My guest today is Courtney Heald, lead roaster for Modern Times Beer and Coffee in San Diego, California. This interview starts slowly, building up to a roaring thunder as we go.
Courtney shares her experiences of staying with a company while it’s going through a public moment of reckoning, and answering for the harm it’s caused—there were multiple allegations of misconduct and sexual harassment at Modern Times made back in May 2021. An employee was fired, and eventually, CEO and founder Jacob McKean stepped down.
During that period, Courtney decided to continue on with Modern Times and dedicate her energy to advocating for herself and holding her superiors accountable. Courtney suggested herself as a guest for the show, and I’m glad she did. We emailed back and forth a few times about this conversation, and I think we uncovered a lot of feelings about accountability and self-advocacy during times of turmoil that feel incredibly universal.
When a boss or an employer causes harm, there are reasons to stay and reasons to leave—money, safety, comfort, and your emotional wellbeing and capacity all have to be taken into account—and this conversation isn’t meant to be a recommendation or endorsement that one path is better than the other. Instead, it’s meant to capture one person’s experience, and how she learned to use her voice to demand better for herself and the people around her. Here’s Courtney.
Ashley: I was wondering if you could just start by introducing yourself.
Courtney: Okay. My name is Courtney Heald. I'm the lead roaster for Modern Times Beer and Coffee in San Diego, California.
Ashley: What are your first memories of coffee? Did you grow up drinking coffee or seeing people drink coffee?
Courtney: My first memories of coffee are with my mom and her best friend. So they would just always get together and they just loved coffee. They would always be drinking coffee. I didn't drink it as a kid like my cousin did. I always thought that was weird and like, adult. But I was always around it, and my mom and her best friend had dreams of starting a cafe and all of that.
When I would go to my grandma's house and after family dinners, they would always have coffee with dessert. So it was just always around me. But I actually got into coffee immediately after high school, I got a job with Starbucks. I started as a barista and I was there for eight-and-a-half years.
Ashley: Oh, wow.
Courtney: Yeah. [Laughs] Everyone's very surprised. I'm like, I did like it when I was there. But it was—
Ashley: Oh, I have no shade against Starbucks in the context of people getting their first coffee jobs, because I'd have to say probably over 50% of people in specialty probably got their start there.
Courtney: Yeah, I feel like we always joke—whenever I meet someone who worked with Starbucks, we’re like, “That’s where the majority of people start.” Yeah, it was great. I feel my love of coffee found me there.
Ashley: Was it intuitive or obvious when you first started working at Starbucks that…you got there and you were like, “Oh, I love coffee,” or did it take some time?
Courtney: I think it took some time. It was kind of sneaky. I was the person that drank the very chocolatey Frappuccinos and the chai [lattes]. Then it went to white mocha and then I was starting drinking shots of espresso over ice…
And then I eventually went to a reserve store that had the Clover machine when they had, like, the small-lot coffees. That's when I started drinking, like, coffee, like from different countries and/or countries that I hadn't seen produce coffee before, I guess. Or that I guess wasn't as well-known for production. Then I was like, “Oh, coffee can taste—it's nuanced. It's not just super dark, robust, bitter.” [Laughs] If that makes sense.
Ashley: That totally makes sense. I think everyone kind of has that moment where—especially if they just get a job in coffee just to have a job—there's that moment where you're like, “Oh, coffee can taste like blueberries or it can taste different from this other thing that I'm used to.”
I feel like for so many baristas, that flavor sensation or that taste memory is often the first one that we hearken back to when we talk about how we got into coffee.
Courtney: Yeah! Like coffee pairings! I remember doing that at Starbucks, doing the black apron [training] and pairing the lemon loaf with their Kenyan coffee and just getting those citrus notes. I'm like, “This is wild! Like food and coffee!” [Laughs] Yeah, it was great.
Ashley: You were at Starbucks for eight years. What did you do after that?
Courtney: I just realized it was my time to go into more of the specialty world. I just wanted a more, I think, more of a personal relationship than with Starbucks, and more—I wanted to learn more about coffee and kind of the behind-the-scenes, and I guess be more focused on coffee itself. I was just over the corporate feel because I was around it for so long.
