bitterly fought office coffee wars: share your stories

by Alison Green on April 19, 2018

On a post last week about coffee wars, someone left this amazing comment:

Without thinking hard, I recall the coworker who made herself a fresh pot every morning then dumped the contents so no one else could have any. The coworker who charged people for coffee the company supplied (she kept the money). The coffee pot that got moldy because no one would clean it. Right now I’m dealing with people who put double coffee grinds in the machine because they like to drink mud…

We need to hear your stories about office coffee wars that have you have participated in or witnessed.

Water club and tea war stories are also welcome.

Share, and spare no detail.

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  1. Foreign Octopus*

    A battle was once waged in my office over cleaning the coffee cups. Not the fact that they were left out on the side to get moldy but the fact that as soon as a coffee cup was empty, just as it touched the surface of someone’s desk, one of my colleagues would swoop in and clean it immediately. The boss kept asking her to stop but she didn’t. I left before that one was resolved.

        1. Wired Wolf*

          My mom still does this if we happen to have the same day off. I’ll leave my desk for two minutes come back…where’s my coffee she saw me make 10 minutes ago? I know she wants me to use up the ground coffee we have (open bag of which is improperly stored so it’s all oxidized and tastes nasty), but…

    3. TheCupcakeCounter*

      My MIL does this and then gets really upset whenever someone asks her what she did with their cup. We actually caught her a couple of time and then got it on video to prove that she does this. She doesn’t do it on purpose (I don’t think) but every family get together if you leave your beverage unattended the contents will be discarded and the glass in the dishwasher within 5 minutes.

      1. NewBoss2016*

        My mom does the same thing, and it can be highly annoying (sorry Mom!). There is no point in drinking anything at her house, because the second it touches a surface, it is dumped out and washed. She doesn’t do that with plates or bowls, just cups. It has turned into a long-running joke.

          1. NewBoss2016*

            Wow, I absolutely will do this the next time I visit. I can’t believe we never thought to do that.

              1. NewBoss2016*

                Absolutely! I will post results in an open thread after I go over there next. Unfortunately she is out of town, because I really want to do this ASAP.

                1. Nerine*

                  This is the kind of stuff that keeps me going. I am really invested in this update and hope I’ll catch it! :D

            2. Nerine*

              This made me LOL. Can you please report back how it goes? (With my mother, it’s cooking implements. While I’m cooking.)

              1. Elle*

                Aaargh, my dad does this to me when I’m over there – I completely went off on him last year when I turned round to pick up the (clean!) spatula I’d just got out of the drawer, and discovered he’d put it in the dishwasher!

                He goes on about people not cleaning up as they go, but I’m usually leaving stuff out to reuse, in order to reduce the number of things that have to eventually be washed!

              2. whingedrinking*

                The incident that will always stick in my mind was the time I was making Thanksgiving dinner at my house, and I had everything under control. When it was time to drain the juices from the turkey, I laid everything out before opening the oven door. I swear, literally as soon as my hands were full with a hot roasting pan containing a fifteen pound bird, Mom zipped over and began moving the stuff, offering me things in the wrong order and putting them “away” in the wrong place. It’s a good thing she never became an OR nurse.

                1. V*

                  My weirdest moment was when I was making tea as a teenager. We had a fancy unglazed Japanese teapot. I put the hot water in the pot and left the kitchen to go to the bathroom (green tea takes about 3 minutes). When I came back the whole piping hot teapot was gone. Went to the livingroom to ask my parents, but both swore up and down that they had never seen a teapot in their lives. Months (!) later when I was getting our Easter baking mold what do I see at the far back of the cupboard? Someone had stuffed the obviously full, heavy and hot teapot into the baking cupboard (the teapots are stored somewhere else). Moldy remnants of the tea leaves and about half of the water were still inside the pot. When I showed it to my parents I got blamed for ruining the good teapot. To this day they both claim innocence. I’m 99% sure it was my mother, but she’d rather die than admit she did something wrong or stupid.

          2. The Other Liz*

            My roommates do this. My solution: drink out of my Nalgene. Water glasses disappear, but Nalgenes are left alone!

      2. Cadbury Cream Egg*

        My mom did this and poured out my almost full wine glass. I was livid. Whenever she is at my house she now checks carefully, lol.

        3. AsItIs*

          Why would she do this at another person’s home? Does she consider your home hers, and you are a child needing to cleaned up after?

        4. Ace*

          Why is she doing this at another person’s house at all? Your mother has serious boundary issues.

        5. KT*

          My mom goes around emptying the water glasses I leave out for my kitty cats. They have very specific spots they like to drink from, and I kept coming home to find them waterless and thirsty. She just (naturally?) assumed I was a messy person who never put glasses back, I guess. Sigh.

      3. Dr. Speakeasy*

        My stepmother does this. But she has started asking if you’re done with something after she put two glasses I’d left in the guest bathroom in the dishwasher. Why would I leave TWO glasses you ask? Because I forgot my contact lens case at home. Good thing I’d brought my glasses.

        2. EddieSherbert*

          Hahaha, oh no! I’ve totally had to use cups for contacts a few times. Luckily, no one has emptied them for me!

        3. Caitlin*

          I had to do that at a hotel. They overnighted me to another location and sent my suitcase ahead to where I was going. I used two of the hotel’s water glasses for my contacts.

      4. anyone out there but me*

        LOL *raising hand*…. I am guilty of this and it drives my husband kuh-RAZY….. “Where’s my iced tea?” Ummmmmm.

        I am just a bit obsessed with cleaning.

        1. Anion*

          My husband used to do this to me, until I finally made such a stink about it (mostly jokingly, but still) that he promised to stop.

          Then one day I left my drink on the kitchen counter and left the room. I came back, no Coke. Where is my Coke? I checked the sink, the dishwasher, everywhere. I spent fifteen minutes searching for it, while my husband watched, barely controlling his laughter. I finally asked him (accused him of taking it), and he, doubled over with laughter by this time, opened the kitchen cupboard and showed me where he’d hidden it.

          Stinker.

          (In fairness, this was revenge for a prank I played on him. And it *was* funny. But still. He let me wander around for fifteen minutes thinking I’d imagined pouring myself a Coke!)

      5. only acting normal*

        My mother will clean up so close behind you that she’ll put the milk away before you’ve had a chance to put any in your tea/coffee. Unattended drinks have zero chance.

      6. Blue*

        My mom does this and it drives me nuts. I’m used to reusing a single glass throughout the day because I don’t have a dishwasher and why get more things dirty if I don’t have to? She, on the other hand, constantly has miscellaneous family members around who have not been trained to put things in the dishwasher (don’t get me started on that), so she’s in the habit of picking up their random used dishes. After years of me visiting and being like, “Where did my cup go??” we have come to an agreement that “my” cup lives on a particular shelf in the kitchen. Since she knows it’s mine, she can trust it will get into the dishwasher without her help, and she leaves it be.

      7. Thoughts*

        Somewhat similar and equally frustrating, my mom puts all the cans of soda and bottles of water she finds all in the same place on the counter. No one know who’s is which anymore. She wonders why there’s so much waste. I told her and she didn’t realize she did it! Now she encourages you to write your name on it with a sharpie, lol!

      1. TootsNYC*

        my husband throws out the last bit of whatever is in your glass, even if you specifically say, “I’m not done with this soda from my dinner, don’t throw it out.”
        He himself sets a glass of water on the counter to have all the time, especially overnight, but if *I* do it, he will throw it out and put the glass in the dishwasher.

        We’ve spoken nicely, explained, spoken sternly, yelled. Nothing changed it.
        Once, I accidentally threw his water out (I didn’t realize he’d deliberately set his water glass up in the afternoon). And when he asked where his water was, I pointed out that this was how we often felt.

        I think he was worried about it spilling or something.

        We never have broken him of it–we just drink everything right away.

        1. Dr Wizard, PhD*

          The temptation to throw his water out every time in retaliation would be overwhelming for me.

        3. Ice and Indigo*

          Would he knock it off if you got re-useable coffee cups, do you think? They have snti-spill lids, and they’re opaque so he can’t see what’s inside them…

      2. Teapot Tester*

        I admit I do this to my kids. However, they leave cups with water in them all over the house, and I never know which one they just filled and set down, and which one has been there for hours, or possibly even a day or two. When I loading the dishwasher to run it, any cup that’s not in someone’s hand is likely to end up in the dishwasher.

        I don’t do it to my husband’s cup though, because I know he drinks from his all day long, and he doesn’t take a new one every time like the kids do.

        1. Fan*

          Yeah, I did this to my ex, who would only bring all the mugs/cups/etc from around the house to the kitchen and wash them if she was literally out of vessels to drink from. *shudder*

          1. Specialk9*

            Vessels, lol, I’m imagining her drinking from a pot because all the glasses and Tupperware and measuring cups are dirty.

              1. Laura*

                When I was a student, I once drank gin and tonic out of a teacup because we didn’t have any clean glasses. I regret nothing.

              3. DistinctiveGait*

                I thought the pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true.

        4. bookends*

          My boyfriend does the same thing! Random glasses everywhere. At least I can use the water for the plants as I carry them to the kitchen! He’ll even have 2-3 glasses out and then get confused and drink from my *one* glass, which is my pet peeve.

          1. Teapot Tester*

            Ha, I do that too, water the plants with the leftover cups.

            And yes, my older son will often grab the closest cup and drink from it, even if it’s my one cup that I refill instead of taking a new one every time.

            1. whingedrinking*

              I only wear lipstick when I’m visiting my parents, because one way to keep my mother from drinking my wine is if the rim of the glass has vivid lip prints on it.

        5. MamaGanoush*

          Pick one kid. Tell kid: go around the house right now and pick up EVERY cup. Take them to the kitchen. Then wash every cup BY HAND, dry it, and put it away.
          Ignore all whining that “but they aren’t all my cups!” or “but I didn’t even drink anything!”
          Make the same kid do this every day for a week. No exceptions.
          The next week, pick a different kid.
          I had four sibs. Five weeks (plus an occasional lapse, which meant five weeks again; lapses became rare).
          Thanks mom!

      3. straws*

        Mine does this as well. It’s not a huge deal when it’s water, but he doesn’t check the contents so it’s occasionally a gin & soda. That doesn’t go over as well…

      4. Turquoisecow*

        My husband and my brother have done this to me. My dinner drink is 95% empty but I am intending to refill it and drink again that evening. I turn away to put dishes in the dishwasher, and he’s handing me my not-empty cup. Nope.

