Did Capitalism Create Coffee Productivity?

Originally published: 11 May 2020

I'm not feeling productive.

While Quarantine has led to increased Netflix screening time and banana bread baking, that thought must have crossed your mind at some point during lockdown. Productivity is socially drilled into us to the point where not doing enough can make us feel guilty. So you go on super-workaholic mode, reaching the peak of mount productivity until you can't handle the altitude- phase two: the Quarantine burnout.

In retrospect, this burn out could have been prevented with an obvious solution- nay, the ultimate cure: a coffee break. It was the year 1952 and the Pan American Coffee Bureau spent over $2 million to tell you exactly that.

COFFEE BREAKS

The concept of a coffee break was popularised by The Bureau with their advertising slogan: "Give Yourself a Coffee Break- And Get What Coffee Gives to You." What is it that coffee gives you? Energy? Higher productivity levels? It was open to the floor. And capitalism profited from sweeping it.

As the US entered the Second World War, Eleanor Roosevelt began her weekly radio program, 'Over Our Coffee Cups, which was sponsored by The Pan American Coffee Bureau. In a broadcast, the First Lady announced (addressing young people): "I have faith in you! I feel as though I was standing upon a rock. And that rock is my faith in my fellow citizens." The same broadcast ended with the sponsorship message: "And don't forget that good-night cup of coffee." In the midst of a World War, as the First Lady addresses the nation, drop in a sponsorship message about coffee- lobbyists sure knew how to advertise.

If you know anything about psychology, you'll re-call the infamous Pavlov's study. The details are gruesome and may upset dog lovers- or humans in general so we'll skip that. The point is, the psychologist of this famous study- J.B. Watson- worked on an advertisement for Maxwell House Coffee. Watson was a behavioral psychologist who believed people could be conditioned (trained) to act in certain ways in response to repetitive actions. This concept was put to practical effect in a commercial for Maxwell House which featured the coffee break. According to an article by Coffee For Less: "…if you were going to have a coffee break you had to be drinking Maxwell House coffee..Up until the late 1980's, Maxwell House coffee was the most purchased brand of coffee in the United States." This concept resonates today: Have a break, have a KitKat.

Advertising certainly played a key role in shaping the American consumer's addiction towards coffee. An article by The New Yorker, referring to cravings, notes that they "are not natural appetites but carefully created cultural diktats." Your cravings could be influenced by strategic advertising. Identity crisis?

CAFFEINATING THE LAW

In his new book Coffeeland, historian Augustine Sedgewick offers a new perspective on coffee breaks, which can summarily be present as: capitalism profits from you taking a coffee break because after consuming this magically energising beverage, you become more productive and consequentially make them more money. Sedgewick mentions how a firm calculated that coffee breaks saved them "$130,000 a year in over-all labour costs when the coffee is delivered to the workers' desks."

Sedgewick also discusses the origin of the coffee break at Los Wigman Weavers (a Denver necktie company). An employer, Phil Greinetz noticed that "four women who had been among the worst performers were now among the best" after Greinetz introduced two fifteen minute coffee breaks- "one in the morning and one in the afternoon." Greinetz made these breaks compulsory but they were unpaid. Put your money where your mouth is- Greinetz didn't and he was sued.

In 1955, the U.S. Department of Labour sued Greinetz for refusing to compensate his workers for the coffee breaks, which violated the Fair Labour Standards Act 1938. The initial decision favoured Greinetz but after an appeal in 1956, a federal appeals court ruled that coffee breaks: "promote more efficiency and result in a greater output", noting that they benefit the employer as much as the worker and should thus be paid for as work time. The coffee break was no longer one of capitalism’s ‘self-less’ offerings: it was brewed into law.

Then followed another moment in caffeinated class struggle when in 1964- the labour union-United Autoworkers threatened to go on strike if they did not receive a 15 minute coffee break. Negotiations with the "Big Three" (Chrysler, Ford and GM) led to a 12 minute coffee break. Once again justice was served, with a cup of coffee.

A CAPITALIST CONSPIRACY?

At one point coffee productivity was virtually an axiom; today, the internet is still flooded with scientific research backing the concept. Although, some recent research has casted doubt on the influence of coffee productivity. For example, in Harvard Business Review, a study showed that taking coffee breaks were actually "associated with higher fatigue, not lower."

However, the researcher noted, "That could just be a matter of causality: It may be that being tired makes you drink caffeine, not that drinking caffeine makes you tired."

According to an article by The Atlantic, "Caffeine is now the world's most popular psychoactive drug, used daily by 80% of the world's population." Did we buy into a capitalist conspiracy or is coffee productivity a genuine phenomenon?

If coffee wasn't so addicting and didn't taste so good- we might actually want to answer that question.