Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Imagining an Honest Thank You Note

Dear child I care about and their really great parent(s),

Thank you so much for the holiday present! It really means a lot to me that you thought to include me in your seasonal thank you's. Sometimes I feel a little pushed around at your school, like people don't see that the work I do running the afterschool program, which is also a large chunk of your student's arts programming, as a vital part of the education and support the school provides. It really feels good for a family to see me as important enough that I get a holiday teacher-present. Your kid is great, and I'm not just saying that. I really love how much of my job is about tending to young people's emotional experience, and I am learning so much about how to respond to sadness, happiness, frustration, anger, entitlement, wronged-ness, confusion, panic, exhaustion, overexcitement, glee as I support your child through their after school hours.

I have to say that I'm disappointed in your choice to buy me a Starbucks gift card. You weren't alone: they comprised all but two of my work-related holiday presents; its a little bit uncanny. I really don't want to seem like a brat here, but I don't like Starbucks. I try not to buy anything there. I feel strongly that corporate franchises are not doing good to culture or the planet. Big chains need to fill a lot of stores, and so it only really makes economic sense for them to do business with other big producers: large-scale factories and factory farms. I understand this scale of production and trade as fundamentally unsustainable. Because any chain store location provides the same feel and products as the first one you ever visit, I believe franchises foster a comfort with sameness. We place a high value on the convenience of this sameness: we know what to expect, we can replace our favorite product, trade in presents, or redeem gift cards any place we go- but as a trade off we are handing over what places make us comfortable, and what stuff we choose to buy (and thus eat, wear, drink, read, play with, listen to, and decorate our spaces with) to a smaller and smaller group of design "experts". Starbucks is particularly problematic to me because of its cultural position as ambiguously alternative and creative. By evoking some platonic ideal of an independent coffee house in its design, Starbucks has helped institutionalize the homespun coffee-house aesthetic, forging a model of how to profit off of the human need for identity expression through a process known as branding. Starbuck's is also thought of as vaguely conscious: and it is true that it is the largest buyer of Fair Trade coffee in the world, and has made some notable efforts to decreasing their carbon footprint.. In making symbolic changes towards greening their business practice that distract from the ways they are really wasting and abusing resources, they are participating in a scary phenomena known as 'greenwashing,' a play on 'whitewashing', that refers to corporation's ability to placate customer's ecological concerns with illusions of sensitivity that amount to almost no actual ecological change. Starbucks very successfully enacts all of the big trends that scare me about corporations, and they do it well. Receiving their gift cards almost exclusively as a holiday present from families, though, has made me newly aware of the uniquely awful role this company plays in society.

Look, I know this letter is kinda obnoxious, especially because I'm ostensibly writing to say thank you. Maybe you know all that stuff already, or maybe you don't agree with my beliefs about Starbucks. But because I love your child so deeply-though only a tiny fraction as intensely as I'm sure you feel about them- I feel a special intimacy towards you, which makes me desire to be honest with you. I don't think it's your fault that you thought buying a Starbucks gift card was a good idea, it's clearly the most socially acceptable, normal thing to do. You don't know much of anything about me, and you don't know where in the city I live, so it makes sense that you'd want to get me something as universally appealing as warm beverages, and that you'd want me to be able to get them whatever place is convenient to me-but I've already explained how insidious I believe this valuing of convenience is. There must be other options.

It is depressing that our common ground is Starbucks, I believe we can do better. How can we move beyond the expectation that we will endorse global chain stores, to function based on a common ground that is sustaining to our community, our city, our planet, our culture, and to each other? One family got me a bottle of wine, which I think is pretty awesome, but you could get me any number of foods or drinks, at whatever level of sustainability you wish to endorse. Or you could make me something! My mom and I used to make little tins of cranberry sauce for all of our teachers. I make it for myself at Thanksgiving, now, and think of it fondly as 'teacher cranberry sauce'. Sometimes we'd make coffee cakes instead. I can see the appeal of a gift certificate, though: they're easy to transport, and guarantee that I'll like what I end up with. If this is the case, you're in luck! The school we share is in an amazing neighborhood filled with small businesses there that I'd be happier to support. For one, there's A Little Bit Wicked, that new little vintage shop on Houston- which I know is a painfully obvious real-estate gain of the gentry, but I have to admit I like to browse through, and would love to get a sweater at. Every so often I cave on the way to work and get an amazing brownie at Clinton Street Bakery, so a gift card there would also be a huge treat. There are a couple of sweet little coffee houses across the street from there, too, if you're intent on this hot liquids theme. There are also a whole bunch of food establishments nearby that I have strong feelings for from having visited them as a child- Russ and Daughters, Yona Shimmel Knishes, The Doughnut Plant, Guss's Pickles, Katz's Deli, Economy Candy. I love Bluestockings Radical Books, but I bet that's kind of, well, radical for your taste. Any one of these places, I would be proud for you to give business to on my behalf. Starbucks, on the other hand, makes me feel kinda trapped: I do want to access all the cash you and other families collectively spent on presents for me, and I know that they have already made the money you spent on the gift cards, whether or not I redeem it for 10 or 15 chai lattes. A lot of people shop at Starbucks, whether or not they have gift cards, so I'm looking for somebody who I can trade all the cards for cash with, someone who would definitely be endorsing Starbucks anyway. My dad offered to trade with me, but I just know that he'd go to Starbucks more often if he had them. I might trade him some, and I might also ask my ex-boyfriend who goes to Starbucks a lot, though I suspect he'd find it kind of tacky. Once I manage to trade them all in, I promise I'll use the money to buy myself a holiday present that I'm really excited about, and I'll think of you.

Happy New Year,
Rachel