You may have noticed, most of us working folks have an entrepreneur colleague who makes coffee at the office. You may also have noticed that this guy does the least amount of the real “work related work”. He is practically on overhead for all intents and purposes, but the interesting thing is that his boss doesn’t seem to care at all about any of this!

Every time I see this guy, he is always doing something related to coffee. In the morning, I see him fetching water from the special sink in the bathroom, which is reserved for the custodian’s use, in the old dirty looking plastic milk jugs, although I never see him wash those jugs. A little later on, at about 8:15 am, he is making the first pot of freshly (hmmm!) brewed coffee that everyone except the writer of this (the reason for the exemption will be discussed in a future essay; watch for it!) has to have to get his/her day started. The next time I see him at about 8:45 am, he is rearranging the plastic coffee cups, the little plastic stirrers (which, I suspect, he may have lifted wholesale from the neighborhood fast food restaurant), and the dirty old coffee mug that had lost its handle (and therefore belongs to nobody), in which the customers throw in their quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies (not necessarily in that order). Due to the intense drinking habits of his paying customers during the morning hours, he is already making another fresh pot by about 9:15 am. Mid-morning finds him making his third pot of “freshly brewed” coffee, after which the first collection from the handleless coffee mug, hereinafter referred to as the change cup, is ceremonially carried out. The proceeds are taken to his desk and put in a change bowl, formerly a large ashtray until smoking was totally banned inside office buildings.

Now it’s 11:15 noon (actually AM, but for all practical purposes, it’s like noon!), and the lunch time is upon us! Remember, lunch time is lunch time, and it’s a totally different matter altogether. You don’t mess with that time. It’s sacrilegious even to talk about it! It’s one’s own time. The company doesn’t own it, and has nothing to do with it. No business is transacted during this holiest of holy hours, not even such pagan rituals as coffee making, coffee drinking, money counting, change wrapping, none of that stuff. The only reason why anyone stays at his desk during this ‘quiet time’ is simply because of the air conditioning, which the office has and the outside doesn’t.

But 12:30 o’ clock comes, and there’s a tremendous amount of coffee activity near the coffee pot. There’s new life on the floor, which is the direct result of all those calories just ingested! The coffee pot is now ratcheted several notches up, causing the octane number of the brewed concoction to rise to about 93, which is needed for the sleepy afternoon hours which are usually a lot more gassy than sleepy. The condition is aggravated by the fact that the lunch consists of such variety of southern feed as fried beef, fried eggs, fried vegetables, fried chicken, fried pork, fried potatoes, fried green tomatoes, fried catfish and “crawdads”, and anything else that can be southern fried. (Don’t worry, for the folks of any other geographical persuasion, replace the word southern with north-east-western; we’ll make it simple for you!) There’s also plenty of starch on the menu, together with gas producing stuff of the likes of lima beans. The coffee procedure is repeated in its entirety at 1:30 PM. An hour later, 2:30 rolls around, and the last pot is brewed. The coffee manager goes around and reminds everyone that a fresh (hmmm!…) pot is just made, and invites all the coffee drinking populace to partake. All the faithful gather around the coffee pot, and partake they do. They partake of the Maxwell House to the last good drop, and then they rinse the pot with tap water and partake a little more! By three o’clock, the coffee club is shut down for the day, and Mr. Coffee goes and tidies up the place by nicely rearranging the plastic cups, the plastic stirrers, and the plastic paper napkins. The dirty handleless orphan coffee mug, which by now everyone knows as the change cup, is also promptly emptied, and the contents are hauled off in an armored Brinks truck to the coffee man’s office.

Starting at 3:00 pm, and for the next one whole hour, the coffee manager shall not be disturbed under any circumstances! Emergency? It can wait! Critical path item which can adversely impact plant operation? How critical, and what path? Whatever it is, it’s not a problem, and ask them to wait! Why? Because our coffee manager is circumspectly performing a variety of important coffee related tasks such as wrapping the day’s take in penny, nickel, dime, and quarter wrappers (not necessarily in that order; sometimes pennies are also wrapped in quarter wrappers by accident!), taking inventory of the coffee supplies, planning for any future coffee paraphernalia procurement that’s needed in the short run and the long, and investing on coffee futures at the Rio de Janeiro mercantile exchange. By 3:45, he is done with the coffee assignment, but too bad, it’s already quitting time! No time to do any work! On your mark, get set, split!

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