        Thankfully I usually do the after dinner dishes and can stop him, but not always!

    5. Dancing Pangolins*

      A colleague of mine threw away (in the trash) my clean cup (that I left drying by the sink).

      1. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

        I would have murdered a colleague for doing that (but I’m very persnickety about my work mugs).

      2. Specialk9*

        Have you seen the book Roly Poly Pangolin by the author of Llama Llama Red Pajama? It’s my favorite.

      3. Rainy*

        Ohhhh my goooodddddddddd. No jury on earth.

        My office has actual offices for everyone, so that doesn’t happen here, fortunately. We all keep that stuff IN our offices (and usually out of sight when not being actively used). Our big problem wrt drinking and eating vessels is that we have a “supergreen” person who insisted that the office buy reusable plates for office celebrations, which then have to be washed by someone (unsurprisingly not the supergreen themselves of course), rather than using paper plates (we had the recycled paper totally compostable ones, too!). So now most people put their cake or cookie on a folded paper towel instead, and the plates barely get used.

        1. essEss*

          If someone raised a stink that reusable plates needed to be purchased, then whenever the plates were dirty they should be stacked on that person’s desk to be cleaned. If they deliberately caused extra work, then they need to be the one to do that work.

          1. Violet*

            I once worked in an office where they bought reusable plastic plates to be environmentally friendly to avoid using paper plates.

            So everyone would need to wash their plastic plates after use… but there was no dishwasher or drying rack so everyone would dry them off using paper towels, and by saving 20 paper plates, we ended up with a trash can full of paper towels…

          2. just dropping by*

            I interned at an environmental non-profit that purchased fair trade coffee beans in bulk to lower the costs. What they did not purchase, however, was an appropriately sized coffee grinder. There was a single tiny household coffee grinder, the kind that’s about the size of a soda can, for the entire organization of about ~75 people. You had to stand there grinding coffee for ten minutes because it took three or four batches to grind enough beans for a single pot, so naturally everyone waited for someone else to make coffee. Whoever broke down first would then have to stand guard over the machine as the coffee brewed, because the caffeine addicts would start hovering once you could hear the bubbling and the entire pot would be gone as soon as it finished brewing. It was such a pain in the ass, I ended up drinking a lot of tea instead.

      4. anycat*

        a colleague of mine threw away my hello kitty mug from japan that they had used and left dirty in the sink.

        2. RueBarbe*

          People like your colleague are why we can’t have nice things. I’m sorry that your supercool Hello Kitty mug fell into unsavoury hands.

      5. essEss*

        We know from a previous letter this week that the idea of leaving personal dishes to dry in the communal kitchen has a sharp divide in opinion and is a separate war unto itself. :-D

      6. Geillis D*

        I started four years of bad blood on my first day at FormerJob when I accidentally used OfficeQueenBee’s mug (it was my very first day, the mug was in a cupboard in the kitchenette that contained a hodgepodge of mugs and glasses so there was no way to tell one of those was someone’s dedicated mug, and no one warned me). She was not happy. I was not not feeling warm and fuzzy on that first day. She never warmed up to me, even after she became my manager (what’s not to like about me, right?). Both of us breathed a huge sigh of relief when I gave my notice last summer.

        At NewJob there are distinct plain office mugs, and people’s special mugs that stand out so I know not to touch them unless I need to put out a fire. I have my own mug (incidentally, a going-away gift from OldJob) that lives in my office and will never touch the common dishwasher or sink.

      7. Wired Wolf*

        I’ve had two travel mugs thrown out at work…one I was able to rescue from the breakroom trash (one of the cleaners tried to argue with me that it wasn’t mine), the other one I think wound up in the large bin and got taken down to the compactor before I realized what happened. Luckily they were old and not very expensive to begin with, but both had my name on them in bright blue glitter paint and were obviously somewhat full/warm.

      8. NorthernSoutherner*

        That’s outrageous, Dancing. How did you deal with it?
        I worked in an office where kitchen duty rotated weekly. Don’t get me wrong. We still had the kitchen police sending email reminders and/or overhead announcements about some mess or another, or letting us know the fridge was about to be cleaned out, so if you had anything molding in there, you’d better rescue it or say goodbye.
        Once it was my week and the sink was really backed up. I used the small plunger stored under the sink and came up with, I don’t know, a dozen plastic coffee stirrers. There was no whatever you call that thing — a strainer? — to stop stuff from going down the drain. Still, how hard is it to toss your stirrer in the garbage, which was RIGHT THERE.

    6. Excel Slayer*

      I have to know. Was your co-worker in any way responsible for mug cleaning, or cleaning in general? Or were they some kind of self appointed mug police?

    7. OlympiasEpiriot*

      How did she know? Why the cup spidey sense? Didn’t she actually have work to do??!

    8. Typhon Worker Bee*

      I had a roommate who used to do this. She’d also start washing the dishes I’d used to make dinner, while I was still eating dinner, all with a huge amount of banging around, frowning, and sighing. We all tried telling her that it was perfectly reasonable to wait to wash the dishes until you’d finished eating, but she clearly didn’t agree.

        1. Allison*

          I hate it too. Angry cleaning, and passive aggressively washing dishes at someone, is not a good solution when you’re frustrated about housework.

          What generally happens with me and my roommates is I’ll go to take care of my dishes, and end up taking care of all the dishes and cleaning the kitchen because hey, why not? I’m already doing stuff, I might as well! I’m not doing it to send a message, but I’m also not purposely taking on the role of a caretaker for my roommate. I have been naively assuming that by doing it that way, my roommate will follow my lead, or at the very least, I won’t have to wash their dishes *that* often . . .

          But then my roommate and I fall into a pattern where they get used to having their dishes taken care of and they’re no longer in the habit of cleaning up, and when they do clean they seem angry about it (huffing and puffing, grumbling and moaning, slamming things around, etc.), and I realize that I’m doing way too much of the work. But I know my options are suck it up and keep doing the work without cleaning *at* them, or talk to them like an adult about how we can even things out.

          1. Specialk9*

            I had one roommate – one – who’d just simply do what needed doing without asking or negotiations. She’s just be like, ‘hey the leaves are piling up, I’ll go buy that special leaf bag and a rake, and then rake and bag the leaves’ and I was all ‘you’re magic’. Sadly for me, after a year she found a dude who adores her.

            1. SomethingFishy*

              I tried this method with my roommate. It worked okay until she went on vacation, leaving a sink full of dirty dishes. This included a sealed Tupperware full of shrimp scampi tails that, by the time I decided to just do the dishes, had been sitting in the sink in our unairconditioned apartment for over a week. When I opened the lid, I thought I was going to die from the smell.

      2. KRM*

        Ohhh, I had a roommate like that. I would tell her to leave the dishes because I would do them at X time. She ALWAYS did them before that, and then would complain that I ‘never did the dishes’. Solved that one by moving out.

        1. Typhon Worker Bee*

          She was a university-assigned flatmate, during my first year of grad school, so the rest of us couldn’t do much about her. She was extremely uptight in other ways too, and ended up dating her stepbrother (no blood relationship, but they’d grown up in the same house as siblings since they were little kids) – definitely a very strange person.

        2. Dust Bunny*

          My dad does this: You tell him to leave the dishes because you’ll do them this evening or whatever, but then you found that he’s already done them. Then he plays the housework martyr (mind you, dishes are just about *all* he does–he doesn’t sweep or vacuum or Swiffer or anything else). But of course if he feels like doing dishes later, they’ll sit until he’s ready to do them, so it’s not just that they have to be done RIGHT NOW.

          1. Artemesia*

            My experience of roommates who ‘will do the dishes later’ is that they never do, or later is days later and when you do them ‘they were GOING to do them later’ but they never do. It is reasonable to do dishes for the day after dinner. But if later is a long time from now or tomorrow — then not so much.

            1. Blue*

              Dirty dishes in the sink is the one house-sharing thing that I can’t deal with. Leaving it to soak after dinner – fine. Leaving it overnight – not fine. Once I figured that out, it was an early negotiation with every roommate. I’ll compromise on pretty much anything else!

        3. Jojobean*

          Hah, my mother does this to me. One of so very, very many reasons why I hated living at home…

          I would usually prepare a meal, leave the dirty dishes/pots/pans/whatever rinsed off and sitting in the sink while I ate, then as soon as I was done I’d bring my plate back to the sink and wash everything.

          But apparently that wasn’t soon enough, because a large percentage of the time, my mother would have swooped in while I was eating and angrily washed the dishes before I could get back to them.

          Then, of course, she would “remind” me to be sure to wash my dishes because I had been leaving them in the sink and she “had” to do them.

          Sigh…..passive aggressive parents.

          I also solved that one by finding a job and moving out (to a war zone — because that was easier than living with my parents).

      3. Oxford Coma*

        My husband was in for a surprise when he started eating with my family. My family’s culture is “eating gets in the way of being productive, so you need to cram food down your throat as fast as possible so you can get back to work”. My husband is from a culture that thinks a 3-hour nightly dinner is normal. Their holiday meals take an entire day.

        He is never done his first course before my dad gets up to start the dishes. After many years, my husband has learned to take very tiny portions and then just re-eat when we get home.

      4. Ruthi*

        Lol, I do that to my roommate all the time, but without the sighing, because if it doesn’t get done before we sit down to eat, the dishes are in the sink until supper the next day. Usually it’s accompanied by catching up on our day and lots of thank you.

    9. LBK*

      I confess I am a gross weirdo who prefers not to wash his mug after every cup, but rather generally just rinses it out. It tastes better! I can’t explain it.

      1. The New Wanderer*

        That’s how it works in my family too – I wash the mugs about once a week but otherwise, a quick rinse right after the last of the coffee is gone seems to work fine for us.

        We also keep one water glass (each) going for a couple of days at home, and have had to hide them when visiting certain relatives because sometimes you blink and it’s gone.

        1. LBK*

          I’m also notorious for leaving water cups all over the house – I’m so bad at keeping track of them that I actually didn’t realize my boyfriend regularly dumps them out and washes them for me until he told me a month or so ago, after living together for over a year.

          1. Middle of Messy and Neat*

            Ha! I love it :) It’s like that YouTube video with the magic coffee table.

          2. Is It Spring Yet?*

            I went TWO years thinking my car only needed washed 2x a year.

            My husband gave up me noticeing after the first year.

