I am a great barista & cafe staff, but i am finding it near impossible to find a cafe that is looking for a good barista and meets my own standards, they are: I expect the coffee machine to be well taken care of and properly maintained. I expect the grinder to be clean, and void of stale/rotten oils in the hopper. I expect a tamp (this, i have found it'sn as easy as i expected, and now bring my own tamp to trials) and most importantly I expect properly sized milk jugs. I quit my job last week as the owners were splendid, the team was fun, the pace was perfect, but the manager was misogynistic & crude, and I had had enough. Subsequently, i have done 5 trials, and have gotten every job that i applied for. But none of these places REALLY expect excellence, they claim that they expect and want good quality coffee, but when i get behind the machine i find jugs that make, like 8 cups of coffee at a time, and the manager tells me this jug will be my best friend. I also find 10 second pours. This is unacceptable to me. I don't mind working in such and making some MAJOR changes to force them to be at my standard, but i expect to get paid much more for that. Ideally, i would like to find a place that already has a great set up & passion, because i'm tired of arguing with these cafes that have such poor standards... I think that they figure they've got customers, and they come back, so why change? why invest the money into getting the machine properly serviced and the couple seconds more that it would take to make some superb coffee. I'm almost thinking of giving up and looking for a coffee rep job or something. Could any of you offer some advice to finding a place that meets my standards? I'm in Melbourne, City, and am willing to travel for the right place. sorry about the rant, just very frustrated.
