The Coffee Protectzia

A tale of absurdity in hiring practices

A friend of mine works in a big coffee house near Tel Aviv University, and she set me up an interview there to work as a waiter or barista. I went, but it turns out that at that particular branch, they were looking for people to work Friday nights/Saturday. Of course, I don’t have a way to get there without public transportation and they won’t pay for cabs, so they decided to send me to a branch that’s closer to where I’m staying. So I went to the local branch, interviewed with a woman named Orly*, and learned all about the glorious history of Coffee To Go, and was offered a job in the spot. Great, I thought, that wasn’t too hard. I’ll learn how to make cappuccinos, kill some time, and maybe even meet some people. Then came the fun part. Tuesday morning, at precisely 8:30, I showed up at Elite Coffee, and was promptly escorted upstairs to a small seating area where there were about eight other future baristas eagerly awaiting to absorb new coffee-related knowledge. We sat and waited for about 25 minutes until this Orly finally showed up and distributed a thick, spiral bound packet to each new recruit. This packet, which must have weighed maybe half a kilo, starts out with a nice five page summary of the company and makes a strong point that they weren’t taken over by this other company; they just bought a 26% stake, made them use their name, etc. She left us for another 15 or 20 minutes to look through the books, and finally someone else arrived to actually teach us how to make coffee. Again, you wouldn’t think that coffee is that hard to make. Just like you wouldn’t think wine was such a complicated thing to handle, so too is coffee, at least according to the pretensions of , a quasi-independent subsidiary of Elite-Strauss Ltd. (Just so we’re clear, Elite-Strauss owns precisely 26%). Somehow, two or three hours of coffee theory pass by without incident, we ate lunch, and individual instruction began. While each recruit made whatever drinks the instructor demanded, the rest of us got another stack of forms. With the sound of milk being frothed in the background, I started to look through the stack. The first form was the Israeli equivalent of a W-4 form, with pretty standard fields like name, address, ID number, etc. No big deal. I finished the _Cartis Oved_and moved on to the next form, which of course also asked for the same information that the previous form requested. But after the basic information section was what was dubiously billed as a “questionnaire”. The ranged from fairly reasonable to ask a future barista to completely ludicrous. Below are some examples, along with my approximate responses:

What are some of your hobbies and interests? Listening to music, photography What are the most important traits necessary for executing this position with success? Patience and courtesy Please copy the following math problems and solve below: 4x13 \= 52 54+12 \= 66 73-8 \= 65 What are your expectations from your work at Coffee To Go? I want to learn to make a really wicked cappuccino

Here’s where it got really good: “Please write a detailed CV on the next page. Make sure to fill at least one page.” I pondered the dubious relevance my prior experience in advertising might have before calling the manager and asking her to explain the meaning of all this, and she told me to write a history of my life. Though ridiculous, the question wasn’t as obscure as the following: “On the next page, either in pen or in pencil, draw a tree.” So that was it, I drew a palm tree, while at the same time, turning to everyone within eyesight of me and rolling my eyes and asking why this had anything to do with my newly chosen occupation. Nobody could provide a satisfactory answer. I thought that had to be the end of it, but then I reached the last page of the form, which was a blank page, except for the first line: “Compose a story about a topic of your choosing.” What is this, I thought, 5thgrade? Class, we’re going to do a creative writing exercise. The only thing that was missing was a page with the three dotted lines that show you how high upper and lower-case letters are supposed to be. But hey, they asked ridiculous and irrelevant questions, they were about to receive an equally ridiculous response. I began crafting a story.

Once upon there was an idealistic young guy from New York. He grew up and studied there, and after working in a boring office, he wanted a change. So Yossi quit his job and moved to Israel. Yossi wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do, so he decided to work in a coffee shop – he thought it would be really cool…

At the end, there was a release authorizing the company to send the questionnaire for analysis by a graphologist. This way, they would be able to learn about the personalities of the people they hired and if they are honest, trustworthy people. Isn’t this sort of thing widely discredited in most of the world? Because if you analyzed my handwriting or my dad’s you’d probably come to the conclusion that we’re serial killers. At least now I know how to make fancy coffee drinks. As if that weren’t ridiculous enough, they also wanted me to sign a contract. As I flipped through the three-page contract of seemingly innocuous clauses covering things like arriving on time and proper attire, I came to clause 5, which was effectively a non-compete/non-disclosure clause. What is anyone going to disclose, how to make a cappuccino? Do they seriously consider this information to be proprietary in nature? Come on. And if that wasn’t absurd enough, the next clause stated, in very formal legalese, that if you leave the job before six months, you are required to pay the company damages of ₪300 for each month you did not work out of those six moths. So, if you quit after 4 months, you would owe the employer ₪600. And mind you, all this for a ₪20/hr wage, less than ₪2 more than the nationally mandated minimum wage. To top it off, the boss said, “I’ve set up a really great place for you to work, the Tel Aviv train station. They sell over 4,000 cups of coffee a day at that branch!” This is bad for two main reasons: first, it means I would have to work about ten times as hard for the same ₪20/hr wage, and second, the train station is a prime target for terrorist activities during this tense period. She refused to remove the damages clause from the contract, and I refused to sign up for this arrangement, so I just said I was sorry but could not accept, and walked out of there. Let the record show that despite my refusal to sign, I received a call later that afternoon offering me a job at the very same cafe where I originally wanted to work, this time without signing the agreement.