            The worst part is i bragged to all my coworkers about how i was so lucky. They really enjoyed when i told them my epiphany.

              1. Jadelyn*

                Cars don’t *need* to be washed at all, to be fair. Unless something that’s actually damaging to the finish got on it.

                …I say, as someone who was mildly concerned that taking my previous car through a car wash might’ve damaged the duct tape holding it all together. I try to wash my current car more often but it just depends on when I have time.

              3. Elizabeth H.*

                I am having the same feeling. I don’t wash the car unless it is filthy for some reason. And even so, eventually it will rain. The inside matches!

                1. Flash Bristow*

                  Right! The times I wash my car is actually after the Sahara dust has rained down on my car and made it hard to see out of the windows. A few times a year at most.I guess if you park under a tree and get berries and bird shit splattering then ok, out might need doing more often, else… Save your energy!

              4. Astor*

                It can also really depend on where you live, too. If you’re in a temperate climate with regular rains but few puddles, you don’t have to wash your car nearly as often as someone who lives in a muddy area, or where they salt or sand for snow. So, in some places it’s more about shining the car up than cleaning it, in others you’re cleaning the car so that you don’t get dirty, in others you’re cleaning the car so that it doesn’t get damaged, and in still others you’re cleaning the car even though there’s a risk of damage.

                Ditto with the style of car, some of them get dirtier and are more likely to make you dirty that others.

                1. Chinook*

                  Yup, in Alberta in spring, every vehicle is some shade of brown. We marveled at all the shiny cars in Florida because none of them had mud or even a slight sheen of dust (and few had cracked windshields)

            2. General Ginger*

              I. Don’t think I’ve ever washed my car more than twice a year. Usually only when mud was involved.

            3. Owler*

              I only wash the car when I leave my coffee mug on the roof and start to drive away. The sad drips of coffee and cream delicately sweetened are like tears of an angered caffeine goddess that must be purged before the dairy turns bad.

        2. Teapot Tester*

          Are you my husband? Because this is totally us. I don’t even know how long I go before washing my water cup. Coffee cups I do tend to wash after a day or two because the leftover coffee settles in the bottom and gets gross.

      2. General Ginger*

        I do the same, especially with my work mug. Rinse in between drinks, serious wash when it gets grubby.

    10. Specialk9*

      I find it deeply ironic that in a coffee war thread we’re largely taking about cleaning, and burning food and appliances.

    11. Deus Cee*

      I had a colleague who would get frustrated that I would use the same coffee cup for the whole day before washing it. She would wait until I was AFK then take my cup, put it on the tray with the rest to go back to the kitchen for washing, then add washing-up liquid to it so I couldn’t use it again.

      1. SittingDuck*

        WTF? Why did she care what you used?

        I use the same coffee mug for DAYS before washing it at home – probably not the most hygienic – but its MY cup and MY choice.

    12. SittingDuck*

      My dad and step-mom do this -it drives my husband and I batty! Mostly it is at their own house – but if anything is left unattended for 30 seconds it goes into the sink or dishwasher.

      I get that they don’t like having dirty things sitting around, but at least 80% of the time I (or my husband/kids) weren’t done with whatever it was in the glass/bowl/plate etc. we just went to the bathroom, or chased the baby to stop her from falling down the stairs, and we come back and BOOM – no more glass!

      They even do it at our house, and my sisters house. Its infuriating!

    13. Caitlin*

      If I were in that office, I’d pointedly keep my hand on my empty latte cup. Not because I’d want any more, but because I’ll throw it out when I feel like it.

    1. Amadeo*

      Yep, have not been part of office coffee drama (I tend to bring mine from home because all of my current and past coworkers liked to drink rocket fuel and I just don’t like it that strong), so I’ll join you with the ‘corn.

      1. RJ the Newbie*

        ‘Corning here as well. Too much coffee drama in my last two places (a former supervisor actually kept a spreadsheet to analyze how much two underperforming departments were using) led to my buying a nice thermos and brewing my Bustelo at home!

        1. Coywolf*

          Omg tracking coffee consumption based on performance is a whole new level of crazy I don’t ever want to see at my workplace!

            1. M_Lynn_K*

              Or is it the opposite? The department drinking more coffee is clearly more energetic and producing more? So maybe if folks were more caffeinated they’d work more/harder? I mean it worked for Jessie on Saved By the Bell….

    2. SJPxo*

      Same. I don’t drink coffee or tea so couldn’t give two hoots about it but I love the stories because it makes people crazy!

    3. Amber Rose*

      Me neither. I don’t actually know how to use a coffee maker. If I desperately need a coffee, which is only rarely, I just go to McDonalds haha.

      Someone did burn popcorn around here a while ago, and the reek was incredible. How about some gummy bears instead?

      1. Whoa*

        We had two people, on two different occasions, burn their popcorn so bad that it filled the entire area with plumes of black smoke and scorched the inside of the microwaves. We were surprised the smoke alarms didn’t end up going off! The smell stayed for weeks, though.

        1. Sled dog mama*

          I worked at a place that you would be disciplined if you walked away from a microwave with popcorn in it. This started after someone did set off the fire alarm by burning popcorn in an unattended microwave.

        2. Snickerdoodle*

          Somebody once burned popcorn at my job, and we had to evacuate the building. There are now large all-caps signs over all the microwaves saying employees must remain in the area while reheating food. It didn’t take, and somebody heated up pork rinds (WHY?), burned them, and then took the whole smelly smoldering mess back to his desk. He was almost run out of the building on a rail.

          1. Whoa*

            OMG. I can’t stomach the smell of pork rinds anyways, and the thought of burnt ones? So gross. I’ll take burnt popcorn over that.

          3. JustaTech*

            I have a coworker who’s a real germaphobe, so if he wants to eat chips left over from a party he will microwave the chips to kill the bacteria. At least one time when he did this the chips burst into flames in the microwave.

            1. General Ginger*

              I can’t imagine they would have a good texture post-microwave even if they didn’t burst into flames!

            2. whingedrinking*

              There are a wide range of UV lamps available that are marketed as killing germs. I don’t know if they actually work, but at least they won’t start a fire if he shines them on his chips…

              1. JustaTech*

                Yes, and we have those, but they’re in the lab, where food is 100% forbidden (we work with blood).

          4. Rusty Shackelford*

            I worked with someone who put his popcorn in the microwave, accidentally punched in 30 minutes instead of 3 minutes, and walked away. Who can’t stand in front of the microwave long enough to watch your popcorn?

            1. essEss*

              Exactly. You aren’t supposed to cook popcorn for the time on the package. That is an estimate and you are supposed to turn it off when they stop popping. It even says so in the instructions on the microwave popcorn bags. You almost never go the full amount of time on the package.

            2. Nonnon*

              … I’m that kind of person. Mercifully, smartphones exist, so I can look at cat pictures and keep an eye on my food.

          5. margarita mama*

            Shrimp was over-microwaved in the cubby next to my desk. “But it wasn’t fish!” Had to throw out the microwave, the smell didn’t dissipate.
            I thought it was reasonable to assume ‘no fish’ means that other sea or freshwater foods were included in the ban. I guess…not so much.

        3. Skunklet*

          yeah, i did that, back in the early 90s… high wattage nuker, I decimated the popcorn… the department head smelled it and decreed no popcorn until after 5 pm…

          1. Rebecca in Dallas*

            I also once burned popcorn at work. *hangs head in shame* I’ve never eaten popcorn at work again!

        4. FoodieNinja*

          In college I had a job as a student assistant in the office of one of the university’s VPs. Our office got a new microwave, and someone came from another office in the building to use it to make her popcorn. She didn’t pay attention to the setting and wandered off. The popcorn burned and the resulting smell was so bad that the president came down from his office upstairs to investigate, and promptly banned all microwave popcorn in the building.

          1. Commenter who works at Tufts!*

            Was this at Tufts? I used to work in the main administration building and people told me this story – that a former university president had banned microwave popcorn from being made anywhere in Ballou as a consequence of a burned popcorn episode. People assumed that the ban wasn’t really still in effect after his tenure ended, but the whole time I worked in Ballou nobody ever made microwave popcorn anywhere so it seemed to have worked itself into the culture.

              1. essEss*

                Our university administration building had a rule that NO department on any of the office floors was allowed to cook popcorn because the president of the university said he was allergic to popcorn. We always wondered how true this was and how sensitive he truly was because he regularly attended university sporting events where the entire facility reeked of popped popcorn.
                The first day after he retired, all departments had lines at the microwaves of people waiting to make popcorn.

            2. Specialk9*

              This has happened at two big companies I’ve worked at.

              And please don’t guess where we work, it’s kinda creepy feeling. (Commenting rules)

          2. Harper*

            You have reminded me of a semi-cherished college memory.

            In my dorm, there was a girl who was a major scholarship winner but not so big on the street smarts. In the cafeteria there was one of those conveyor belt toasters with a big sign saying NO BAGELS and an arrow pointing to the pop-up toaster. Every day for the first two weeks of school she put a bagel on the conveyor belt, it caught fire, and the whole residence had to be evacuated. I really don’t know how they finally convinced her to stop.

            Later that year they had a “morale building” Name the Dining Hall competition that was canceled when the not suggestion was “The Flaming Bagel.”

            1. Elle*

              My dad once caught one of my sister’s friends, aged about 15, on the verge of putting a slice of buttered bread into our toaster. He, in all seriousness, had to explain to her that you buttered it after toasting it.

              She had a deeply controlling mother, and wasn’t even allowed to use the microwave or toaster at home. She was allowed to pour her own cereal, but her mum hovered at her elbow while she did it.

            2. JennyFair*

              I’m a very literal person and would probably have taken that sign to mean ‘no bagels in the toaster’, so I’m not sure the book-but-not-street-smart girl was entirely at fault here.

              1. AntsOnMyTable*

                But I feel like after the first time you probably would have figured out that a bagel catching on fire is a bad thing and stopped putting it on the conveyor belt. Or even the 5th time.

              2. FirstTimeCommenter*

                We have a sign at my workplace that says “no cheese in the toaster.” I can only assume someone did this at least once…

            3. Laura*

              Reminds me of the girl in my halls at uni who put a baked potato in the oven and went out for the evening. Unfortunately she wrapped it in kitchen roll rather than tin foil, and the thing caught fire. Cue the smoke alarms going off and the building having to be evacuated…

        5. Parenthetically*

          My school, somewhat ill-advisedly, provides microwaves to allow kids to warm up their lunches (since we don’t provide hot lunch). Popcorn is a favorite snack for their morning snack break. You can imagine that, in a K-12 school, this happens with some regularity. And yet we still provide microwaves.

