29 “The Pull” by Autumn Johnson

Marissa had not grown up drinking coffee. Not even as a teenager, even though her high school days had been filled with school, work, and extracurriculars from early in the morning until long after the sun had set. Now that she was in college with only two or three classes per day and just a couple of extracurriculars, she found that she could barely get through each day and wondered how she had the energy to do so much more as a teenager.

She had started drinking tea as a freshman, but by her junior year it was no longer giving her the boost she needed. She still didn’t know how to make coffee, so she began venturing into local coffee shops and the nearby Dunkin’ Donuts to order something other than her usual (a chai tea latte).

There was something about the brightly-colored Dunkin’ logo and the multitudes of fellow college students carrying around cups of coffee she saw everywhere she went. Growing up in a small town, the coffee shops in her college town gave her access to something she hadn’t had before while also maintaining a small-town atmosphere. Marissa didn’t even like the taste of coffee and had to order it with some kind of flavoring, milk, and sugar to make it tolerable. For this reason, she was often able to convince herself she didn’t really need coffee and could get by with tea.

But still she felt the pull of coffee shops, especially chains like Dunkin’, whose low prices appealed to college students needing a quick pick-me-up. She wondered, though, how many people knew what a vicious cycle of addiction they were stuck in. Even with her limited experience regarding coffee, Marissa knew this was a combination of clever marketing and the atmospheric environment she knew many people found comforting. And of course, the fact that caffeine was a literal drug. People drank coffee to will themselves awake throughout the day, but then didn’t sleep as well at night and had to repeat the cycle over again the next day—a cycle Marissa was glad she had managed to avoid. This need for coffee was what drove people to frequent these spaces for meetings with friends or coworkers, drinking a cup or two even when they might’ve not needed one. It was what drove them to pay over five dollars for a cup even if it wasn’t really in their budget. Marissa herself was guilty of this—chai tea lattes at most coffee joints were in the four-dollar range. It was a daily sacrifice many of Marissa’s peers were willing to make, and she wished she could find some way to explain what she knew about caffeine addiction and business strategies without seeming uptight or negative. She wanted to tell them they were sacrificing so much more than their money.

She knew she wouldn’t, though. As she began the walk to her first class of the day, the sign advertising her favorite coffee shop loomed up ahead, and her feet found their way inside to order a latte.