Employee Newsletter 5/8/2023

CoCo Reflections from Garrett McGowan:

This Week’s CoCo: Be Here, Physically & Mentally

During my first two summers of college, I would return home to Boise and split my workweeks between an accounting internship and a landscaping job. Half of my week was spent learning the ropes in an air-conditioned office and the other half was performing backbreaking work in 100-degree weather. The landscaping gig served as a solid source of income and an invaluable confirmation that my soft hands belonged behind a desk. That being said, when things were running well, I found a great deal of balance in my work arrangement: my body was engaged, and my mind was engaged. The problem was that I was young and wanted to live fully and hadn’t yet submitted to the cruel fact that adult life requires saying no to some things, getting proper sleep, and taking care of oneself.

One day a week, my landscaping job consisted of ‘maintenance work.’ This mostly entailed operating antiquated, commercial-grade push mowers the size of small cars and speed mowing as many yards as possible. On one particular ‘maintenance day’ the exhaustion caught up. I was physically present, but my mind was dreaming of sleep. I remember turning in the wet grass, losing my balance while jolting to attention, and seeing the mower take off towards the cheap brown picket fence. My attempts to catch up to the runaway mower were in vain. I watched that huge red machine blast through the fence with all the ferocity and pizzaz of the Kool-Aid man bursting through a wall.

The fence was quickly fixed, my boss was completely understanding, and no real harm was done. But that incident served as a wake-up call to what it takes to be fully present. Be Here, Physically and Mentally is a demanding request. Adherence to this commitment guarantees that one’s best work will be realized, but it requires discipline. Discipline to be fully engaged in body and in mind in the moment, but also the discipline to do the work behind the scenes to enable a fully present disposition. This is still a challenge to me all these years later. I’m continuously attempting to strike the balance between basic self-care, recharging through joyful pursuits, and being fully present in body and in mind to my responsibilities. Overall, I’m optimistic in achieving this balance but one thing is for certain: for as long as I’m able to, I will be physically and mentally avoiding any more landscaping jobs.

Next Week’s CoCo: Prepare For Your Work

Scenario #1: I am a fifth grader that has blindly joined a drama club because my brother, who is four years my senior and my hero, has enrolled in the group. The first session is delightful: we watch funny sketches, we get handed our lines, and most importantly, I get to spend time with my brother and his friends. The next week we arrive and are asked to perform our sketches in front of the group. It suddenly dawns on me that I have not even read my lines let alone memorized them and, to make matters worse, I have zero interest in acting. Alas, I get up on the stage, the sketch begins, and I wildly make up all of my lines. This kind of story goes one of two ways: I impress with my raw improv talent and become a lifelong thespian, or I crash and burn and become an accountant. You know how it ends.

Scenario #2: Later in life I develop a sense of self-awareness (i.e., social shame). Public speaking has become a light phobia that I have to address repeatedly in high school. With each rep, I become more confident in myself and the fear morphs into something healthier. That is, until I go to college and enroll in a large public speaking class. My first assignment is to present 10 minutes on Nostradamus. My preparation is obsessive. I memorize my entire speech to the extent that it becomes a subconscious mantra. It has been nearly 12 years since I performed that speech and I can still recite the opening line:

“Imagine if every innovative concept or creation shaped by the mind of humanity’s greatest thinkers or every disaster that has inflicted a devastating toll could be predicted before it occurred?”

My preparation was so extreme that it is now permanently stored in my brain’s recall files – that is unhealthy.

Aristotle claimed that excellence is achieved through a “Golden Mean,” or a compromise between the extremes of deficiency (scenario #1) and excess (scenario #2). The call to Prepare For Your Work is a commitment that can be best fulfilled through a similar approach of moderation. In my mind, to be prepared is (1) to be informed enough to competently speak to or act on an issue, (2) to be comfortable enough to anticipate and react to any unforeseen developments of an issue, and (3) to be confident enough to admit when more time/resources are necessary to truly address an issue. Anything less is a deficiency in preparation. Anything more is an excessive misuse of time and resources.

CoCo Heroes:

• Be Here, Physically & Mentally: This Core Commitment Hero comes from the Office – Celeste Bayer! Each and every day, Celeste brings a great deal of focus to each aspect of her work whether it be emails, interviews, benefits, or otherwise. The nature of the work an Employee Care team member does is detail oriented and requires one to be not only physically present, but mentally as well. Celeste is dependable both in her Employee Care role and also in all the ways she remarkably cares by being physically and mentally present in her barista work at our Oconomowoc Cafe. Mega shoutout to Celeste for making each interaction unique and engaging day in and day out! 
• Prepare For Your Work: This Core Commitment Hero comes from the Office – Amy Balestrieri! Amy is such an integral part of what we do at Stone Creek Coffee and cares so remarkably for each of our customers we interact with. Much of the work that Amy does with our wholesale partners, events we support, as well as internal project teams, requires forethought and careful planning. Amy is a rockstar at keeping all of these pieces moving and accounted for and we’re so grateful to have her as part of our SCC team! Great job, Amy!
  

Wins & Shout-outs:

Job Openings:

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Employee Discount Codes:
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• 20% Employee-Only Website Coupon Code
  • May: May2023sccemp
• 40% Employee-Only Mobile App Coupon Code
  • May: May2023sccemp

Ways to Speak Up:

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