Sartre, you brilliant sly old dog. I work in a café/bakery and found Sartre’s example of the café waiter very relatable. I too am a bit eager with customers, and sometimes feel like i’m playing a game at work, a game I’m quite bad at. Sartre would call it the dance of the barista. I am always acting in bad faith when at work for I play the role of the barista. Waking up most mornings at 4am I get ready being sure to wear appropriate clothes, comb my hair, and drive to work. When I arrive at work I start the first pot of coffee and put out the chairs.
This is something I do without being conscious of the fact that it is my choice to wake up at 4am and do this. Surely if I didn’t I would be fired lose my wages which I earn, but it is still my conscious decision to do so. This is something that i’ve forgotten over time. As Sartre says so candidly, I feel like an “automaton” and I probably look like one as well. I have several phrases I say to customers such as “what are you having today?” and “have a nice day.” I repeat these phrases to excess day after day and I truly feel very inauthentic playing this role. It gave me some comfort to read someone who shared similar thoughts to mine. The clientele demand of me a certain behavior, for the things I do in my private life have no place at the bar. I can’t sing Bob Dylan songs or make inappropriate jokes in front of customers. I’m required to put on a smile and wait patiently while they look at the menu while inside I might be wearing a grimace and think of them an *expletive.* I believe that I’m a great example of bad faith, which I like to think of as inauthenticity.
What I find most interesting is Sartre’s explanation of the contradictions of “being.” Like many existentialist philosophers we’ve read this semester, Sartre too is a fan of contradictions. “We have to deal with human reality as a being which is what it is not, and which is what it is” (228). I understood this as Sartre saying that the essence of a human is everything it has been in the past as well as everything it has not yet been in the future. Our lives are not yet complete for we are freely changing, but our essence also includes all of our past actions which we are responsible for choosing. Bad faith as I understand it is also a contradiction because in an attempt to achieve sincerity, we are being insincere. A barista who sings Bob Dylan and insults customers is fleeing from his essence as a barista. In an attempt to be who I am, I am not being who I am not. Sartre says we must be who we are while being who we aren’t. This can be rather conflicting, but I suppose that is the very essence of bad faith.
Later we discussed No Exit and what struck me is the idea that people are like mirrors. Most of what we do is a reaction to what other people will or already do think of us. The reason I wear what I wear or act how I act is for the acceptance of others. An interesting point that a student brought up in class is that we don’t fully know how others view us, but we make assumptions. So really it’s our perception of how others perceive us which cause us to do most of what we do. After the readings I have a much better understanding of Sartre’s plays which I had enjoyed before I took this class. His philosophical views are embedded in No Exit and The Flies.
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