K is a nightshift shopkeeper at a local drug store. 10 p.m., the shutters of the pawn store across the street are drawn, clunking down like rusty eyelids. Gently pressing his eyes and gulping down an energy drink, K trudges [1] into the back office to throw on his red uniform.
Three blocks away, S, a hedge fund manager dips her bagel in coffee and listlessly observes numbers ticking up and down on the screen. Gnawing at a piece of her night, she taps in more numbers to prepare a meeting with a Japanese client in three hours, 1 a.m. Her eyes trace the edge of her monitor to drop down, to roam about the gray floor, to meet the glass wall overlooking an insomniac [2] city from the 30th floor. She sips her coffee.
Oliver Sacks, a distinguished neurologist, declared, “I don’t so much fear death as I do wasting life.” In modern society, our work is one parameter we use to define ourselves. What we do for a living partly forms our identity. And we might have a degree of control over this since we can choose our profession. We are told that it is up to us to make something out of ourselves. Be a “self-made man.” As long as we try hard enough, we might even shoot for the moon. Then, it is natural for some of us to squeeze out as many working hours as possible to be productive — because we are responsible for our fate.
Enhancing productivity thus became one mission of individuals and corporations. One controversial variant of this mission has been to work more by reducing sleep, even though barely anyone recommends this method these days. And it is coffee that runs through the middle of our sleepless culture. Four centuries ago, coffee was a mysterious Ottoman tradition; today, “coffee break” is a generic phrase used in offices around the world. Three centuries ago, coffee was commercially grown in only one place, Yemen; today, it is a cash crop for more than 25 million people in over seventy countries. Two centuries ago, coffee was an upscale beverage for society’s upper classes; today, it is the universal work drug, filling billions of mugs every day.
Coffee owes its ascendency to caffeine. Caffeine, the world’s most famous psychoactive drug, satisfies the needs of capitalism. In the 17th century, before coffee entered the West, alcohol was the go-to drug. It muddied perception and masked the pain from physical labor; hence, beer breaks were common. These properties, however, became problematic when bookkeeping or operating machines became more important. Industrious and meticulous [3] workers were required: a single defective weaving machine would not only taint the reputation of its manufacturer but the productivity of the carpet factory that would use it.
That was when employers discovered the magic of coffee breaks. Augustine Sedgewick, in his book “Coffeeland,” tells a story of a Denver necktie maker Los Wigman Weavers and its owner Phil Greinetz. Greinetz hired older men to make up for the loss of young workers to the war efforts in the ’40s. But they weren’t fast enough to keep up with the complex necktie patterns. The owner then hired middle-aged women, who did fine with the patterns but lacked the “stamina” to work a full shift. When Phil raised the issue, his employees had a suggestion: to introduce two 15-minute coffee breaks per day.
The productivity improved immediately. The women were doing as much work in six and a half hours as the older men did in eight hours. Phil made the coffee breaks mandatory but decided not to pay for the 30 minutes during which his employees were drinking coffee. This led the Department of Labor to sue Los Wigman Weavers. A federal appeals court ruled that “[because the coffee breaks] promote more efficiency and result in greater output,” they benefited the company and should be counted as work time. Since America operates in a common law tradition, this ruling enshrined coffee break in American life.
Coffee makes us better, more alert workers. One observer in the 1660s described it as a “civil drink” that makes accountants and secretaries sober. Now, the beverage has become so ingrained that I-need-coffee memes proliferate the internet. Like we sometimes step back and reevaluate our career choices, we should stop and ask what makes us drink coffee. We are not looking for a simple answer here, don’t just say that you’re tired. Why do you have to suppress your drowsiness? Where did it all begin?