The coffee shop is viewed as a vehicle to move beyond learning about employment practices, and allowed students to learn to do employment practices. Students were not simply reading, discussing, and role-playing about employment preparation; they were engaging, deciding, and actively doing activities that are employment preparation. As Rouda said, "If I can do it in the cafeteria [coffee shop], I can do it outside." Even if a student's placement or job was unrelated to operating a coffee shop, students learned to be an employee. Rouda stressed that it didn't matter to her that the coffee shop activities were not the same activities she did at her job placement. She said she learned to "become stronger" and that was most important to her. Nadine and Stacey agreed. They both said that the coffee shop helped them to gain confidence in themselves and helped them to realize that they could be a good employee. Nadine explained further,

When you're there [in the coffee shop] you never know anything before, but at least when you're there they teach you. If you go out in the world, at least what they will ask you, you will understand exactly what they're talking about. Before, you wouldn't know anything. You have to ask, 'What are you saying? I don't understand.' Here they teach you things.

Rouda described how the improvised practice of the coffee shop with its clear learning purpose helped her in her job placement. The most important learning for her she said was to learn to understand people and "the culture" of work. She compared her brief work experience in the past with her current placement experience.

"That time I didn't know. I was working but I didn't know the people. Now I can understand people like this [she snaps her fingers]." She continued to explain what she learned in the coffee shop from the instructors and students. It's important, she said to…

…be friendly, to understand other people and to work—how it's important and how they do it, how they teach you. You have to follow that. That is very important because if you go to another job on your own, something that is a little tiny that you must understand…god knows that you might get fired [if you don't understand]. So they learn here [in the coffee shop] a little bit what you are supposed to do [and] what you are not supposed to do.