Can You Really Tell How Successful Someone Is Based On Their Coffee Order?

The Cambridge dictionary defines "contrarian" as someone who enjoys "express[ing] opinions that are unpopular." Controversy is baked in — which is why it should come as no surprise that Contrarian Thinking CEO Codie Sanchez made waves for a hot take she shared in a podcast interview. In a clip of the interview, posted by TikTok account @goated.quotes, Sanchez says that she can tell how successful someone is by how they order coffee. "Show me how long it takes you to order at a counter," says the CEO, "and I will show you your bank account."

Sanchez goes on to recount a recent café experience in which a lady in front of her took "four centuries" to place her order. She begins by positing that a speedy coffee order is a reflection of efficient decision-making at large, then goes as far as to say that folks who take a long time to order their coffee "are really comfortable inconveniencing somebody else around them, which means they have limited self-awareness, maybe borderline narcissism."

Character-erasing suppositions aside, the stance implicitly champions decision-making speed as the ultimate indicator. As the TikTok's top comment (which has over 1.7K likes) points out, "I could argue [the] exact opposite. People who have money are careful about decisions, they want to make the right decision always, even with coffee perhaps." Still, if something as inconsequential as ordering coffee takes this long, argues Sanchez, then it might say a lot about the customer.

Before we explore the validity of this hot take, know that I'm a former veteran barista of more than five years. As the store lead at a high-volume college town café, I've personally crafted hundreds, if not thousands, of espresso beverages and faced just as many customers to ask the working-man's mantra, "What can I get for you today?"

I can say that the richer of the college students routinely neglected to leave my coworkers and me a tip — behavior which betrayed their parents' tax bracket, as well as the information that the orderer had never personally joined me in the food service industry before. Lack of tipping notwithstanding, the actual beverage ordered by a patron gave little else away about the content of their character. 

It might be reasonable to assume that a white-chocolate-hazelnut-latte customer might have a sweet tooth, or that a patron who orders a red eye (black coffee with a shot of espresso) is tired. However, beyond these implications, to assume understanding of a stranger's professional merits based on their drink order reads as the bizarre, somewhat obnoxious flexing of a god complex. Also notably, the fact that this take came from a CEO does little to surprise this barista-turned-writer.

Still, it would be remiss to ignore the validity of aspects of Sanchez's efficiency-forward stance. From an industry perspective, little else is worse than a patron who spends their whole time standing-in-line staring at their phone and is clueless by the time they reach the counter. Indeed, folks should have their order in mind and ready to go by the time their turn arrives, especially on busier days when the line is long (along with 14 more mistakes you should never make when ordering coffee).

In the tech age, however, when most facets of organic human life have been digitized to on-demand speed, further steeped in individualism and rewarded by an achievement mindset ("gotta do more, gotta be more, as quickly as possible"), folks might need to re-learn a degree of patience and grace for their neighbor. We're standing in queue at a café, not on the Ford assembly line. Sharing coffee is a deeply human experience — as echoed by global cultural rituals like the Turkish coffee ceremony. Have a question about the menu? Ask it! No need to feel embarrassed or self-conscious about taking up enough space to get the drink you actually want.