          1. Middle School Teacher*

            Interesting. We also provide microwaves and I can count on one hand in the 11 years we’ve been in this building that a student has burned popcorn. I would expect it to happen more.

            1. Parenthetically*

              I don’t know if we just have particularly absent-minded students, but there used to be a couple of culprits in particular who’d save it for their after-school snack, start it popping and then get distracted and run off to play with a friend and suddenly…

          2. Beaded Librarian*

            I can top that, I was told about a community college dorm that had to ban microwaves in the dorm rooms after one to many students started a FIRE by forgetting to put water in their cup of noodles to make them. And the removing them was a last resort, they had reminded them multiple times to make sure to add water, and I believe it was all different students who did it.

            1. Parenthetically*

              Oh, we had that happen once too — a near-fire anyway! And a teacher on lunch duty once had to evacuate the lunch room and the smoldering remains of easy mac. That’s a smell that lingers.

              1. Thoughts*

                I once did that with easy mac…it really does linger. I was so embarrassed. In the dorms. We started reminding each other every time to double check there’s water!

        6. Caitlin*

          When I was in university, the burned microwavable popcorn would set off the smoke detector and we all had to go outside until the fire department dealt with it. That’s never fun but it was SO much worse on nights when the newest episode of Friends was airing (this was pre-PVR). Another time, some poor girl was in the shower and had to go outside on a fall night in her towel. Someone lent her their sweater.

          1. AcademiaNut*

            They banned hot air poppers in my residence building because it would set of the heat detectors, triggering the alarms, usually at about 10 pm. The local fire marshal was notorious for his lack of sense of humour, and his insistence on rapidly evacuating the building. There were stories of people being harried outside wrapped in sheets because they weren’t prompt enough.

        7. princess paperwork*

          I worked in a clinic ans someone burnt the popcorn. The front desk staff received so many complaints from building tenants and patients that we weren’t allowed to make toast or popcorn from 7:15am – 6:00pm.

          1. Lindsay J*

            OMG I worked with someone who claimed to prefer the taste burnt as well. I always suspected, though, that she just said that to cover for being embarrassed by burning it multiple times.

        9. Susan Ryan*

          Bring all the burned popcorn over here to me. Love it! Mom wasn’t the worst cook-but was close. By the way, I never have to buy any.

      2. Sara*

        Speaking of bad smells…the Federal building adjacent to the building where my company leases office space had to be torn down and rebuilt for earthquake safety reasons so a lot of the federal agencies leased space in our building for a few years. One of those agencies was the DEA. One day we all came to work and the entire 16 story office tower reeked of marijuana. It was coming up the elevator shafts and seeping into all of the floors. It turns out the DEA had made a huge bust and brought it all into the building. The stench stuck around for almost a month.

        1. Your Tax Dollars at Work*

          This is hilarious. How much marijuana was it? Was there one naive employee who didn’t know the smell? Was there a buttoned up boss who revealed a past love of the Grateful Dead? I feel like I need to know everything about this story.

          1. Sara*

            I don’t how much it was, but it was enough that when stored in the parking garage in the basement in full-plant/non-burning form it stunk up our entire 16 story office building. There were a few naive employees, but we were a non-profit in Portland, OR so most people knew what it was and tried to figure out how they could get their hands on some (this was pre-legalization). Also it was a director who fired up a stereo with Grateful Dead music, but he was never very buttoned-up.

          2. whingedrinking*

            When I was backpacking in England, I made friends with a girl at the hostel. She was from some very small town in Wisconsin and was on summer break after her first year at UW-M. We went to a concert in Hyde Park together, and at one point she sniffed the air and said, “You know, sometimes I smell that smell on the quad and I never know what it is, it’s weird to smell it here too!”
            I looked at her in mild shock and said, “It’s pot.”
            “Oh! Wait, how do you know that?”
            “I majored in philosophy at a Canadian West Coast university. It’d be pretty hard *not* to know what it smells like…”

        3. Specialk9*

          Does raw marijuana smell? I know what it smells like burning. (Like a skunk, you guys across the hall who I hate for this reason. Please buy better illegal weed!)

          1. Emily*

            I’m really not a marijuana expert (I’ve never actually tried it in any form)…but I do know that you can smell it when driving from the Denver airport to the city proper, presumably because some of the farms/production facilities are located further out from the city center.

          4. many bells down*

            It’s legal here, and we still have the same problem. Is there an actual skunk in the neighborhood, or did someone buy literally the worst weed they could find?

          6. Elizabeth H.*

            Oh my god, yes. It smells raw, it smells while it is growing, etc. It definitely depends on the strain, some smell worse or better than others, some smell more like the classic “marijuana” smell, some don’t smell aversive, some smell more like an actual skunk, etc. I’m in MA where it is is legal, my friends grow it, and when it’s at the right stage sometimes you can smell it outside their house as you approach, even with windows closed. That phase is pretty brief though :)

          7. ShakespearesGirl*

            Having worked next to an illegal greenhouse for the stuff for almost a year (until they were finally busted), holy Moses YES it smells. We thought there was a skunk living in the drain system for a while.

            1. Lefty*

              Tangential, but related to the “skunky” smell… I had an acquaintance who worked in Animal Control, doing dispatch. She was instructed that reports of SEEING a skunk could get AC dispatched directly, reports of only SMELLING a skunk got police dispatch with AC follow-up if needed. She said the majority of skunk-smell calls did not need AC involvement, but she had several callers argue with her that they were smelling skunk and that the police weren’t needed. There was at least one man who met the police officers and explained to them that there was no way it wasn’t a skunk- until they showed him a very impressive hydroponic grow room in the apartment next door.

              1. whingedrinking*

                The opposite happened a couple years ago in my city. The Mounties came to bust a grow-op and instead found a very unfortunate family with a crappy landlord who wouldn’t help them get rid of the skunk that had taken up residence in the basement. IIRC the family were immigrants who didn’t know what to do or who to call, so they’d just been putting up with it for weeks.

          8. PattS*

            I have a respiratory reaction to raw marijuana and can’t breathe. The raw stuff smells worse than when it is smoked. First floor neighbor must have been using the entire apartment as a warehouse because not only could you smell it 3 floors up, but right out on the street. The cops were surprised at how strong the smell was and promptly set up surveillance. We moved because I couldn’t breathe in my home.

          9. Down low for this*

            Actually, some of the strongest new American-grown strains do smell exactly like skunk. They may be smoking some of the very best. Just sayin.

        4. Batshua*

          WHOA. I would never have thought that unsmoked marijuana would smell enough to be noticeable, even in large amounts!

          1. Batshua*

            (Also, I hear that burning sage smells very similar to burning marijuana, so … That put me off even considering smudging with sage as part of my ritual practice.)

            2. Ego Chamber*

              The people who say that have never smelled weed (that they’ve confirmed was actually weed), and are often the people who also think incense “smells like marijuana.”*

              ——
              *Like my aunt, who didn’t realize incense is burned to cover the smell—not because the smell is the same—which is why her dad would always ask “Are you kids smoking the dope in here?” when he smelled incense burning.

        5. Sam Yao*

          I currently work in an office tower with a DEA office that has a storage room one floor below us and this happens two or three times a year if they get a big haul in. I absolutely hate the smell of marijuana, for one; and for two, it makes some awkward explaining to our office visitors. We are attorneys.

        6. Sam Yao*

          I work in an office tower that contains a DEA office, which in turn has an evidence locker on the floor below mine, and this happens 2 or 3 times a year when they get in a big haul. I absolutely hate the smell of marijuana, for one; and for two, it makes some awkward explaining to office visitors.

          We are attorneys.

      3. Dev*

        We had one of the bosses make popcorn once and burned it so badly that the fire alarms did go off, everyone had to evacuate, and the fire department showed up…..

        1. Not Australian*

          At one of my workplaces it was a toaster; people would put the bread in, then wander off and leave it … and next thing you know alarms would be going off and the fire engines were on their way, and we all had to evacuate. From the seventh floor. In a hospital. At least once a month.

          1. Triumphant Fox*

            I am so bad about this – well I’ve only done it twice, but both times was at my in-laws, and they are so fastidious – that would never happen to them! I carried the toaster oven outside to open it and get the bread out, which helped a lot…but the shame was deep.

          2. Tardigrade*

            Oh! This happened once at my workplace. The entire toaster oven caught fire and passed away in the arms of the very kind fireman who removed it from the building.

            1. Snickerdoodle*

              Once I left my desk to go reheat my tea, and a tangible smoke cloud hit me as soon as I opened the door to the hallway. I went down the hall to the breakroom, where the door was propped open and a toaster was in the trash can. I never found out who the culprit was. I’m just glad the trash didn’t catch fire.

              1. Specialk9*

                Imagining the scene prior to the smoking toaster in the trash has me belly laughing every time I’ve read this story. Then the guy sauntering away casually, whistling.

            2. Kelly L.*

              Not at work, but at home, from my childhood, I remember two distinct incidences of my mom carrying a flaming toaster oven outside to expire in the driveway.

          3. SarahKay*

            I asked our HSE leader if we could have a toaster available for general use. She explained she’d rather not, having suffered similar problems to yours, Not Australian, in her previous job. Although in her case at least it wasn’t a hospital; unfortunately the evacuation (complete with fire engines) took place the day the CEO was visiting…

          4. Beaded Librarian*

            Oh god I did that once working in the hospital kitchen. I don’t remember the exact reason but I couldn’t use the 4 slice kitchen toaster to make toast for the patients (I’m assuming that it needed fixed in some way) so I used the employee 4 slice toaster that was just outside the kitchen door (the plugs were different so I couldn’t just move it) I had to toast about a dozen or dozen and a half slices, never left the toaster, never even BURNED or overly darkened a single piece and STILL somehow set off the smoke detector that was about 10 feet away. They turned down the sensitivity slightly after that.

            1. ShakespearesGirl*

              Hey, at least you don’t put whole (unhalved) bagels into the toaster. Or croissants.

              1. Beaded Librarian*

                I can ALMOST see fitting a croissant in one of the wide slot toasters if it was squashed slightly but how do you fit a WHOLE bagel?

