In 1996, The Republic of France officially ended conscription. However, young adults are still required to register in case of natural disaster, or the unlikely event of armed conflict. They may also choose to legally satisfy any future draft obligation in advance, by volunteering for either La Gendarmerie Nationale (France’s National Guard), or Service du Café (Café Service).
Conceived in the final weeks of the First Indochina War (1946-54), Café Service became popular in the 1960s with baby-boomers (boomers enfant), and is a now a universal choice with French Millennials.
“The skills a young man learns in Café will last a lifetime.”
These words, reflecting a mid-century gender bias, are attributed to the late Commandant Jean-Marie Martz, France’s first acting head of Café Service. In accordance with his efforts, the three “Règlement (rules) du Café” were established:
1st Règle – Those who serve in Café shall later be served.
2nd Règle – All patrons know good service, because all patrons have waited tables.
3rd Règle – If Café is overwhelmed, patron and server alike shall join together in support of Café.
What began as an option for pacifists in the municipality of Paris quickly spread throughout the provinces, and soon to the continent’s other romance-language nations. In contrast to combat training, Café Service is regarded today as a truer reflection of European values, especially for those who find the military to be hazardous and depressing.
As is often stated, the European mindset is more inclusive as a result of multi-language tasking. Just imagine crossing the border to a kaffeeklatsch, a mere kilometer from one’s birthplace, while suffering a piercing caffeine headache, and forced to recall arcane idioms in a second, third, or even fourth language: how would one order a short macchiato in Romanian? What are the Basque words for “half and half”? This dynamic mélange of cultures is the primordial soup from which Café Service evolved.
In the twenty-first century, the Café system expanded to Germanic language democracies, with the noted exception of The United States, a country still burdened with the massive troop requirements for nation building. In contrast, Café Service became compulsory in both Switzerland and Luxembourg—a required two-year hitch between ages eighteen and thirty-nine, depending, of course, on the individual’s school and vacation schedules.
The basic provisions of European Café Service are usually introduced in grade school, beginning in K through 4 socialism classes, typically, “Intro to Socialism I & II.” It’s also covered in the first chapters of the ubiquitous Finn primer, We Have It All Because We Share All of It.
As a subset of physical education, Café Boot Camp teaches high schoolers a way of directing their hormonal energies toward the basic needs of others. In a series of lessons under the rubric “Get Over Yourself,” teenagers are trained to focus on what is referred to as “the other,” and invited to imagine whether this “other” requires an additional napkin, or refill.
Longstanding patrons of Café often assume the principles of service to be self-evident. However, these concepts are still new to parts of the globe, including as mentioned, the US, particularly in the region between New York and San Francisco.
Take for example, the case of Langford Smith, English professor from The University of Cheyenne, visiting a dozen European cities in five days. As he penned in a recent series of American Scholar Tweets: “At first I was offended when a German waiter asked me to bus my own table, bluntly stating, ‘After all, you’re only playing a game on your iPhone.’ I had not realized the café was serviced by this single, frazzled man. Clearly, something was amiss. An elderly Belgian woman next to me pointed out that our waiter was also desperately jotting down notes for a new play. He had worked a double shift, and was having trouble with his ending. I decided to take my own dishes to the kitchen and promptly returned with a broccoli quiche for table 6. The hard part was adjusting to the new language. Patrons shook their heads as I approached the wrong tables. Thankfully, a pre-adolescent girl in black chiffon, reading Hermann Hesse and drinking café noir, continually pointed me in the right direction. When my shift ended, I could count to twelve in German, and had earned 41 euros.”
Not an atypical example of the cultural lag between nations with Café Service, and those without.
As a blustery counter-argument to the Café system, American capitalism has always demanded an ever-expanding margin of profit whose mantra is “turn that table over.” Many strategies are employed: dimming lights so students are unable to read, eliminating Wi-Fi during lunch, and even harassment by waiters to relinquish a table, thus binding their allegiance to the leaseholders such as Citigroup and Bank of China.
Veterans of Café Service see things a bit differently: the drinker and server as two characters in a timeless drama whose well-being is interdependent. The first duty a Café Server learns is that coffee is delivered promptly, not just to make a buck, but to relieve patrons suffering caffeine addiction. With experience, this type of anguish can be identified as in battlefield triage, where patrons are served in order of testiness.
As the patron’s tolerance decreases, more cups are required at an ever-increasing pace to maintain verbal and intellectual momentum until, finally, a point of saturation makes it impossible to think, and the patron might as well put on an apron and sweep the floor.
However, the opposite holds true. The role of server is sometimes compared to alternating current. When euphoric bliss peaks, and true industry at a table is realized, as observed through rapid speech, furious typing or intense sketching, the server should remain aloof. These signals are intricate and subtle.
The patron/server dynamic is probably the longest and most reliable relationship most of us will have after separating from our mothers and, with luck, maturing under the protective umbrella of democratic socialism.
If your server detects a trembly hand and suggests decaf, as a confederate of Café Service, you welcome the guidance. Patrons should be alert to what acid tummy and canker sores are indicating. Naturally, it’s not the responsibility of the server, but rather one’s lover, or lovers, to point out that “tapping your pen incessantly and finishing my sentences is annoying as hell.”
Comradeship, however, does not grant the privilege to interrupt a patron’s tranquility once it’s airborne. With experience, servers learn that the patron is there to sip latte and perhaps parse the trajectory of her career, not to receive an account of your Hyundai’s flat tire coming home from a Duran Duran reunion concert.
Likewise, patrons learn that your server has come to deliver drinks, not to kill five minutes enduring a rhapsodic, first-draft dissertation about workplace despondency in Joseph Heller’s Something Happened.
What is the future of Café? No one can say for certain, but many believe that the days of individual genius, an Einstein or Madame Curie, may well be of the past. In Café, patrons build freely from the shared ideas of others. A coffee is, after all, the combined result of countless growers, shippers, servers, and psychologists who determined the three basic cup sizes.
Suspicions aroused by Café Service are often born of provincialism. Critics from the Von Mises Institute in southern Alabama alert us to the danger of Café replacing the church in working class neighborhoods. While it’s true that some drinkers adhere to a dogma of creamer and sweetener selection, this hardly threatens religion. There is no liturgy in Café Service other than the so-called “Goldilocks Serving,” not too hot, not too cold—just fuckin’ perfect.
Caffeine consumption, in fact, may bring us closer to God. It’s consoling, sometimes epiphanic. Certainly, an omnipresence can be felt at the halfway point in a Trenta cappuccino, or the final sip of a second eggnog frappe sprinkled with nutmeg. There is no single vessel of awakening. A serene sense of earth’s eternity, and the fleeting sparks of enlightenment we humans are capable of on our best day, may well be attributed to a tiny, momentary shot of espresso.
Mobil Kamera
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