Greg Bruce is a multimedia journalist with The New Zealand Herald.
OPINION
It was 2011 when I first walked into landmark Mt Eden cafe Fraser’s with my laptop, insufficient funds for anything more than a coffee and no intention of leaving the Auckland establishment for severalhours. I had just started a non-lucrative career as a freelance writer and needed somewhere to work that wasn’t my freezing cold flat.
Every weekday for the next few weeks, I walked into Fraser’s with my laptop, ordered a large flat white, and sat there for most of the morning. Once the staff knew my order, I started feeling a bit uncomfortable, so I added three other cafes to my rotation. For the next three years, those four cafes were where I spent most of my weekday mornings.
Not once, during any of the hundreds of visits I made to those cafes over those years, did I buy more than a coffee, and never did any of the staff suggest I do so, which was lucky, since I couldn’t have afforded it. Had they done so, I would have been too embarrassed to ever return. That probably wouldn’t have made much difference to their business, but it would have made a big difference to me.
My visits to the cafes of Mt Eden made me feel more productive and more a part of the world. They played an important role in maintaining my mental health. It was uplifting to feel part of the buzz of life, of something bigger than me, at a time when I was otherwise isolated. It made me feel good.
You could argue it’s not a cafe’s job to worry about people’s feelings, but you could argue a cafe is just a place run by people. Is it people’s job to worry about people’s feelings?
Alleged table hog, deputy editor Mark Story, outstayed his welcome at Smith's cafe in Ahuriri. Photo / Warren Buckland
When Story later called the owner to ask if they had any comment for the article he was writing about the incident, they replied with the rhetorical question: “Is this newsworthy?”, which showed they were not only bad at public relations but also at journalism. Story’s article, published on this website on Sunday, would go on to generate massive online buzz, including huge numbers of clicks and comments, multiple follow-up stories and hours of talkback on Newstalk ZB.
During the years I was working in the cafes of Mt Eden, a large flat white cost approximately $4, meaning my access to those tables was typically costing me a little over $1 an hour. You could argue that this was a good rate of return, or a bad rate of return, or you could argue that “rate of return” is entirely the wrong way to think about it.
Being human is a bit about making money and a lot about trying to live a decent life. We do this by employing the qualities that make us most human – consideration, kindness and compassion – rather than the ones that make us most money – efficiency maximisation, rule-bound management practices and the arrogance to believe you know more about journalism than the deputy editor of the country’s best newspaper (Voyager Media Awards, 2024).
By his own account, Mark Story had only been in that cafe for an hour, was not depriving anyone else of a table, and would have left if he was, presumably because he’s a decent human, capable of considering the interests and wellbeing of others.
When we reduce people to their economic utility, we demean them and ourselves, and make our part of the world a colder, sadder place – and who would want to sit for more than an hour in a place like that?
