owned by Starbucks whereas most locations Iâm told were leased).
My new cafe was patronized by professionals who worked at the corporate offices in the vicinityââfinance and enterprise IT. In 2008, the economic depression hit and many of our customers lost their jobs. Eventually, Starbucks announced they would be closing 600 of its stores permanentlyââand my store was one of the first to be closed. But Iâm not going to talk about that in this post.
Change of pace
Before a chunk of our customers got laid off, life at the slow-paced cafe was great. The tips were down, but there were benefits to the extra time we had: our store was the cleanest in the district; we had time to chat with interesting customers. One of those customers was a South African man, and Iâm going to call him Dean in this post.
Dean
Dean visited us every afternoon along with his girlfriend. Heâd always order a venti (large sized) coffee, and even though he never asked us to leave room at the top, heâd walk to the condiment bar and pour out half of his coffee then top it off with half-and-half. 1-3 refills would be ordered before he left the cafe, and his intake and consistency was impressive.
Dean was wicked smart, and would talk circles around youââcharming you, insulting you, likely some small talk thrown inââbefore you knew what hit you. His dad was an engineer or scientist (I donât remember which it was) who worked with satellites and rockets for the government. His siblings were similarly accomplished. It was clear to me that Dean shared his familyâs intellect. He was a computer programmer who was taking time off of work for health reasons. I didnât learn what the reasons were, but Dean did share that he had a severe case of Tourette Syndrome and was now on medication for it. He explained to me some of this ways it affected him: he could be at a restaurant for a meal, and if the server took too long describing the daily specials heâd mutter something offensive and personal towards them; he admitted to doing the same to me when weâd make small talk during daily customer-barista exchanges.
Mötley Two
We had other interesting regulars like a couple of roommates who were in a Mötley CrĂŒe cover band together. They wouldâve been delighted to hear me say thisââjust picture Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee stumbling into a Starbucks cafe inebriated on a Saturday night and you get the picture of what they looked like. They were gentle souls whoâd sit and chat with us baristas on the patio after weâd closed and locked down the cafe for the night.
Network security = money?
One of our white-collar professional customers was a project manager for one of the banks (Charlotte is/was a banking capital and there was more than one bank headquarters in Charlotte). He always wore a sharp suit and a big smile, with perfect hair despite keeping the top on his jeep down constantly. He had two degrees: economics and computer science. He looked like he was happy the way his life was going, but I thought theyâd never let me declare an economics major at college since I took an online economics course and flunked it (I wish I was joking, but the professorâs tone via email was not welcoming or understanding when I asked for help or grace. It was my first time taking a college course 100% online and it was not a good experience.) I explored career options in technology and it seemed that the highest earning salaries were in a ânetwork securityâ role. (Today I work in tech, and I still donât know exactly what exactly a ânetwork securityâ person does.) I determined that a first step onto the network security professional path would be to enroll in an âintro to programmingâ course in community college.
Intro to Python programming
I enrolled in a thrice weekly class that started at 8 oâclock in the morning. This was my first time at the community collegeâs central campus in downtown Charlotte. I showed up to class this first day and felt alienated. The other students were gathered around each otherâs computer at one moment and then in an instant back at their own computer staring with laser focus into the monitor and typing quickly with intent. I didnât even know how to touch type. I missed out on AIM and internet chatrooms. In high school I typed all my papers the night before and very slowly.
Beard, suspenders⊠Unix
The professor looked just like the Unix programmer from the Dilbert comic.
I knew nearly nothing about computers, but this professor didnât fit what Iâd pictured a computer expert to be like. His faculty bio stated that he enjoyed playing authentic Appalachian music on banjo. I didnât think someone who cared so much about the art form of a rural society could be an expert in modern computers. His bio also stated that he first started working with computers in the US Navy in the 1950s. Back then I thought this meant he probably didnât keep up with advancements in technology, but now I think I would pay good money to go back in time and hang out with this man in class and in office hours so I could glean all I could from his knowledge and experience.
On the first day of class the professor talked a bit about Python. I remember he said Python was âgood enough for NASA to use for space shuttle missionsâ. Eventually he walked us through writing ahello world program in Python. (Yes, this was my first hello world.)
def class_is_boring:
By week two heâd introduced functions. I had not struggled one bit with the material, in fact I was bored and not challenged. I typed slow, but I completed the labs with time to spare. I was struggling to stay motivated. I felt disconnected from the professor who seemed to be separated from modernity by several generations to me who was young and immature. I felt disconnected from my classmates who never spoke a word to me, but seemed to all know each other, chummy with their greetings, inside jokes, and swapping flash drives and shared a common interested inââfor all I knewââtrying to hack the mainframe.
I was intimidated by my classmates when the class first started. It was clear that typing speed wasnât the only thing that separated us: they seemed to have no interest outside of computers. I found a small personal victory in hanging with the class at least for a couple of weeksââI discovered I was not incapable writing a computer program and this felt pretty alright. I had a glimpse that I could survive in the world of technology, but it wasnât fulfilling.
Iâd stop by my Starbucks in the mornings before class, and think about how I was happier there than I would be at the 8am Python programming class. Yes, Starbucks wouldnât be a way for me to earn enough money to cruise around with the top down while wearing expensive suits, but money wasnât everything. The class was boring, and I would have rather been in bed. I dropped the class after the second or third week.
Feeling âzenâ this go âround
That was twelve years ago. I havenât written much Python code since. Thatâs about to change.
This past weekend I installed Python (Anaconda distribution). It took me all weekend to install Pythonââ*lolz jk*ââbut I wrote Python code and it was fun! Iâm a seasoned programmer now, so itâs interesting to come back to this language that is well-designed and different from other languages I know, namely Ruby with itâs Perl-influenced TIMTOWTDI (âthere is more than one way to do itâ) principle. I appreciate the alleviation of decision-fatigue that Python offers here. I also like that I instantly feel empowered to step into the worlds of data engineering or machine learning if I choose to, since Python is important in those realms. JavaScript has been my primary scripting language for the past couple years, and itâs given me a passport into the internet browsers and popular frameworks like React, but itâs exciting to see what new adventures the future holds!
