Celebrate Your Work!
As we roll into Labor Day weekend, I wanted to take just a moment to remind us to Celebrate Work!
Labor Day honors the American labor movement and the contributions that workers have made to the development, growth, endurance, strength, security, prosperity, productivity, laws, sustainability, persistence, structure, and well-being of the country.
Take something as simple as a cup of coffee served in your local coffee shop.
The following was taken from a post called Seed-to-Cup, The Journey of a cup of coffee. Think of all of the people who are employed and the different working conditions of each step!
- Nursery – where seeds are planted to grow coffee plants – tended for 4-6 months.
- Coffee Farm – plants take 3- 5 years of nurturing before they produce.
- Harvesting: Some done by machines, some by hand – it takes around 120 beans to make an 8 oz cup! and there are over 1 million cups of coffee served each day!
- Sorting and loading: again some by machine, some by hand
- Wet Mill: sorted by quality, depulpled and washed and laid out to dry
- Dry Mill: beans are put through mill to hull, destone and grade beans
- Cupping: samples are tasted and batched based on quality and destination
- Sales: The Farmer sells to a buyer (trading firms, importers, larger commercial coffee companies)
- Shipping: getting the beans to the buyer -roads, ships, trucks, trains, loaders
- Roasters: beans are property roasted to taste for retail
- Your Local Coffee Shop: Barista’s prepare the coffee for your order.
Look at all of the people involved! All working for a living to bring you a cup of coffee so that you can grab that morning cup to get through your workday!
Now think of all of the products we consume each day – so many jobs and people who do the work!
HAPPY LABOR DAY!