I followed Google Maps to a newly opened cafe in Fitzroy, Melbourne. According to Broadsheet, the ‘bright and airy’ cafe offered a generous menu of coffee.

The barista was tinkering with a series of coffee apparatuses and beakers, making the area behind the counter look like a year 10 science lab. He looked bored, which seemed fair. The cafe was empty.

Sitting on a light timber stool next to a clinically white table, I scanned the various drinks that impressively filled two pages.

The list covered everything from hot chocolates made with organic cocoa from a local fair trade company to Ethiopian nitro cold brews. Under every drink was an elaborate description, detailing the origin of the beans, roaster and the coffee farmer.

I wasn’t even in the cafe for a coffee. I was staying in a friends apartment while he was away on business and had spent two days walking around Melbourne largely without speaking to a soul. As a barista in Perth, I thought striking up a conversation with a fellow cafe-worker would be an easy way to break the two-day silence.

I watched a lady walk in and order. ‘Almond cappuccino,’ she said, then stood in the corner and began scrolling on her phone.

The barista was impeccably well-groomed and wore a leather strapped apron and he was keenly watching the coffee pour out of an espresso machine that had six group handles, which seemed excessive for a space no bigger than a one-car garage.

He adroitly poured latte art in a takeaway cup. The artwork resembled an elaborate Christmas tree. He then popped a lid on the coffee which, I thought, undermined the point of latte art. It was like throwing a dollar in the tip jar when nobodies looking. “Thanks, Julie,” he shouted.

She didn’t respond, though, continuing instead to giggle at something on her iPhone. “Thanks, Julie,” he shouted again. She seemed so unaware of what was happening outside the contents of her phone I doubted whether she’d be able to detect a cataclysmic explosion let alone someone calling her name. Still, the barista, instead of walking three feet and handing her the coffee, called her name yet another time.

Frustrated with this scene before me, I grabbed the coffee and tapped the customer on the shoulder. “Here,” I said, putting the coffee near her phone.

“Oh,” she jumped. “Was in my own world,” she said. Were you just? I thought, watching her leave.

Hoping to have a conversation, to find common ground, I said to the barista: “Some people, hey?” He shrugged like he didn’t have the energy to have a conversation with a customer who was desperate for company. I don’t blame him, but he certainly debunked the chummy hospitality stereotype.

To break the loud silence, I said: “So, are the coffee beans for the hand-poured filter coffee grown in Columbia and roasted in Sweden or the other way around?” I knew coffee didn’t grow in Sweden.

‘All the info is on that menu, mate,’ he said and walked away. I had already read the entire menu.

The room suddenly did feel—to Broadsheet’s credit—airy. The barista was now on his phone. In the background, the cold brew was slowly dripping, drop by drop, filling in the silence between tracks on the record player. Feeling that my traveller loneliness now had an exclamation mark, I got out my phone and walked out. A notification from Google Maps had bannered across the screen. It said: How did you rate your experience?

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