May 9, 1990
Dear Everyone:
Let’s talk about coffee.
Most people like coffee.
I don’t, but most people do.
In truth, I love the smell of freshly ground coffee beans.
It’s just that my taste buds don’t agree with my nostrils and
every time I’ve tried coffee, they’ve said:
“Taste doesn’t live up to the smell”.
And so, I don’t drink coffee.
But most people do.
In fact, there is only one other person in Records Management who
doesn’t regularly drink
coffee and that’s “Rowena” who has tea about half the time.
And then there’s “Melanie” who drinks coffee but doesn’t drink
regular coffee; she buys
gourmet coffee at an expensive shop.
When she walks up to the counter, she doesn’t even have to order.
They just automatically hand her a large-light-sugar-extra-cream.
Everyone else in Records Management drinks the
office coffee with one exception which I will explain shortly.
(At 5’ 2½” tall, I do everything
shortly.)
Each person who drinks the office coffee contributes to the cost,
which surprises me because I would have thought that they would have
come up with a way to get the Company to pay for it a long time ago.
(Some people consider it a mark of honor to get the Company to
pay for as much of their lives as possible.)
At any rate, each person takes turns buying and
bringing in a can of coffee when the supply runs low.
There is even a “coffee file”, listing who bought the last can
and whose turn it is next.
The first coffee drinker to arrive in the morning makes the coffee.
This would be “Murray”, except he’s on loan in “Livermore”, or
“Rowena” as they come in at 7:00.
If not, “Carla” or “Alma” would do the honors at 7:30.
On very rare occasions, “Ashley” might make it when he comes in
at 8:00. “Kevin”, being the
last to arrive, never makes coffee.
However, being the
last to leave in the evening, he washes the pot and sets up the filter,
etc. for the next morning.
Now, not being a coffee drinker myself, I haven’t
really paid much attention to the whole thing.
When my ORT (Organization Review Team) meetings took place in San
Francisco the first time, I did ask if I should (as hostess to the team)
pay someone for the coffee that the team members drank during the
meetings. But I was told not
to worry about it, the coffee was also there for guests.
And in fact, “Ruth” is a tea drinker and “Lorraine”, after the
first meeting, started drinking tea, also; so it didn’t matter.
Not being a coffee drinker, I never really noticed
that “Kevin” always arrived in the morning with a cup of coffee,
purchased prior to coming to work, in his hand.
But “Melanie” noticed and wondered about it.
Well, last Friday we had our usual Friday Morning
Meeting From Hell, after which “Kevin” and I had an additional meeting
with “Alma” in which she managed to do a particularly fine job of
driving both “Kevin” and me nuts.
Following this, “Kevin” and I went to lunch at City Eats with
“Melanie”. This is one of
those places where you can choose to have Chinese, Mexican, Italian,
whatever, depending on which counter you go to and then all meet at the
table to eat together. I had
a cheeseburger, “Melanie” had pizza and “Kevin” had fettuccine.
It was while we were eating that the subject came
up of “Kevin’s” morning coffee.
It turns out that even though “Kevin” pays for his “share” of the
coffee and cleans and sets up every night, he never gets any of the
coffee because the others have drunk it all before he arrives.
This is why he has to buy his own coffee.
Now, you might think that “Kevin” would just drop
out of the coffee “club”, but we have a delightfully devious mind at
work here. “Kevin” is a
devotee of John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s famous maxim:
“Never get mad, just get even.”
Each evening, he cleans the pot and fills it with fresh water.
Each evening, he then cleans out the filter holder, puts in a
fresh filter (which is intended to use 4-5 “scoops” of ground coffee)
and puts in 7 “scoops” of
coffee.
Each morning, someone pours the water into the
coffee maker, fills a cup, takes that all-essential first sip of the day
and says, “Ooh! That’s too
strong!” And then they go
and add hot water to their cup.
And so does the next person.
This has been going on for months and so far none
of these bright people seems to have figured out what the deal is.
Now things begin to make sense.
“Kevin” brings coffee in from the outside because he knows the
“his” coffee would kill him.
“Lorraine” drinks tea because she tried the coffee here once and once
was enough. And now I know
why “Rowena” opts for tea half of the time.
She may live longer.
As for the others, they go on complaining that the
coffee’s too strong and adding water and wondering why they need to buy
more coffee so often.
As for me, I use two bags of tea each morning to
make a 3-cup pot and by 4:00, chances are there’s still a cup sitting in
the teapot. I may be
stressed, buy I’m not wired like
some people.
(Come to think of it, “Alice” and “Marshall” are
probably thinking, “We need someone like “Kevin” making coffee at our
office.” Or maybe, “You call
that strong?”)
Love, as always,
Pete
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