So then I went to a coffee roaster in San Diego, Bird Rock Coffee, and I was for three years, I believe. And that grew my love even more, training there. That was the first job where I learned more about coffee during the orientation there with the owner than, I feel like, my whole career at Starbucks, just because it got really focused, like hyper-focused.
Ashley: That totally makes sense. When did you make the jump from being a barista to maybe thinking about roasting? Was that an obvious jump for you or was it more happenstance?
Courtney: Kinda both. I've always wanted to learn about roasting. I think that's my personality of just wanting to learn more about whatever I'm into, I wanna learn about everything—where it starts and then how it affects the final cup and all of that.
But that happened—I feel like I haven't even been roasting for a full year. I think it'll be, actually it might be this month. It might be a full year of roasting. When I came to Modern Times, I started in the cafe and then when the pandemic and quarantine started everything shut down on the hospitality side.
I jumped into the production [side that] needed help. We were still roasting and giving coffee for wholesale and online orders. So I was helping with bagging and then there was a need in roasting. So I started just training for that and then kind of just fell into it. So yeah, it was kind of happenstance, but it was also the desire to learn was there too.
Ashley: I mean, obviously both can exist together, but I mean that's real happenstance. But like, if COVID-19 hadn't happened, do you think that you would've fallen into roasting?
Courtney: I don't know. I definitely said that in my interview, during my interview at Modern Times, [that I was interested in roasting] because I know the coffee team here is pretty small and the job, like the growth, you know starting as a barista … it’s pretty accessible to grow in coffee on this team. The mentorship is there and we’re all coffee nerds and just want to teach each other things. And I think that’s a reflection of the company too. There’s a lot of cross-training.
And then COVID happened, and then…
Ashley: And then it just accelerated your pace. It was like, “Yeah, I’m getting in there.”
Courtney: It definitely accelerated [things] and that I was like, “Okay, the cafe shut down. I don't know what I'm doing. I will just help with production,” and then got into it.
Ashley: You've been in coffee for quite some time.
Courtney: Yeah.
Ashley: At least over—if I'm doing my math right—at least 12 years.
Courtney: Yeah. I think so. I'm 32 and I was 18. Yeah. Over a decade.
Ashley: Something that's come up on Boss Barista a number of times recently—especially—is the way that we establish our careers in coffee.
There seems to be this very typical hierarchy of: You're a barista and then maybe you're a lead barista and then you're a store manager and then you start that process all over again if you get mad at your employer or something happens and there's nowhere to grow—that's come up a couple of times on the show recently.
I was wondering, did you feel like you were stuck in this almost like, repeating cycle for a while? I mean, you stayed at Starbucks for a really long time. So I wonder how you were thinking about your career or growing, or what was supposed to be the next step for you? Did you think about these things as your career was going in different places?
Courtney: Yeah, I definitely did. I definitely felt stuck a lot of times—in pretty much every spot that I worked at.
I don't know if it was me or the places I was working for or like, so I've done the like, shift supervisor, the assistant manager, all of these different things, and something just didn't fit. And I didn't know what that was. I didn’t really feel like I wanna be a store manager. I feel like I would get stuck in that, like at these specific jobs that I've had.
What I wanted to do was like, I love coffee itself and I love human interaction, so I think that's how I've moved through my coffee career currently—and even thinking about the future now, I don't know if I wanna roast forever, but I still love, even as a roaster, I'm still learning something new about coffee and it's still like, there's still kind of like a sense of wonder there.
And just getting out the different flavors from the coffee, it’s like, “This is wild how different factors play into like, getting more out of a coffee.” And then also just the people that I get to meet through just working in coffee, like that’s what I’m drawn to in this career and why I'm drawn to different workplaces.
Ashley: It seems like you've made this like, big bucket almost of like, “These are the things I like about coffee. I like the things that it allows me to do, the things that it allows me to learn,” and that's probably why a lot of us continue to stay here. I know that's why I continue to stay.
But then when you get to the specifics, when you needle down a little bit more, then there's like a big question mark: “What do I do? What would make me happy?” And what I like is that you identified some of the skills that you—you see strengths in yourself. “I like interacting with people. I like discovering the nuance and small things, like changing a roast curve very slightly or changing a pour-over recipe by like a gram or two”—I'm just giving, you know, just making up stuff there as we go; who knows if that's what you like.
