For someone like me, who spends an undesirable amount of time in offices, sat in front of a screen, arranging numbers into interpretable forms, working in more or less any other job seems like a great option. From earning my paycheque as a humble garage attendant to being the little old woman in the wool shop in town, idly clicking away on some nameless grandchild’s cardigan, i’ve often wished that i had chosen any other vocation to the one i’ve found myself wrapped up in. Well, except maybe an assistant at McDonalds.

Most recently, i’d started contemplating the joys that surely must come packaged with being a coffee shop assistant (or barista if you wish to grant them a sexy, professional-sounding title). Listening to music all day, chatting to customers, dressing in trendy, casual wear, surrounded by stylish, even artistically-inspired surroundings – and to top it all, if you love coffee, which i do, then you have the exquisite aroma of freshly ground beans and a plentiful supply of the stuff to drink; great!

So then imagine my initial confusion when i hit upon the realisation that the vast majority of baristas (or coffee monkeys if you wish to give them a more ridiculous, zoomorphic title) are, in an overwhelming majority of cases, the most miserable, seemingly soulless people you’re ever likely to meet outside of Argos warehouse.

But why was this? Why? From my perspective, as i described above, the setting seems sumptuous, the atmosphere amiable and the comparisons to that of a drab, cream-walled office cubicle seemingly work highly in the professions favour.

Then it dawned on me, that the explanation lay hidden behind the very things i had suspected made the job great; yes they listen to music all day, but no matter how highly you rate them, listening to Fleet Foxes and Laura ‘the ghost the ghost the ghost’ Marling on loop 35 hours a week would probably make you a little tetchy. Chatting to customers seems enticing from the perspective of an office worker, but any amount of time spent with the kind of typical self-aware, pretentious, Camden-cuddling people that frequent these coffee houses would inform you that your first instincts were misleading.

As for the artistically-inspired surroundings, no amount of newspaper-cuttings, vintage posters or Banksy knock-offs can shroud the fact that the majority of these houses are darker than the darkest darkroom in Sweden when it’s really dark. Well, that may be a slight elaboration on my part, but they’re dark, not to mention claustrophobic and depressing. Together with the smell, which i can imagine over time develops from warm, intoxicating Columbian roast into a scent much akin to the pleasantness one would garner from rotting flesh, these poor people are slaving away in a secret hell that their poor, damned, vacuous souls can’t even begin to comprehend; no wonder they’re miserable. If only they could tear themselves away from their Topman catalogues they could save themselves…