                1. whingedrinking*

                  “A bagel will not fit gracefully into an electric toaster. Or if it goes in, it will not come out — unless you employ a screwdriver. This postulate has been completely tested.” ~Robert Fulghum.

          5. Kelly*

            One office in the building I work in on a public university campus has a mini kitchen with a stove and microwave, plus a Keurig and electric kettle. There had been a drip coffee maker and a toaster prior to the incident where the new person in my office left her bagel unattended and set off the smoke alarms throughout the building. I could smell something when I came back from break and my annoyed boss informed me what happened.

            She’s very fond of snacking and eating throughout the day, which is a problem in a building that officially doesn’t allow food because we have art museum galleries and library books in it. Most people adjust to that policy but she thinks she’s special and the rules don’t apply to her. It’s not the only rule that she thinks are for others, but not her special self. I can live with her sneaking food in and eating it in her office because it’s a policy that most people break, including myself if she was more interested in doing the basic core part of her job – interacting and trying to help the public. She’s more interested in becoming a member of what some term “the committee club”, and scheduling herself as out of the office in some busywork committee meeting.

        2. LibraryLife*

          I worked in a bagel shop in the basement of our college library. We once had a microwave start on fire and since we were warned to do everything possible to avoid the fire alarms going off (displacing the entire library was a mess), a coworker grabbed the microwave, ripped it from the wall, and ran outside with it.

          1. FuzzFrogs*

            OMG, I love that. Not super safe for the employee, but definitely an efficient way to fix the issue!

        3. NCKat*

          First year I worked at my present location, people were constantly burning popcorn in the microwave, setting the fire alarms off and prompting the fire department to respond each time. And each time all employees had to go out of the building to wait for the all-clear.

          After this happened several times, an edict went out from HR – no popcorn in microwaves, period. I’ve even heard this is now part of the orientation presentation for new employees.

        4. MusicWithRocksInIt*

          Once, two months into a new job, I put the wrong time into the microwave when making frozen snackers. The packaging said 90 seconds and I put 9 minutes in, or something like that. I was distracted at the time and did not double think it when I clearly should have. I went back to work (microwave was in the same room) and around minute four started to wonder why my food wasn’t done yet. I leapt up and stopped the microwave, but the snackers looked like little pieces of coal. So I threw them out in the plant so they wouldn’t smell up the office, and since no one else was around at the time I figured no one would know what happend. I closed up my work and went out to find myself another lunch. When I got back with my McDonalds there was a fire truck in front of my office and one of my managers was talking to the firemen. The fire alarms had gone off – minutes after the smoked snackers were removed from the office. I had to explain the entire thing. It was so embarrassing.

          2. Cookie Monster*

            I microwaved a cookie and decimated it, chucked the burnt remnants in the trash and walked away whistling while my coworkers asked what was that smell?

            I just wanted my cookie warm and melty :(

      4. Wendy Darling*

        One of my jobs featured both a Serial Fish Microwaver and a colleague who was obsessed with microwave popcorn and preferred hers well-done so she burned popcorn daily. I sat pretty close to the kitchen and it was not great smell-wise.

        Absolutely no coffee drama though. There was a well-established company-run coffee arrangement, and we had cleaning staff who cleaned the kitchen including putting people’s coffee cups in the dishwasher (there was a dishwasher!) if people left them on the counter like monsters. We were very spoiled but it made for a very peaceful kitchen situation.

      5. Funny Cide*

        Popcorn is banned in our workplace. It’s the only food specifically named in our employee handbook – it says the smell is “unprofessional.” Partly because it’s easy to burn, partly because even if you don’t burn it the smell does linger then too. I think the true answer is that our president just doesn’t like the smell.

        1. Artemesia*

          Our little agency moved into new quarters with a kitchenette and on the first day the gleeful admin staff fried chicken, which of course made the whole place smell like a KFC The CEO was livid as he had potential funders coming for a meeting in the new conference room and from that day on, no food was allowed to be prepared on premises. It did in fact smell pretty unprofessional.

          1. Toads, Beetles, Bats*

            Waaaaiiiiit…someone brought raw chicken and breading and fry oil and a pan to work for fun? Who on earth fries food at work if it’s not part of the job description?

        2. Nonyme*

          I worked in a corporate setting where they had a popcorn machine like you’d have at the movies, and they regularly wheeled it up and down the aisles dispensing cups of popcorn. People fought over who got to make the popcorn and give it out.

          At my current job, microwave popcorn is totally banned. Full stop. Signs on every microwave.

      6. MamaGanoush*

        A former manager always walked away from the microwave when making popcorn, and often burned it. You could smell it throughout the office. Drove us crazy.

        Then one day THE POPCORN BURST INTO FLAMES. Inside the microwave.

        We never let her forget it. She moved on some years ago (not because of the popcorn — a very capable manager). We still love to talk about it — it is part of the lore of the office.

    4. Lorelai Gilmore*

      We still joke about the great coffee war in our office.

      A couple of years ago we had a contract with a delivery service that brought us crappy ground coffee in single-serving bags. It was like drinking brown water. I was the new girl so I just brought my own coffee in a mug from home and kept the peace. The office manager said that if we could find better coffee for the same price, we could switch. One guy, we’ll call him Michael, made it his mission and scored a contract with a local company that was CHEAPER than the crappy stuff. Office manager, we’ll call her Pam, has been here for 30 years and is the type that holds her ground for no reason at all. So she started making up lame excuses that no one believed. She doesn’t really have any power, just a 15 year old job title that would mean something in another office. So Michael went to the Operations Director/Accountant and made his case. She approved, and the new coffee started showing up. Pam got really upset and pitched a fit.

      They spent the next several weeks passive-aggressive fighting over which coffee was made. They basically just tried to beat each other to the office to make the first pot. If Pam was first, she would claim that it was the new stuff, but everyone could tell it was the crappy stuff. She had no reason to hold her ground, she just did. Michael would pour it out and start over. You’d think you were getting the good coffee and take one drink and realize what had happened. Finally, Michael found Pam’s supply of the old coffee and threw it in the dumpster when she was off.

      Michael doesn’t work here anymore, and to this day, Pam refuses to order the new coffee. She just pretends it doesn’t exist. If she makes coffee, she’ll use one scoop instead of three. If the coffee delivery guy comes in to take our order, she just turns and walks away and someone else has to do it. It’s so bizarre!

      4. Parenthetically*

        I just do not understand people who fuss about coffee of normal strength being “too strong”. It’s pretty easy to ADD hot water to too-strong coffee and pretty freaking difficult to REMOVE water from too-weak coffee. There were many battles waged between the Weak Coffee and Strong Coffee factions at my church growing up — little old ladies having passive-aggressive niceness contests over the percolated Folgers.

        1. Lily Puddle*

          This x 100. At my old office, people would make a whole pot of coffee with 3 scoops, which is fine if you want coffee-flavored water, but not fine for those of us who actually like coffee.

          1. JustaTech*

            At my office (back when we made drip) we occasionally had the 2X coffee wars, but we solved them by putting out a stack of little Post-its and if you made extra strong coffee, you just labeled it.
            (We also used those to say what day the coffee was made and when the carafe was last cleaned.)

        2. Kelly L.*

          Ugh, that’s my BF’s mom. A whole pot of vaguely brown water, and if I’m visiting, we all have to get through all of that before I can brew a real pot without looking rude and wasteful.

        3. gmg22*

          Yep. I had this battle once with my aunt at a family gathering my mother hosted — she insisted that the correct amount of coffee to brew a 12-cup pot was ONE SCOOP, TOTAL, and that I was going to poison everyone with my one-scoop-per-cup pot of coffee. I nicely put the kettle on and assured her she could add hot water to hers. (I also enjoyed an inward chuckle about how much this explained about my uncle’s sneaky coffee habits — she thinks he “hardly ever drinks it” while in reality, everyone in our family and around our small town knows that he finds any excuse to pop out of the house to go get his extra-large dark roast at the convenience store.)

        4. Kelly*

          My dad and I both prefer our coffee stronger and absolutely no decaf, thank you very much. My sister when she visits his house every couple months doesn’t mind and lets one of us make the coffee. His sisters, who visit too frequently for both my sister and my own liking, have been banned from making coffee at his house because they don’t like theirs strong. He’s also tossed out the decaf coffee one of them bought over, saying that he doesn’t serve that fake coffee.

          We all like better coffee, and aren’t fans of Folger’s. We also don’t like McDonald’s drip coffee, which one aunt thinks is so good. His late mother thought Folger’s was good coffee and that was the best she’d serve. His comment was “at least it’s not instant coffee”. It got to the point that when he visited his mother’s house during her last couple years, he’d have me buy a cardboard traveler full of fresh Panera or Starbucks for us and any other relatives who wanted better coffee to drink at her house. I live an hour away, so it would be fresher. The two sisters with no coffee palate would give those of us drinking the better coffee instead of their mother’s crap coffee the stink eye.

      5. Arya Snark*

        This very same scenario happened at the most horrible job I ever had! I was Michael and hated the coffee they got from Sysco so I went on a mission to find better coffee. There was a local roaster less than a mile away and I found something that, while not the greatest coffee I every had, was better and cheaper than the dirty dish water they were drinking so I volunteered to pick it up on a regular basis. Well, our version of Pam and Dwight just could not deal with the change. I chose not to die on that particular hill of beans and just brought my own.

      6. zora*

        One place I was temping, the grouchy guy in the office decided to “train” me my first week (which was not actually his job, the EA was training me) which included “teaching” me how to make coffee in the regular old Mr. Coffee coffee pot. Then he proceeded to grumble the entire time about how “‘everyone’ always uses way too much coffee, don’t they know how expensive it is,” while showing me how he only used 3 scoops of grounds to make a whole pot of coffee. So gross.

        Of course, then I surreptitiously used a NORMAL amount of coffee every morning, just like everyone else did, OOops!! (sarcasm)

        1. No longer buying the coffee*

          My boss is a picky coffee drinker and for years we made the office coffee with a specific brand and flavor. When we were running low oon coffee one time, I ran to the store to pick some up, only to see that while there were other choices for this brand, the flavor he preferred wasn’t available. So I bought a few bags of the other (still the same brand, though) and the next day finished up the remaining bag of the stuff he loved and made a pot. By the time he came to fill his coffee cup, all he could see was the new bags (not knowing that I made one final pot with his favorite). He took a sip and frowned and said, “You know I really prefer the kind you always get. This flavor isn’t good!” He was drinking the kind we always made but because he saw the new bags, the power of suggestion apparently overwehelmed him and he had convinced himself he didn’t like this “new” kind!

