the feminist librarian reads

I worked with a number of rosy-cheeked middle-aged women who could quote the company’s binders of promotional materials verbatim. They anticipated Pumpkin Spice Latte season with a terrifying, giddy excitement. One had a “How to Make a Mocha” poster hung in her home, above her living room couch. On the weekends, they got together with their boyfriends—many of whom worked at a Starbucks across town—and made cocktails out of Starbucks-branded coffee liqueur. The motivational posters and the mandatory lunch breaks and the incremental raises every six months or so, practices ripped straight from a corporate (albeit paper-pushing) culture increasingly on the downswing, created an effusive sense of brand identification among its employees I hadn’t imagined before and haven’t seen since.