But I think what often happens in the coffee industry is that we focus on these titles because we don't really know necessarily how to identify like, these traits, or we don't know how to rectify the difference between a job title and like the things that entails, and the things that we just like to do in coffee.
I'm kind of in the same—I feel like in the same place as you, I’m 34. I've been making coffee since I was 22. And I felt that, like that same pain for almost 10 years of just like, “What do I like about coffee? Like I know I like these things, but what does that actually mean, job-wise?”
Courtney: Yeah. Like quality manager? There's like these titles that kind of box [us] in, but that's not necessarily something I wanna do, like, 100% of the time. Like I wanna do—I like to do everything [Laughs], but does that exist? I don't know. [Laughs]
Ashley: One of the things that I'm interested in is we're obviously—so it's 2021 for posterity’s sake. If people are listening to this in the future, I was gonna say in the past, but that's not a thing [Laughs] unless something, something wild happens in the next couple of years and we're able to travel—
But we were emailing a little bit about the things that we wanted to talk about and some of the issues that we were thinking about in the coffee industry, and you wrote something that really struck me about being in jobs, trying to figure out what the right thing to do is in a job, and eventually kind of deciding maybe that you have to go. That maybe this isn't the job for you, but you've talked about this job specifically and choosing to stay even in the midst of turmoil.
And that reminded me of an episode of Boss Barista that we did—God, like two or three years ago. It was with a group of baristas that unionized at a coffee shop called Mighty Good. And one of the lessons that I took from them, because I asked them why they stayed—there were like, rampant issues with the way that employees were treated. There were accusations of racism, and I asked them why they stayed. And they were like, “Well, it was our responsibility to change things.”
Courtney: Yeah.
Ashley: Which you kind of hearken to in your email. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about like this kind of—I don't wanna say late stage in your career because that implies that we're somehow a lot older than we are, which we're not.
Courtney: Yeah.
Ashley: But like I wonder, do you think about this point in your career now differently than you did maybe in the earlier stages of your career?
Courtney: Yeah, for sure.
I think, I don't know if it's just me getting older and I don't wanna go through the thing of finding new jobs or whatever, or if it's just realizing that like, we all have a responsibility to just be better and help each other be better through that.
I feel like in my early stages of my career in coffee, I was just so young and I'm like, “I'll just go.” I didn't have a lot of experience with other places of work. And so I thought, “Oh, maybe this other place will be better”. And I think gradually they were, but then I just found out like, everyone's human and no company is perfect, no matter how progressive they might be or open about talking about things like, or I guess to be transparent. When stuff goes down, there's no company that's like safe from that because all humans can mess up, I guess.
Yeah. So it's just thinking about—there's times I'm like, “Should I just leave?” And definitely there's been a lot of turnover this past year with this company of people, just like—it was their personal decision to just go—and I was like, I could, but then what if I go somewhere else and the same stuff happens?
I've seen companies do a lot less and with what's going on here, like I'm actually working for a place where they're trying and there's actually like, action steps that everyone is doing. And like, I see that people want to work together rather than just—I'm a fan of accountability and keeping each other accountable rather than just canceling something and the problem is still there.
Ashley: One of the things I thought a lot about as we were talking about places that have committed harm—number one: you're absolutely right. They should be held accountable, but what does accountability look like? Does it look like the people who are working there currently working together to make a new system? Does it look like maybe somebody at the top leaving a company? It could look a lot of different ways.
But then what happens next? I think that's what I find really interesting about your response, is that there's steps, there's more to do and it's not like anybody's immune, there's no one perfect company—obviously some places are going to do better than others. But I think your experience speaks to, I think, an experience a lot of baristas have where you have this moment where you're at a job and you think it's great and then it's not, and then you leave it … and then you go to another place, and you think it's great, but it's not.
And perhaps it's because you're a little bit older now, because I think when you're young, it's really hard to make a big connection between what's happening and what you're experiencing. But I know that as I've gotten older too, it's like, “What can I feasibly do to change something? Can I change something?”