    5. A.N. O'Nyme*

      Same. The biggest I can think of is getting the “oh, you’ll learn to drink coffee at university” response when I told people I don’t drink coffee.
      I still don’t drink despite going to university.

      3. StrawMeatloaf*

        Me neither. I do drink tea though as I have realized I need a bit of caffeine (I feel tired 24/7, undiagnosed depression probably or the anemia) but I have never been able to get into coffee.

        1. A.N. O'Nyme*

          No matter what I try (and I’ve tried a lot of variants, usually take a sip when people offer it to me just because I’m curious about the taste) I cannot get the stuff down my throat. Which means I really don’t understand the coffee hype.

        2. Julia*

          Ironically, caffeine (or the stuff in green tea) can hinder iron absorption, so it could be making you more tired.

          1. Strawmeatloaf*

            That’s interesting! But I only take it 2 days of the week in the morning, so I’m not taking it all the time. But that is good to know!

            1. Julia*

              It’s best if you don’t take it within 2 hours of any coffee or tea intake (and thyroid pills if you take any). Probably more than twice a week if you’re really anemic – I know mine takes forever to go up once it’s down, even if I take it every day with vitamin B and C to help absorption.

      4. Cousin Itt*

        It didn’t happen at uni, but I made it about two weeks into my first office job before caving and becoming a coffee drinker. I think because the only options were water, coffee/tea or paying for drinks and I’m a cheapskate who hates water.

      5. chocolate lover*

        Ditto, I didn’t drink coffee in college and still don’t, twenty years later. Don’t like the taste or the smell.

      6. The New Wanderer*

        I didn’t drink coffee til my 30s, several years after moving to Seattle (coffee central). Discovered flavored coffee, never looked back.

        2. RJTinRVA*

          Same here! I always liked the smell of coffee (especially the freshly-ground stuff), but never liked the taste. About 12 years ago, I had to go on a work trip to a location about 2 hours from home to a meeting that started at 8:30 AM. I was not a morning person in those days (although now I am), and was so tired when I got there that I got a cup of coffee just to stay awake. I felt so good that I started drinking it every day, but always the flavored stuff with Splenda. My current favorites to brew at home are Donut Shop Coconut Mocha and Green Mountain Hazelnut. My dad takes his with a little skim milk and no sugar. I don’t know how he does it!

      8. Blue*

        I’ve heard that a LOT! Four years of university, five years of graduate school, and I still can’t deal with the flavor of coffee. (I drink an unhealthy amount of coke, though.)

      9. JHS*

        I used to drink coffee for the caffeine but I was perpetually disappointed that it wasn’t tea. Eventually I stopped punishing myself and had two cups of tea instead (this was in the days before I found my extra strong tea bags…)

      10. whingedrinking*

        My brother is apparently some sort of weirdo – an engineer who consumes neither coffee nor energy drinks. He can occasionally be persuaded to have a cup of tea, though.

    6. Mallory Janis Ian*

      Me, either. I’ve always been at boring offices where the coffee situation, whatever it is, somehow just works out.

    7. Burnt Popcorn*

      My first corporate job, I actually sat nearby one of the most senior managers on the floor who intentionally burnt his popcorn. He would only burn it slightly, so it never set off smoke alarms, but it still stank like burnt popcorn. A few times people asked him about it and he said he always burnt it because he preferred it that way. Whenever the departments would reshuffle, employees would beg their managers to move their cubes away from his…

      Of course, he was also the first person in corporate culture I encountered who cut their fingernails at their desk on a regular basis too…

      1. a*

        I have several coworkers who clip their nails at their desks. Every time I hear it, I’m all “WWWHHHHYYYY can’t you do that at home?!?!?!”

        1. urban teacher*

          I hate it on the bus
          I hate it and I fuss
          I hate it on the job
          I hate it because you’re a slob.

        2. 30 Years in the Biz*

          We had a guy that would clip his nails in the meeting room during meetings. Would also scrape under his nails with his clipper tool. Super gross!

          1. Teapot Tester*

            Yeah I worked with that guy. He’d also come over to my desk to talk to me about something while clipping his nails. So.gross.

        3. Trying to Understand*

          OMG YES WHYYYYYYYYYYY!?!?!?!! Recently heard our building’s OFFICE MANAGER doing it and was amazed. Why would you want to live down to the stereotype of the secretary doing her nails at her desk?!?!?!!?!

        4. Elemeno P.*

          I will admit to clipping when a nail splits. I don’t do the whole hand, just the offending nail, and apologize to my cube neighbor. I can’t have it rip off!

      2. Millie M*

        I used to have a coworker who cut her nails in the office. She also cracked gum very loudly, which made me jump every time. And she burned fish in the microwave. Not just a little–it was very extremely burnt. We aired out the hall and had fans running all afternoon, and it still reeked in the morning. It was horrible. I was so relieved when she left.

    8. Jesca*

      I took do not have any coffee wars story. i do have a sort of anti-coffee war, though!

      I worked at this satellite plant a few years ago with a very small management staff and then shift manufacturing workers. None of us drank coffee. Like at all. So when visitors starting showing up, not one of us actually KNEW how to make coffee!!!! So then we would all fight over who was going to make this coffee that visitors may or may not want. The first time, all of us tried together. And we failed. HARD. We ended up using the wrong coffee pot that actually did not align with the coffee maker. The VPs from our parent company came in to the entire counter, cookies, cakes, and fruit covered in freaking coffee! Yeah we never went back and checked if it was okay. We earned our stripes of coffee brewing incompetence and when other visitors would come, they would lecture us on the importance of offering coffee refreshments. When my manager came out to visit me at this site, she learned of our incompetence and now total FEAR of making coffee that she called us all in and showed us how!!

      1. zora*

        This one cracks me up. I love picturing all of these grown adults cowering in the corner afraid of the coffee maker ;o)

      2. Plague of frogs*

        I am not a coffee drinker. I used to volunteer at a homeless shelter, and one evening I made the coffee. I followed all the instructions, and it looked OK to me…the clients drank it, and no one complained….

        At the end of the evening, I went to clean the coffee maker, and was surprised to see that the grounds had disappeared. As I was puzzling over this, another volunteer took a sip of coffee and almost spat it out. He said it was like drinking mud.

        I had used instant coffee just like it was regular coffee. The clients didn’t complain because 99% of them are way too grateful to complain about anything.

      3. Lady Blerd*

        I have a friend who absolutely hates coffee, has no idea how to make it. So when she was told it was her job to do so, she purposefully went overboard with the grinds. When they tried to write her up for it, she reminded them of her constant warmings. Her higher ups never went back to her after that.

      4. Chinook*

        As someone who has shown countless people how to make coffee (including church ladies who are using the percolator urns) I have learned that most people actually don’t know how to do it. And you haven’t truly learned until you have had coffee and/or grounds covering something outside the pot.

      5. Cornflower Blue*

        I don’t know how to make coffee and I hate the smell. Nonetheless, I once tried to make it for an aunt when I was at her house and she asked me to (pre-Internet days when you could look up instructions).

        I made it exactly how I make tea – a teaspoon for the cup, a teaspoon for the pot, steep for 10 minutes, then strain out the leaves. Or in this case, beans. Full size coffee beans.

        Unsurprisingly, she was not pleased.

    10. H.C.*

      I’m also not privy to coffee drama since I bring my own beans, mug, coffeemaker & filter (Hario V60 drip, perfect for individual portions.)

      1. MamaGanoush*

        Single serve french press (no paper filter, but then you have to clean it up) or Clever Coffee Dripper. The Hario is swank!

    11. Trillion*

      Right? I’m so fortunate that of all the crazy I’ve been a part of, coffee culture has always been sane everywhere I’ve worked.

  3. Antilles*

    I just wish I drank coffee so I had something to contribute, because if this is anything like the mess that Office Fridges are, there’s going to be some epic stories here.

    1. CTT*

      I DO drink coffee and still have nothing to contribute, which normally I would be thankful for but today I’m bummed I can’t share in the insanity.

    2. Magenta Sky*

      I don’t drink coffee, but have a very minor story anyway.

      A retail place I worked at a long time ago kept coffee for customers, fresh every morning. I was told that I had to take my turn making coffee, using the usual drip coffee maker. But I know nothing about toxic bean waste, or how to make it, But everybody had to take their turn. So I explained my theory of coffee making: The basket for the filter was the size it was because that’s how much coffee you were supposed to put in it. Fill it up level to the top, and hit Go. I really didn’t know (or care to know) better. I was told that since I didn’t drink coffee, I was excused from making it.

      1. Laoise*

        As an avid coffee drinker, that is exactly how I made my first ever pot of coffee. I have never forgotten it!

        If you were my coworker, I’d be pretty pissed that you wouldn’t learn a skill every other employee needed for the workplace’s normal business work. It’s like the office clerk who pretends they’ll never be able to figure out the photocopier and tries to make everyone else do their tasks on it.

        1. Berlina*

          I had to teach each of my colleagues how to make coffee that won’t kill everybody (1dt person to come in usually sets up a can). We have a filter machine, so now everyone’s mantra is “1 coffee spoon with 250ml water equals 1 mug of drinkable beverage”. xD

          1. Laoise*

            I don’t care if someone ducks out of the rotation for making employee coffee. It’s that she skipped a job duty meant for customer service that bugs me.

            1. Jesca*

              Well I would just chalk it up to that not everyone is good at everything, and management made a decision to not suffer through this employee’s bad coffee out of principle and then Let It Go.

            2. AMPG*

              I’m with you – if your coworkers are trying to make you do a chore that only they benefit from, that’s one thing. But in this case it was a work-related task that one person clearly thought was beneath them.

              1. IForgetWhatNameIUsedBefore*

                I would agree with you if she actually drank the coffee too, but since she’s not a coffee drinker at all, it’s absurd to expect her to make it or know what she’s doing.
                I say this as a coffee drinker. I’d rather have it made by someone who knows what they are doing.

        2. Ego Chamber*

          “If you were my coworker, I’d be pretty pissed that you wouldn’t learn a skill every other employee needed for the workplace’s normal business work.”

          And I would be confused that my coworker didn’t bother to read the instructions on the can of coffee, or ask someone who knows how to make coffee to show them how to do it, instead of deciding that the winning strategy was to make such a sub-par effort that the manager thought they were too hopeless to even attempt to bother teaching.

