Coffee

Let’s get one thing straight from the start: I am a certified coffee non-drinker. I have tried it. I don’t like it. I have tried to like it. I have failed to find a way to like it. I have tried to use it as a primary source of caffeine to help me make it through those especially long business days. I just can’t seem to make myself like it. Regardless of what anyone else says, it tastes bad.

However, I do recognize that I am in the minority when it comes to coffee use in the business environment. It is quite possible that without coffee, or its prime component caffeine, that all business and commerce, and quite possibly society in general would grind to a halt. If anything, I think that our coffee consumption in the office has increased in recent years as our dependence on it as an energy source in the office has increased.

I have managed to come up with only one way that I can successfully imbibe coffee. I take a coffee mug and fill it approximately one third of the way up with the artificial, chemical infused, powdered chalk-like non-dairy creamer that populates the counter next to the coffee maker in the break room in the office. I never use the cholesterol laden real cream or the liquid artificial, chemical infused non-dairy creamer. The primary reason for the powdered preference is due to the fact that it is the only type of coffee creamer available next to the coffee maker. I think the Food and Drug administration has forced the manufacturer of this product to change its name to “coffee lightener” as opposed to coffee creamer in the interest of honesty in advertizing.

I then step over and find the sugar. The real sugar. Not the further chemically infused, cancer in rat causing sweetener. I am not afraid of the carcinogens in that sweetener. It is the aftertaste that they leave after I have used them that removes them from my preference list. If I am going to drink something that tastes as bad as coffee, I do not want to have to put up with the added insult of tolerating and additional bad aftertaste from the artificial sweeteners after drinking it.

I carefully measure out approximately another third of a mug of sugar and combine it with the powdered coffee lightener.

Now is the time for the coffee. It doesn’t seem to matter if I add a spoon full of Folger’s instant coffee crystals and hot water, or get freshly brewed from ground coffee bean French vanilla coffee from the local college degreed barista at Starbucks. I can’t tell the difference. They are both equally bitter in my universe. I then fill the coffee mug up the rest of the way with whichever coffee is available. If I happen to have a Milky Way or Snickers candy bar handy I will then use it to stir these elements into a nominally drinkable solution that I am somehow able to choke down. I don’t do this often. I think I might have had two cups of coffee this year. I usually resort to coffee when I don’t have enough money to buy a caffeine rich soda from the soda machine.

I guess I have never been able to develop the educated palette that can discern between the various levels of bitterness that are entailed in recognizing the difference between Folger’s and Starbuck’s fresh brews, even though they are purported to come from obviously different ends of the taste spectrum. I guess I don’t go to Starbuck’s enough, and when I do I usually seem to order something other than coffee. It is kind of interesting to go to Starbucks and order a (caffeinated) soda though. Whenever I do it, it seems the entire staff behind the counter stops whatever it is that they are so industriously doing in the obviously complicated preparation of their patron’s coffees, and stare at me. I used to be slightly off-put by this, but now I find it relatively humorous.

The only problem with preparing coffee in the manner I prepare it is that it can only be called a liquid in the truest sense of the word, meaning it is not a solid or a gas. The coffee I prepare from this recipe seems to be slightly more viscous than the equivalent beverage that others prepare in the same break room. This higher center of gravity, slightly more dense coffee causes the other patrons of the office break room coffee maker to not so much stare at me, but to seem to want to keep track of me by watching me indirectly from across the room while quietly talking to each other.

Between the staring baristas and the whispering break room denizens, it should be no surprise that I usually drink diet sodas. These drinks usually contain the desired caffeine but not in quite the concentrations associated with coffee. I have never been able to figure out why anyone would want to drink decaffeinated coffee. If you are going to drink something that tastes that bad, you should at least get the desired effect from the caffeine, or you have defeated the entire purpose of the exercise in the first place.

Here is just a little “did you know” information about caffeine. Caffeine, as it occurs in nature is an interesting element. It is a bitter (who would have thought that after actually tasting coffee) element that acts as a natural pesticide in plants. That is correct. Caffeine is nature’s bug killer, yet we guzzle it down in our coffee like camels hitting the oasis after two weeks in the desert. It is also recognized as the worlds most widely consumed psychoactive drug. That is also correct. It is a psychoactive, mood altering drug. However there is no one stopping Juan Valdez and his mule from bringing pure Colombian coffee across the border into the United States.

I mentioned that I drink diet caffeinated sodas, and as you know these are in fact sweetened with those aforementioned bad after tasting chemically carcinogenic compounds. I felt that since the sodas tasted so much better than coffee, I needed to demonstrate some sort of caffeinated solidarity with the bad tasting coffee drinkers. The solution wasn’t so much to make the soda taste bad but rather make sure it left some sort of bad aftertaste. This way we caffeine imbibers can stand united.

Stand is a relative word here. I don’t think that anyone consuming any sort of a caffeinated product can stand united or any other way for that matter. They usually fidget, or go to the bathroom. This stems from the fact that caffeine is both a stimulant, which means it incites activity in our central nervous system, and a diuretic, which means it incites activity in our bladders. Hence you are either fidgeting or going to the bathroom after drinking coffee.

Thinking back, I don’t remember it always being this way. I seem to recall that the office used to have an energy all its own. Caffeine seemed optional and more the province of the particularly spasmodic and hyperactive individuals in the office. When there was a question about someone’s behavior it was usually attributed to the fact that they must have had “too much coffee”. Funny, you don’t hear that excuse for strange behavior in the office anymore.

The office seemed to generate its own energy in the people there, not reduce it. There seemed to be an inverse relationship between the number of people who are actually in the office and the need for and amount of coffee that is consumed. Could it be that in the past we generated our energy from each other? Now that we have remote offices and virtual offices and are no longer in proximity to each other, it seems we need a different energy source, such as coffee and the caffeine that it contains.

Perhaps I am reaching, but I definitely think if we had more people back in the offices, we would all have more energy and sources of stimulation, and probably need less coffee.

I think I’ll go and get another diet soda. I hope I have enough change as I don’t think I can face drinking any more coffee. I had a cup a couple of weeks ago and still shudder at the thought of drinking any more of it.

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