Margot’s Decaf With Milk

Margot had taken her coffee with milk as long as she could remember. Raised on the shores of Lake Geneva – with a dairy farm as her neighbor – perhaps she felt a certain loyalty to supporting the national heritage industry.

Aside from the traditional strong ristretto of Switzerland, the people were also known for their penchant for the renversé – so named for its reversal of proportions of coffee and milk. Or maybe she just liked the taste of milk. Either way, the taste of milky coffee ran deep and wasn’t even uprooted when she moved to San Francisco and was immersed in a sea of specialty coffee shops.

Margot returned home once a year – a pilgrimage to reconnect with quality chocolate and family and friends. Many of her friends had remained in Geneva and she loved coming back to their traditions in the great international city. One such tradition was going for coffees in their old university district.

They sat in faded tearooms of boulangeries and enjoyed each other’s company to the backdrop of renversés and indifferent customer service. With each passing year spent in the over-attentive world of American customer service, the Swiss indifference endeared Margot all the more. They didn’t care if you liked their café or ever came back again – and Margot somewhat enjoyed that. It certainly meant she and her girlfriends could gab away for hours without being interrupted every five minutes by a server asking them if they were still happy.

On this particular visit, Margot’s friend Claire insisted they all go to the new hot coffee shop in town. The first of its kind, it looked to Margot like most of the hipster havens of San Francisco. Chemex and Siphon brewers lined the window while sweet Marzocco espresso machines sat proudly behind the bar. She had to smile at how the avant-garde coffee culture had come to her conservative home country. But she was sure the traditional ristrett’ and renversé rhythms would never die.

With Claire excitedly leading the way, the girls lined up to place their orders. The line was almost out the door and as they waited, Margot picked up a specialty coffee magazine that was sitting in a pile of compatriot publications on a funky jute bag side table next to the bar. It seemed to be the European version of an American magazine she’d seen at most of the Bay Area coffee shops. She opened it to a well-creased page with an article about this particular coffee shop they were in and how it was pied pipering the way for a coffee culture change across Switzerland.

Margot was intrigued, amazed at what she’d missed in the 12 months she was away and was just starting a paragraph on the man with the vision behind it all when the barista asked her what she’d like to drink.

‘Can I have decaf filter coffee, please?’ she asked – not expecting to be turned down. ‘Oh’ the barista replied with a false apology – and no small measure of condescension – ‘we’ll save you from that fate.’

Margot hadn’t realized decaf could be fatal.

‘It destroys the taste’ the barista continued as he began to prepare Margot’s caffeinated experience for her without awaiting her reply. ‘Oh, OK’ Margot replied – caught a little off guard. ‘Can I have milk with it?’ she asked – still not expecting the refusal that came next. ‘Oh,’ the barista began again in his same tone of false apology. ‘You don’t want milk in it – you’ll never taste the coffee.’

Margot gave up. She paid and took somebody else’s coffee that the barista handed to her and went to the couches where the other girls were already sitting happily gabbing away. As she sat there with her perfectly barista-ed specialty coffee, she missed the poor service and milky coffee of yesterday.