It’s the topic of conversation that echoes off the library’s walls in the early morning hours when the angst must be directed somewhere: the new schedule for Einstein's. Upperclassmen know that in previous years one’s late-night caffeine withdrawals and bagel cravings could be satisfied by the silver bullet that was the 1 a.m. study break at Einstein's. Now, we are left with a 24-hour room for our study-cave and diet Mountain Dews from its vending machines to tide us over during those inevitable study marathons.
But what if the Einstein's hours are about a different kind of injustice than that which we are all prone to selfishly rant about? What if our lack of coffee stems from a deeper lack of compassion? What if we start thinking outside of ourselves as students and begin to wonder about the effects that these hours have had on the employees of Einstein's?
Imagine this. A single mother works minimum wage from 11 p.m. to 2 a.m. at a college coffee shop. She’s always on her feet, always busy, always exhausted from trying to make ends meet. But as long as she holds this job, the pieces fit together, even if it gets a little tight at the end of the month. Her position earns her $8 an hour — just 75 cents over the federal minimum wage — and she more than likely works a second, perhaps a third job just to keep up with rent, utilities, and the basic costs of living the paradoxically expensive life of those in, or close to, poverty.
So what happened to her when Einstein's closed down its evening operations? Has any student been asking what options this woman was given? Did she have any kind of say in the changes that directly and dramatically affected her life?
Scott Dorriety, Food Services Director for Furman, promises that no employee was terminated because of the hours change, but concerns still linger with regards to the decision-making power these employees had when it came to what was going to happen to their jobs.
We complain about our lack of caffeine, but we are quick to forget about those who served it to us. We forget about those employees now working different hours, those unable to maintain another job, those forced to completely change their already tenuous schedules, those who had no persuasive influence with regards to the changing hours of the business for which they tirelessly work. We forget about those whose opinions held no authority but whose working lives would be most directly impacted in the midst of this organizational change. We forget about the names, faces, and stories behind the cash registers and espresso machines. We forget to think outside of ourselves. In our discontent, we lose sight of that which should most upset us. We forget that students are not the ones whose lives have been most fundamentally affected by these changes.
Maybe we feel that, as college students, we do not possess the capacity to fix true global injustices. Racism, economic inequality, human trafficking, and hunger are too vast and too complex to mend, so we emotionally compartmentalize and focus our energies on what we can fix: the scarcity of late-night coffee, our own desires, needs, and fears. But let’s dig a little bit deeper. Our lack of coffee perhaps stems from a lack of compassion, a lack of advocacy on behalf of the wage workers, and a silence imposed on those who, in the most difficult circumstances, still show up for work everyday. We might not be able to solve the vast injustices we see in the world, but this is a problem we can face, here and now.