Fair-trade-coffee, Dutch style

If it wasn't for coffee I suspect the Dutch Golden Age would never have got off the ground (no pun intended). As early as the late 1600s the Dutch were the main suppliers of coffee to Europe, thanks to colonial outposts in places like Java. The brown gold was brought home to the Lowlands, where it remains an integral part of Dutch culture.

The Netherlands currently claims fifth position on the list of per capita coffee consumption. The Finns come first, while the Italians manage only twelfth place, and the Australians, who prefer their brown beverages cold, limp in at number forty two.

At a time of day when many of us are reaching for a corkscrew, the Dutch will fire up the percolator.

This national obsession with coffee, and it's subtle ongoing use as a form of currency, has become patently clear to me through my dealings with Dutch tradesmen over my first ten months in the Lowlands.

To set the scene, understand that one of the curious cultural quirks in this country is that her tradesmen expect to be fed and watered. I was advised early on to offer them coffee with a biscuit or a slice of cake shortly after they arrive at my house to do some work.

I call this fair-trade-coffee. I give them coffee; they ply their trade for me. This seems fair. Hence fair-trade-coffee. Note that this is different to Fairtrade coffee, which is a concept I endorse, but which has not always been adopted in the Lowlands  (don't mention the colonies).

Fair-trade-coffee is certainly cheaper than the fair-trade-beer I felt compelled, in a previous life, to give Australian tradies on a Friday afternoon.  I did this in the hope that they would actually return to finish the job the following Monday. 

When our basement flooded during our first week here, there was such an assortment of tradesmen in my house that I had two plungers and a stove top espresso maker on the go simultaneously for about half a day. In the midst of our domestic baptism, while our belongings floated around our knees, I was running to the local supermarket to buy more milk. I had no idea who I was refreshing, and for all I know a rumour had swept Amsterdam that some hospitable ex-pat woman was offering coffee and biscuits to anyone who came into her house wearing steel-capped boots and carrying a toolbox.

Fair-trade-coffee can be quite educational and even entertaining. For example, when a carpenter came to our house to replace some damaged doors I made him coffee and we got chatting. We taught each other the word for “the machine that cleans up the mess” in our respective languages. He thought “vacuum cleaner” was weird; I thought “stofzuiger” was amusing, since it translates as “dust sucker". At the time, I was struggling to count to ten in Dutch, so "stofzuiger" seemed very sophisticated. I used it whenever I could.

"Wilt u de stofzuiger gebruiken?" I'd enquire regularly of De Jongens. "Would you like to use the vacuum cleaner?". Not once, in ten months, have they taken me up on the offer.

I had to arrange for that carpenter (milk, no sugar) to come back recently to rehang the doors. He didn’t turn up. It wasn’t particularly urgent, so I didn’t chase him up. Unbidden, he arrived 48 hours later.

“I expected you a couple of days ago”, I said when I opened the door and found him standing there.

“Yes, I forgot” he said, then strolled in with no further explanation or apology. I wondered if the coffee I had made on his previous visit was perhaps sub-standard, and a two day delay in services might be my punishment. Mental note to self: grind it fresh to order this time.

He gave me a second chance and accepted my offer of coffee. He fixed the problem with the doors. The coffee must have been okay this time.

A painter (milk, one sugar) also needed to be recalled. He didn’t turn up at the agreed time either. This time I rang. “I expected you yesterday” I said, a little of my old assertiveness creeping back.

“Well, I couldn’t come. My father is very sick.” A likely excuse.

He promised to call me in a few weeks to arrange a new time to paint the wall. I'm still waiting, while suffering a further bout of coffee paranoia.

Earlier in the year, a leak from our boiler had been repaired by a bloke for whom I'd made a perfect cup of coffee. He'd spent three months in a Bondi backpacker's hostel twenty years ago. He seemed to think that this made us compatriots, and entitled him to ask for a second cup of coffee, which I provided.

A month after Bondi Boy had been here, the boiler was leaking again. I can’t help thinking that if he hadn’t had so much caffeine coursing through his veins he might have done a better job at repairing the leak.

As well as a recurrent leak, the central heating wouldn’t turn on. So a new plumber (milk and sugar) was dispatched. He fixed the leak, but he couldn’t get the central heating to work. He ascertained that there was a problem with the control panel. He arranged for an electrician to come and replace it.

The electrician (no milk, but sugar) came and needed access to the building roof, which he gained through our upstairs neighbours’ house.

The electrician phoned me from the roof to give me a report on my electrical woes, and then assured me he was on his way downstairs and would see me in five minutes. I waited. An hour later, he was back.

He explained that he’d been waylaid by my upstairs neighbours. Actually, they’re not my neighbours; they’re my neighbours’ visiting parents. I’ve never met them before, although my electrician assures me that they are lovely people. In fact they are so lovely that they’d made him coffee and they’d all got carried away chatting. I wondered what his hourly rate was and was secretly glad the invoice would be going to our landlord.

Suitably refreshed, the electrician announced that he was sorry but he couldn't replace the central heating control panel after all.  Instead, he arranged for a central heating specialist to come a few days later.

The central heating specialist (milk and sugar) duly arrived. The first thing I noticed was that he had not brought a replacement control panel with him. The first thing he noticed was that the second plumber hadn’t in fact fixed the boiler leak after all, clear evidence of unfair trade. I fleetingly considered doing a barista course as a means of ensuring fairer trade in future.

The central heating specialist repaired the leak. Then he turned his attention to the control panel. He became the third person in a month to conclude that there was a problem with the control panel. And the third person who failed to fix it.

I glanced around for the hidden camera, which must surely be here somewhere, waiting to capture the moment when I finally snapped. Images of me, a desperate and deranged woman, my face smudged with freshly ground coffee, would be broadcast across the nation.

"Who does she think she is", people would muse, as they watched the footage. "Look at her, crazy screeching banshee, ripping the control panel out of the wall like that and shoving it in such an intimate location on that poor Dutch tradesman, making him spill his coffee. He was simply trying to do his job", they would all tut. "She asked for it; she should make better coffee".

Slightly unnerved by this potential notoriety, I smiled sweetly and told him I understood, and thanked him for his efforts. I told him I looked forward to seeing him on Tuesday...WITH A NEW CONTROL PANEL...right???

Tuesday came . . . but the central heating specialist didn’t. With a heavy heart I phoned him, and listened incredulously as he told me he was sick and would be off work for the remainder of the week. He assured me his colleague would phone me and come instead. Next week.

It’s just not fair.