| A Cup, A Cup, A Cup, A Cup, A Cup |
[Feb. 18th, 2013|12:44 pm]
|
My wife and I have a saying – some people wouldn't be happy with two free drinks and a blowjob. (We believe in elegance in all things.) With this in mind, I am going to complain about free coffee.
My company, even after acquisition, provides free coffee. I am grateful. There's a Dunkies two blocks away in one direction, and a Starbucks two blocks away in the other, but four or five cups a day (bearing in mind that a "cup" here is at least 16 oz) would run into money, not to mention time. The time, of course, is why a lot of places provide coffee – so one isn't constantly slipping out to refuel. (My wife's work, in fact, stocks all sorts of things – instant oatmeal, and granola bars, and the sort, so one has less reason to leave.)
Right. My company, even after acquisition, provides free coffee. I am grateful. (They even provide milk and half-and-half, though not dependably.) Yet, the coffee service has irritated me.
Our machines are the sort that one inserts an envelope into. They have an even worse debris stream than Kurig machines, but they have advantages – the drink never touches anything but its own envelope, so you don't get cross-contamination. And you can select "Regular" or "strong" when you set it up.
Or, you could, before they changed the machines.
Couple weeks ago, they swapped over all the coffee makers. ("They" being Atlantic Coffee, our provider.) I don't know why. When I got coffee at 10:00, the usual machines were there, and when I went at 11:00, they were all new. It's the new machines that are aggravating me – they no longer have the "Strong" option! I am forced to make normal coffee. They do have an "Espresso" button, but that produces about an ounce of liquid, and I hate to waste coffee like that.
That's not the worst of it.
Like everything else in this future, the coffee machines have screens. And while they're brewing your coffee, they display the message "Brewing your fresh-ground coffee". Which is not only a lie, but nonsense. You just put a pre-packages envelope of ground coffee into the damn thing – there's no "fresh ground" about it.
Hmph.
I actually have a third point of contention, but this one is my own fault. As the coffee is brewing, on the new machines, there's a progress bar one can watch. However, it also has a little rotating circle, like the descendant of the hourglass icon that we now stare at while we wait for our electronic masters to get around to doing something. I often find myself watching the little circle go round and round and wondering why my coffee isn't downloading faster.
So, coffee. Free, but not a free drink. Now not industrial-strength. Accompanied by self-serving Marketing lies. And irreducibly analog. I suppose it's the best of all possible worlds. Free coffee, and a number of things to resent and complain about.
My wife and I have another saying, which is actually a line from Frasier. "What's better than an exquisite meal? An exquisite meal with one tiny flaw that we can pick at endlessly". There, as they say, ya go. |
|
|