And that's part of the question, too, is “Can I change something?” If not, then I have to go. But if I can change something, how do I see that through and what emotional capacity do I have to make that happen? And it seems like you made that assessment for yourself and you decided that you do have the emotional capacity to see through meaningful change.
Courtney: Yeah. And I'm learning to use my voice more too. And like, “Well, I will just, I'll speak up for myself and kind of advocate for myself, and see if that is heard and if I'm listened to,” and I think that's a big tell to see if I can like, work with a company and work with the people around me.
Ashley: What does that look like for you?
Courtney: [Pause] I think to have co-workers and people that I feel comfortable going to, like, just with asking, even if it's just like, “Hey, I would like a title change,” or, “I would like a raise,” or something like that. And bringing different things up and kind of seeing, or just even having, like, my supervisors coming to me, letting me know the steps that they're taking and just different things in getting me a raise with the title change or whatever.
Or like weekly check-ins. At this job, I do have a pretty, like, we have pretty consistent check-ins with supervisors and stuff like that. In past jobs, we did not have like consistent reviews. And yeah, I don't know if that's just because like staffing scheduling. I have no idea, but it seems like at past jobs, I haven't, that wasn't as much a priority as much. But yeah. Does that make sense?
Ashley: [Laughs] I'm gonna ask you the question again, because I think that you talked about the company. I want you to talk about you.
Courtney: Hmm.
Ashley: Okay, so I'm gonna ask it again. And I might even keep this in just to annoy people. [Laughs] No, but I think it's easy to forget like your power in this, and that's why I wanna push you on this is like, how did you decide, like how did you build up the confidence to say, “No, my voice is valid. Like, I can be a force for change by using my voice.”
Courtney: Hmm.
I think it was just my own personal, like my personal frustrations and things that got me being upset, but then also I was the type of person that just like, let things go. And like, even people would say, like, “Oh, like you carry stress well,” and like, just because I would internalize it all and just get really quiet.
But then it would really bother me. I would just like, rant about something that was bothering me or whatever. And then I'm like, I should—because I was afraid to bring it up. I was a little conflict-avoidant. But then I think I just realized that I like, just when I say like, when I found people I can say things to, and have it be met with acceptance and not like resistance, then that was telling to me that I can be honest with what I'm feeling and thinking.
Ashley: I think what you just said about the way that you internalize stress or internalize conflict is incredibly common. I think that's why I wanted to hear more about it, because I think people are often prized for that. Like you even said it, like, “Oh, you handle stress well,” and you're like, “Is that really a compliment? I don't know if it should be.”
Courtney: It was in like, every review that I've had. [Laughs]
Ashley: Every one?
Courtney: Yeah. Like, and a lot of it was always like, “That was a compliment, you work well under pressure,” or, “You handle stress well.”
Ashley: I mean, there's some, like, good in that, but there's like…
Courtney: Yeah.
Ashley: Also not. That's also telling that what we get prized for is often to keep our mouth shut.
Courtney: Is that the patriarchy? I don’t know. [Laughs]
Ashley: I mean, it's partially, I mean—I often go back to power, just because I think that power's a little more universal in terms of—one of the things that I think, and I think this goes back to some of the stuff that you were saying earlier, is that it's not just about one thing. It's how power works. Like power is structured so that it goes unchallenged.
Courtney: Yeah.
Ashley: And that's how the patriarchy works. That's how racism works. That's how gender discrimination works. That's how any form of discrimination works, by making it unsafe to challenge the status quo, and I think you kind of spoke to that a little bit earlier about how this isn't necessarily … the problems that we've been having in the service industry, by and large, not just coffee, not just beer, not just restaurants, have to do with like, hierarchal structures of power and not being able to challenge them and who is in positions of power.
And that's why there's so many problems everywhere. That's why it's not a bad apple problem. It's an industry-wide problem.
Courtney: Yeah.
Ashley: And just hearing you talk about how you are reviewed at your jobs, you're like, “Yeah, of course, like this is what we reward. This is how we reinforce those power structures.”
And I really like that you kind of detailed how you personally dealt with it because that's, I think, a really universal way in which we deal with the stresses of work. That we like go home and then complain about it, or we find another outlet or we become really resentful.
