Good coffee, bad advice

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A handful of years ago, I worked as a delivery driver for an organic, non-pasteurized, cold-press juice company in Toronto. I would spend the summer mornings and early afternoons hopping from cafe to yoga studio to health food store. I provided overpriced fruit and vegetable goodness to the masses who were willing to shell out $15 for a bottle of liquified carrots, celery, and apples. It was a good gig, and I drank enough cold-pressed juice that summer to make a vegan-hipster-yoga instructor blush. But it wasn’t just the juice that was a perk of the job, it was the coffee. I would deliver to some of the highest quality artisan and hipster cafes in downtown Toronto. I would show up, unload that day’s juice into a mini fridge or a display behind the counter, and pray that I would hear those magic words from the barista: “hey, juice guy, you want a drink?” 

One particular day, when I had just dropped off a crate of charcoal lemonade, green, carrot, and beet juices, and was waiting for the benevolent barista’s brew, I happened to look up at a chalkboard that had the words, “How we live is more important than what we believe,” scrawled in an artistic font above the drink menu. I couldn’t help but think that such a well intentioned saying might sound nice, but I was left wondering how that would actually work in practicality.

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