      2. fiverx313*

        my first job after college was at a furniture store, and the owner only came in a couple days each month… which was a relief for all of us! he was pretty exacting about a number of things (and left detailed handwritten notes about them), but coffee was definitely a big one. coffee must be fresh (a pot that’s two hours old is TOO OLD), coffee must be brought to his desk, and coffee must be made by someone other than him.

        that’s all well and good, but neither i nor the manager had ever made coffee before. i don’t drink it… i’m not sure what my manager’s excuse was. so we’re both standing there staring at the machine like it’s a bomb we don’t know how to defuse. we decided to proceed by removing the basket, putting in the filter and coffee, and then… pouring the full pot of water directly into where the basket should go, causing it to spill out immediately, all over the floor.

        the ensuing ruckus drew the owner out of his office, and he dressed us both down like we were the biggest morons ever created. he shooed the manager off, and had me watch (and take notes) while he showed me how the mysterious coffee machine works. life skill learned, i guess?

        1. Chinook*

          In the owner’s defense, coffee served at Tim Horton’s is thrown out after 20 minutes and you can tell when it has been on the burner longer than 30.

          1. IForgetWhatNameIUsedBefore*

            LOL! My husband makes a pot of coffee when he gets up for work at 4am…I drink it when I get up at 11am, nice and fresh X-D

      3. Mine Own Telemachus*

        This makes me so glad our office coffee comes in pre-measured vacuum packs so there’s zero question of how much to put in.

      5. Emelle*

        Last admin job I had, the first admin in made the coffee. On days I made it, the Office Grouch complained endlessly about how bad it was. We finally figured out it was only on my days that it was awful. He scheduled a meeting with me the next morning with him and another admin. They watched me make the coffee. Exactly they way I was supposed to. She said it was fine-ish, he said it was sludge and told me the only time I should ever make coffee is when a client that drove him up the wall was in the office.

        My husband still says something is off with my coffee. Even when I use the keurig.

      6. IForgetWhatNameIUsedBefore*

        Sorry people are piling on you. This is a task that needs to be done by those who know and care what coffee tastes like. It was ridiculous that they expected it of you or any other non-coffee drinker.

    3. Triple Anon*

      I drink coffee, but I can’t think of any interesting office coffee stories. I’m usually focused on big picture work stuff and kind of oblivious to everything else.

  4. Cheesesticks and Pretzels*

    I worked at a company where the coffee pot would get low and would just get left on the burner until the remaining coffee evaporated and burned. The place always smelled like burnt coffee.

    1. AnonEMoose*

      Ugh…that is not a nice smell. Am I the only one who thinks that Starbucks always smells like burnt coffee?

            1. A.N. O'Nyme*

              I just realized I don’t have any of the pokémon games that gives you a Charmander as a starter. I must amend this.

      4. Bea*

        They’re known for pushing shots to the near burnt stage. It’s their thing and so many live for it.

      5. Bacon Pancakes*

        My boyfriend who, at 38 finally decided to give coffee a try and became an IMMEDIATE coffe snob, looked into this. Turns out that Starbucks knowingly over-roasts the beans to the point of burning because it creates a “more consistent product”.

        1. Wendy Darling*

          My dad loves it. I’m a third-wave coffee nerd and have tried giving him a halfdozen different bags of really excellent not-burned beans but the man loves his Starbucks. He’s in his 60s and spent my childhood guzzling Yuban coffee made from grounds in a big can so I’m sure compared to that Starbucks is manna from heaven.

        2. Specialk9*

          I buy coffee from Bongo Java in Nashville, thanks to a former roommate. Made in the Shade made me start drinking coffee.

        3. Beckysuz*

          Yeah and that’s why Starbucks is hot garbage. Give me that sweet sweet Canadian goodness every time. I worship at the altar of Timmy Hos. But seriously I recall reading somewhere that SBs buys old beans and that’s why they burn them? I find their coffee intolerable. No amount of cream and sugar can mask the burnt bean flavor

          1. Vonbomb*

            Please please come to Australia and drink coffee, Timmy hortons coffee made me sad. All Canadian coffee made me sad.

          2. canadian standoff*

            Timmy Ho’s black coffee isn’t a stand-alone drink – it’s just the first stage of a double-double. It’s a sad time in our nation’s history when McDonald’s is making a better cup of coffee than all of its closest competitors.

        1. Big Person*

          Me too. I had been so excited to find Starbucks beans in the store, only to find out the coffee it made was awful. That was when I realized it was just their lattes I liked.

        2. Specialk9*

          Have you tried their Flat White? So smooth and velvety. I hate foam on a late, but micro foam is apparently thenectar the goods.

          1. Wannabikkit*

            Flat whites in New Zealand are even better. :-)
            There aren’t many Starbucks in NZ. I supect it’s because they tried to getting into a country that already had a thriving cafe culture with cafes that serve decent coffee.

      7. Alternative Person*

        I cannot stand Startbucks. It’s always burnt and too acidic. And I’m a as bitter as possible, black as my soul coffee drinker.

      9. smoke tree*

        No, and to me it tastes like burnt, stale residue from week-old grinds. I’m not surprised they have to put a gallon of syrup into most of their drinks.

      12. AOK*

        The reason why Starbucks coffee always smells burnt is because they double roast the beans. They are literally burned. My husband’s company did a job for Starbucks a few years ago and had to go out to their plant. You can smell the burned coffee beans from 3-4 miles away.

    2. Bea*

      I had this problem for only a couple times, I put up a reminder notice by the machine saying “If you finish the pot, please turn the burner off. We will not replace any busted pots due to over exposure to heat without liquid.”

      Granted as an impromptu EA I was also doing a midday drive by of the coffee station to catch it. They were really good at not leaving them after reminded.

      Over the years I’ve learned I’ve caused fewer of these gross things by just routinely glancing at the problem area in passing. So many notice the thing is still on and it’s just not their issue or job so they get to smell rank ass burnt coffee. I’m a coffee drinker and that’s the worst smell.

    3. sssssssssssssssss*

      I hate that smell of burnt or cooked coffee. Ughhhhhhhhhhh. I had a boss who loved it that way.

    4. beanie beans*

      Let’s name today as Insulated Coffee Urn Day and throw a party for its invention! I will celebrate that *most* offices don’t have to deal with the burned coffee smell and taste!

      1. Adele*

        We recently made the switch and it is a great improvement to office life and kitchen cleanliness. No one would ever take responsibility for the burned pots before. And the last cup is nearly as good as the first.

    5. Berlina*

      Due to exactly that offten recurring issue my I ordered a coffee filter machine that turns off automatically after 40 minutes. :D

      (And since I actually had the same problem at home, we know have a filter machine with a thermo pot, so no more heated plate below it.)

    6. KR*

      Ah this is actually really dangerous! If the glass gets too hot it can spontaneously explode either if it gets hit or moved the wrong way or just randomly on its own! I hope that doesn’t happen to your old employer.

      – used to work at Dunkin donuts.

      1. Victoria*

        I had a Bunn pot explode on me once, back when I waited tables. Picked up a full pot of brand new coffee, Was about to pour into a mug, BOOM, hot coffee all over myself.

        On the upside, I got to go home early that day.

    7. starsaphire*

      I also worked at a company where the guys downstairs would come up for coffee and leave “just a half cup” so they didn’t have to make the next pot… and then it would burn and stink up the upstairs. They didn’t have to deal with the smell, of course, so they didn’t care…

      The owner “fixed” the problem by removing the coffee maker entirely.

    8. SC*

      That would make me nostalgic, because that’s exactly what my grandmother did, and how her house always smelled.

  5. SallyF*

    We used to have an employee who made coffee every morning but sometimes didn’t line up the carafe underneath properly. She’d start the coffee, go off on her merry way, as the coffee brewed all over the counter top and cascaded to the floor. At least once a week someone would come into the kitchen to find the coffee flood and have to clean it up. Never the woman who mis-aligned the pot.

    1. Whoa*

      We have a large commercial style coffee brewer in our kitchenette, and people like to brew double-batches of the coffee grounds for extra-strong coffee despite the large DON’T BREW DOUBLE BATCHES sign on the wall. It ends up back flooding the brewer and getting coffee, boiling water, and wet grounds all over the counter and floor.

      1. machiamellie*

        Simple resolution – the person who does this gets to clean it (same with the merry woman above)

        1. Whoa*

          I wish that was the case- usually they just walk away and as the closest (and most visible) admin, people come crying to me about fixing the coffee maker.

          1. Ceiswyn*

            Yup, it’s never the person who does it who cleans up.

            I once stood right next to the coffee machine and told one of our Sales guys ‘Don’t get a coffee with milk, the milk’s blocked’. He glanced at me incomprehendingly, pressed the latte button, got a black coffee, aded milk from the fridge, and wandered off as the machine overflowed milk all over the worktop and floor from above the blockage.

            He returned five minutes later to get coffee for someone else in the meeting, as I was mopping up. I glared at him, gestured at the mess, and asked why he’d pressed a milk option after being told not to and left the result for someone else to clear up. He just looked a bit gormless and then got a black coffee and hurried away. Didn’t apologise, of course.

            2. Arya Snark*

              We had a sales guy who exploded spaghetti all over the microwave and didn’t clean it up. He and I always had a bit of contentious relationship because I would call him out on his work BS but no one else would stand up to him.

              I threw the glass plate from the micro on his desk with cleaning supplies and told him to clean up the mess he made. He had the nerve to deny it was him despite witnesses and a half eaten plate of spaghetti in front of him.

              Sales guys!

            3. Snow*

              To be fair, if someone told me “Don’t get a coffee with milk, the milk’s blocked,” I would assume they just meant “No milk will come out of the machine and you will end up with black coffee and be disappointed,” not “The milk will EXPLODE OUT OF THE MACHINE.” In that situation I might think “Well, I’ll still choose latte so that it gives me the correct amount of coffee for a latte, even if I have to add milk separately.” But there may have been more context that explains why he should have known that “the milk’s blocked” meant “milk will explode.”

              1. Ceiswyn*

                Which does not excuse him leaving as the milk very obviously cascaded out of the machine.

            4. JoJo*

              Years ago I brought in an espresso maker to one workplace (there were 5 or 6 of us who drank espresso drinks), thinking that in the California Bay Area everyone knew how to use one (I was young, what can I say). I came in one morning to find that someone had put milk in the water boiler, apparently thinking it would then heat up and come out of the steam wand. Never did find out who did it so I could get reimbursed. I got a travel mug and made my cappuccinos at home after that.