I think the best piece of advice I ever got for a job that I quit a couple of years ago was to quit before I got resentful. And I realized I've been letting myself get resentful at every job because there's no outlet for me. So I wonder if that speaks true to your experiences at all?
Courtney: Yeah, definitely. I think that's why I left a lot of past jobs, because I was starting to. I don't know, looking back, I probably was [Laughs] or I definitely was, but I think to me, to my past self, I was thinking that I'm like, I'm starting to get resentful, but I think I totally did. So now like going forward, in choosing to stay and work through hard things, it’s almost helping me to not be resentful and speak up when things are bothering me.
Ashley: Yeah. Right. It's allowing you to be a change-maker. So that instead of this like situation lingering over you—let's say you didn't get a raise at work and then you're resentful and you quit, on the other end of it, you can say, “I didn't get this raise. Like, how do I deal with this? And how do I say something that's meaningful at work and then actually deal with this problem so we can move on?” We can move forward. We can do better.
Courtney: Totally. Yeah.
Ashley: Has that been hard for you? I wonder if this is a conscious, like, personality shift or even just like—I wouldn't say maybe personality shift—but like conscious shift in the way that you approach work.
Courtney: I think so. It is like, it isn't a natural, like—it's not natural for me to initiate those things. So it's definitely like, it takes some effort for me to vocalize those things and speak up and choose to advocate for those things, I guess.
Ashley: Right. And it's also hard cause you're, you know, you're at work and it's hard to know sometimes, especially if you're alone or you're the only one who experiences something.
Courtney: Yeah.
Ashley: Like, “Did I experience that? Was that really that awful?” Am I—like, those questions that, you know—I just would just air an episode with Sierra Yeo and a lot of those questions come up. Like, “Am I the weird one here for complaining about something?”
Courtney: Especially when no one's talking about it, or it seems like no one is speaking up either. You're like, “Am I the only one that feels this?” And then it's not until someone like, I don't know, whistleblower or whatever, like on something I'm like, “Oh, like you too, okay.”
Ashley: It seems like the team, your team that you work with at Modern Times now though—I don't know if this is accurate, so maybe you can explain it a little bit more—but it seems like you folks have gotten better at making space for conflict.
Courtney: Yeah. I would think so…
Ashley: But like, also understanding that you could work through the conflict. So I was wondering like, how have you as a team grown together to make Modern Times better?
Courtney: I think it's through—like the tangible steps that we've taken is we've brought in third parties to do mandatory, like all-staff meetings of how to basically like manage conflict and diversity inclusion trainings, and bystander trainings, like how to approach things and speak up when it's needed. And then also just, like on the smaller, like the coffee team itself, is just open—kind of like open lines of communication, that the supervisors will just say, like “You can come to us with anything.” And just like that constant reminder.
Ashley: Do you get constantly reminded of that? “Hey, you can come talk to us if you need anything?”
Courtney: Yeah, actually I do. Yeah.
Ashley: I love that, because I think it's easy for folks to say, “Oh, my staff can come to me.” It's like, but did you tell them? Did you say it?
Courtney: Yeah, totally. Either if it's like on our coffee team Slack channel or if it's just even personally—like a supervisor will say, like, we'll just have a one-off, like one-on-one. Just like, “How are you feeling today? How's it going? Work or personal?” Like just, yeah, just to check in.
Ashley: Are there any personal victories that you think you've achieved for yourself in the last couple of months? Maybe getting a raise—or you mentioned a job title change, anything that you're particularly proud of?
Courtney: Ooh yeah, a few things. I mean, getting a raise and having the job title of lead roaster—that was great.
Ashley: Did you have to advocate for those, like I'm wondering how those came about?
Courtney: Yeah. I advocated. I was advocating myself for the raise, like this past year since becoming a roaster, and like yeah, I was told that the title would come with a raise and so I just kept saying that and then it happened. And also I roasted a coffee that got—what was the score? It was like a 93 on Coffee Review. I think that was the score. Was it a 92 or a 93?
