The Origin of the Neutral Ground's Volunteer Community

It’s Sunday night -- the busiest night of the week. There are only a few people lingering, and Matt is working the bar donning a Theo’s bandana. The reason for this absence may be that half of the regulars at the Neutral Ground are working at Theo’s Pizza about five minutes away on Magazine. This connection of coffee shop and gourmet pizza place seems to have begun with Jordan, a previous regular. He recruited his roommate Patrick as well as Matt, and the meshing of places and people snowballed from there as the community formed at the Neutral Ground took their work to Theo's.

If I hadn't had a job at the time, I probably would be working at Theo's as well. It seems like half of the staff at the pizza place have known each other for years at this coffee shop -- as friends, as volunteers, as musicians, even as kids. Later on open mic night, when the wailing of guitars and tinkling of piano keys had long faded, many of them came into the Neutral Ground after work. They all wore shirts brandishing the restaurant's name and there was a faint smell of pizza dough throughout the coffee shop, which intersected with the smell of coffee already in the air.

They were all gregarious, like work hadn’t dampened their spirits, and their buoyancy surprised me. I've seen it when I applied there or visited friends there – they enjoy their jobs. Despite all these connections, the reason why all of these folks ended up working at the same place still eludes me. Is the fact that friends recruited each other the reason that they are all working together? Or is there something about the work or the place itself that draws them in? I think it's a combination. Either way it was nice to see all of them there, so content with themselves, all relaxing with a beer with their boss, at a coffee shop ironically, after getting out of work near midnight. At the Neutral Ground, standard conventions do not always apply, especially when the night is reaching its close. Hopefully I can enjoy my next job just as much as they do theirs.