Ashley: I mean, anything in the 90s…
Courtney: So that was really cool. And I'm like, “What? This is awesome.” So just like those little reviews, of just being nervous of profiling coffees as a new roaster and having my coffee taste good and getting that feedback from people, like it’s just—it makes me feel good. And yeah.
Ashley: So have you been able to use those victories of like, “Hey, my coffee scored this on Coffee Review and I've been able to achieve these really cool things. Like now, like what does this next thing look like for me? Do I get this raise? What does that plan look like?”
Because I know that one of the things that I get a lot of DMs about is how to ask for raises at work and it's often as scary—it's so scary. It's so scary to ask for money at work that even the first, like, even just like that entrance way to say, “Hey, can I get more money?” is daunting. And it often takes a lot of persistence and it seems like it probably took some persistence from you. So like, how were you able to stay the course and say, “No, this is the thing that I'm gonna get, I'm gonna keep working on this,” but also like, remain respectful and like stay, you know, employed, I guess?
Courtney: Yeah, yeah. I dunno. I think it's just trying to research the amount of work that I put in for a company and the wage of a roaster. I was kind of looking at what an average roaster makes in San Diego, like looking at that pay and then like, what's livable, how much work am I doing? What's this emotional labor, physical labor, like all of this.
So I think that's what I was trying to go for. I don't wanna ask for too much. And then I also don't wanna undershoot. And then I was also looking at like, what I made as a production assistant. So I'm like, I feel like this, like as a roaster, it takes a little bit more physical labor with things, and also mental labor.
It was challenging to ask like, during a pandemic and constantly seeing the—what was it—the financial reports throughout this year, and how we're doing. And so I guess like early on in the pandemic, it was hard because like, people were taking salary cuts and people were being let go and stuff like that. So that kept me from [asking].
But then I had a—someone who didn't work in coffee or beer or anything was like, “Well, is your company profiting during this? Like, are you still producing things and making money?” And I'm like, “Yeah, we're still at work. We're working twice as hard and producing things.” So yeah. She's like, “Well, like advocate for yourself.” So I think that helped me.
Ashley: Yeah. I love that you said that. I love that you said you're still producing things. You're still making things.
Courtney: Yeah.
Ashley: It's so easy for us to feel the guilt of a company—which, companies are not people, let's all remind ourselves of that—but it is easy to feel that guilt of like, “Oh, other people are taking salary cuts,” and maybe there is some room to be understanding, obviously. Like, maybe you can't gimme a raise now, but like, what does six months look like? I'm not advocating for unreasonableness in this situation, but I think you are right to anchor your ability to advocate for yourself on like, “I am bringing value. I am continuing to bring value. I am probably bringing even more value now.”
Courtney: Yeah. Like if anything, we're all working—if you're working during this pandemic you're probably [working] twice as hard.
Ashley: I mean, the reason I left one of my last jobs—I keep saying the reason like there's one reason; there's like 70 bajillion—one of the reasons I left is that my boss was continuously telling us, like, how much of a hit the company took during the pandemic.
And that the same thing was happening, where we were working twice as hard. And I'm like, “Well then what is our value? What does this mean that we're working twice as hard? Like where is our value going?”
And it seems like there was at least a little more transparency at Modern Times when people were talking about salary cuts that they were taking, or some of the sacrifices that they were making. But at the same time, there was room for you to come in and say like, “Actually, I'm adding a lot more value. What's the plan?”
Courtney: For me. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.
Ashley: Is there anything that you would want people listening to this to know about you or take away from a conversation with you in it?
Courtney: I think it's just that I care a lot about where I'm at. I care about doing a good job and representing something well and getting the most out of [it]. I'm going to make coffee, and you're going to spend money on something, like a product or spend money on coffee, whether it was me being a barista or me being a roaster, like you're gonna have the best espresso ever, or I'm going to try to get you what you like out of an espresso or a coffee. I wanna meet people where they're at.
Ashley: I'm gonna try to summarize it real quick and say, “I really give a shit about what I do and I wanna make it so that you really like what you're having.”
Courtney: Yeah. That's exactly it.
Ashley: Courtney, thank you for taking time to chat with me.
Courtney: Thank you so much.
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Courtney Heald is Sticking Up and Sticking Around