          2. essEss*

            And you immediately responded, “Please let [Merry Woman] that she needs to clean up her mess. Thanks.”

            1. essEss*

              Or … if you have to be a polite admin and not able to push back, then YOU say “Thanks, I’ll let [Merry Woman] know” and then you pass the message on to her.

      2. TootsNYC*

        my company has a Flavia machine, with individual pouches that have a valve on the top that will slide into a clip so a nozzle can squirt into the hole in the center. It doesn’t make really strong coffee.

        I had a freelancer who decided she wanted stronger coffee, so she put two pouches into the clip. How she thought that was going to work, I don’t know–she jammed the machine, and then came to ask me for help.

        I realized that the mindset that let her completely ignore the physical structure of the coffee pouch was also evident in the way she did her job, and the way she communicated. And I never asked her back.

        1. OlympiasEpiriot*

          You just gave me an idea…anyone who applies for a job at my firm should have to make a batch of coffee.

          1. Work Wardrobe*

            Very sensible idea. They don’t have to cater a dinner for 30, just make one damn pot of coffee…

            1. OlympiasEpiriot*

              I don’t think it is irrelevant. (1) Ability to follow instructions, (2) Attention to simple details (3) Willingness to help out (4) Lack of “that’s beneath me” behaviour.

                1. OlympiasEpiriot*

                  There are instructions. Just like on those flavia machines in the example I was answering.

                  What do you do with people who don’t follow visual instructions with words underneath?

                  I dont’ drink coffee either, but I know how to work it.

                2. Mobuy*

                  Yeah, I had that problem once. My boss told me to make coffee, but I’d never done it before. He showed me, but I think there’s an art to how many coffee grounds you pour into the filter. I guess I made it too strong? Anyway, I never was asked to make coffee again.

                3. TootsNYC*

                  Then I would get to evaluate how they handled doing a task that they didn’t understand–did they get out their phone and google it? did they read the side of the coffee package? did they ask me for directions? That’s actually an important skill–being able to ask questions and get instruction when you don’t know stuff, instead of barrelling ahead and making a guess.

              3. SignalLost*

                This is exactly why I say if I ever wind up interviewing, I want to see how my interviewees parked their cars.

            2. Leah*

              I personally don’t like this idea. I hate coffee, never drink it, and thus I have no idea how to make it. Would knowing how to make coffee really count for something in an interview for an office job?

              1. OlympiasEpiriot*

                If there are clear, visual instructions adjacent, I think it is relevant for the 4 reasons I mentioned above.

                I’m mostly a tea drinker, but every time I see someone taking the last cup of coffee from the dispenser in our office, I wait to see if they make another cup. If they don’t, I mention it. If they claim inability, I walk them through it and say that I expect they’ll keep doing it from here on in. We are an engineering firm with a lot of job requiring being in the field and a modicum of mechanical sense. I have had too many junior engineers assigned to one of my jobs who seem to have never done anything more mechanical than pressed the power switch on their computers. This is a problem. I want people who can follow instructions and do something practical (as well as pitching in w/o thinking not-my-job).

                The hot water for tea comes from the same machine, different spigot.

              2. Alli525*

                Agreed. I’d be willing to do this assuming (1) the interview is for an admin role ONLY, and (2) you give me directions on how to make said coffee. Or at least the manual for the coffee maker.

                If I were interviewing for a non-admin role, no way Jose. I’m a woman early enough in my career that I don’t need anyone getting ideas about my ability and willingness to make coffee.

                1. OlympiasEpiriot*

                  Ah, that last bit is a really good point. I definitely have pushed back on typing for that exact same reason (many years ago when I first joined this firm and we had few computers for word processing).

                  Ok. I’ll ditch this idea.

                  I am just SO frustrated with junior engineers who don’t even have to take a one-semester mechanical drawing class anymore! There are SO many who have no mechanical ability whatsoever! We have to use tools in the course of our jobs, these guys all are bewildered and then act like it is beneath them as a defense!

                  And the higher-ups don’t see the value of actually giving people some kind of a mechanical test during the interview.

                  Back to the drawing board. (no pun intended.)

                2. Kendra*

                  OlympiasEpiriot, you could try having candidates put together a basic Lego model or something like that? That would test mechanical sense and ability to follow directions without unfortunate implications.

                3. OlympiasEpiriot*

                  To Kendra, maybe that would be a good idea. Really, if we have to come up with a test, I’d rather it be sketching something. There are a lot of situations (that would be easier to demonstrate rather than describe) when a simple sketch — I’m not talking Mannerism Still Life here! — is absolutely needed. Photographs don’t always do the job. Also, sketching something in front of you makes you *observe* it. Taking a picture doesn’t force that the same way. (Of course, a real photographer IS observing and framing the picture to make sure the observations make it in. That’s different.)

                  Also, if you learn to observe well, you can plan in three dimensions — four if you add in time, like over the course of a stage of a project’s construction. We do a lot of planning. (Not the same as designing. Again, easier to demonstrate than describe.)

                  Sketching and planning can really be related to using tools and basic mechanical sense.

                4. Mad Baggins*

                  @OlympiasEpiriot, I see what skills you’re trying to go for, but I really think things like conscientiousness, resourcefulness, attention to detail and the ability to follow directions are skills you can test for in other ways.

                  Why not have them sketch a Lego model that would match certain specifications? Give them a Master Builder sort of test to see how they think things out.

                5. Nessun*

                  I agree that watching people make coffee would give insight into problem solving abilities and common sense, but I balk at the notion that it’s for an admin-only role. It personally burns me up that people think admins should take care of all the coffee stations/coffee making paraphernalia. If it’s an actual assigned duty of the role, fair enough – but so many staff at my office think “I can leave the cups for an admin”/”I’m too busy”/”My time is worth more”, which is degrading and not entirely accurate, and can lead to resentment and the kitchen in a mess (the admins have pressing responsibilities to their clients too!).

                  Basically – admins aren’t there to clean up after people, or make them coffee (unless it’s explicitly part of the job) and far too many non-admin staff seem to think it’s part of the role.

              3. IForgetWhatNameIUsedBefore*

                I wasn’t a coffee drinker until I was over 40, and had no idea how to make it, either.

                If someone had asked me to do that in a job interview (that had nothing to do with the coffee industry) I’d have thought were out of their damn mind. XD

          2. NacSacJack*

            Read Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell, at least the first couple chapters of it. That is exactly how the main character gets his job on the ship and eventually from there rises to the rank of Captain and Owner.

          3. TheOtherJennifer*

            I actually implemented this for newbies. As a non official hazing ritual. I’ve never seen a Falvia machine before and frankly I couldn’t figure it out at first. So now I show it to the newbies and say “here’s the coffee machine”. Knock yourself out, kids.

        2. Arya Snark*

          Flavia machines are great for avoiding the coffee wars. The coffee isn’t the greatest but it’s better than Keurig.
          I love strong coffee so I always used the strong setting and made two packets of espresso but the thought to try to make two packets at the same time never crossed my mind!

          1. Snark*

            I confess, as a non-coffee person, that I’ve gotten totally satisfying results from a Nespresso machine. It’s still pretty wasteful and terrible, but it’s not a bad shot.

        3. gmg22*

          We had a Flavia at one office where I worked, but you were supposed to pay for your pod — honor system, they had a little locked cash box next to the machine. The free-rider problem was predictably rampant, and from time to time little guilt-inducing signs reminding people to pay would appear next to the machine, and then other people would add witty remarks to them. (The company has since changed hands to the ownership of a very, very, very wealthy person, so I am pretty sure the coffee is now free — it’d look pretty chintzy if it weren’t.)

          1. OlympiasEpiriot*

            Off-topic…but, I have a friend named Flavia and every time I read this coffee maker brand, I think of her instead for a sec.

        4. SC*

          My office has one of these. My boss came in at 10 am the day before the Christmas holiday and told me I could go home if I made him a cup of coffee. I was only at work to avoid burning a vacation day, so I did it.

        5. AntsOnMyTable*

          I don’t drink coffee. I actively hate the smell of coffee. The only time I have had experience making coffee is when I am required to do it through work and yet I have always managed to figure out how by looking at the instructions/pictures that are usually posted somewhere on the machine or commonsense.

          At my hospital system we have these individual packets for coffee. You push a button saying what you want to make and a slot opens up in the front. You put the packet in and the same thing as your machine, it squirts into the center. Well some patient’s family decided to make coffee and on top of the machine is a little indented area that has a cover you can flip up (no idea what it is for). He proceeded to rip open this packet, which isn’t at all designed to rip open, and pour it in there. And then just stare at it haplessly and expect me, as the RN, to clean it all up. If you don’t know how to make something either ask or look for instructions! And if something is difficult you are probably doing it wrong. So many people have no sense of anything. It amazes me how some people make it through the day.

    2. KimberlyR*

      Same! Although it was one of the big pump thermos looking things? I don’t know what they’re called. And if you don’t want to remove the lid, you have to line it up just perfectly over the top part. Not everyone was so precise…That thing holds A LOT of coffee.

      1. Say What, now?*

        I worked at a coffee shop and I know exactly what you’re talking about. Even people whose job it was to make coffee in those things would mess it up on the reg.

    3. Muriel Heslop*

      Okay, this was me at my first job. If I got there in time, I of course cleaned up my own mess but usually someone beat me to it. On behalf of all of us inattentive coffee brewers, my apologies.

    4. Collarbone High*

      When I was an editorial assistant at a newspaper, I came in one Sunday morning to discover that someone had forgotten to put the pot under the spigot while brewing decaf the night before. They just put newspapers over the enormous mess and left it.

    5. Amber T*

      I’ve done that at home…. what a mess. I’d be pissed as hell if someone did that at work (and didn’t own up to it and clean it – accidents happen). Clearly, since it keeps happening, she just doesn’t care.

    6. ContentWrangler*

      This happened at my work too right after they got this new big “fancy” coffee machine. The carafe wasn’t clear like the old one so someone obviously set the machine going and walked away, not realizing the carafe was already full. I don’t drink coffee but I walked into the kitchen to put my lunch in the fridge and did a double take when I heard this loud dripping sound. Total coffee flood. It even poured down onto one of the microwaves (luckily not damaged). Me and another worker cleaned it up. No idea who actually started the machine and walked away.

    7. Lady Phoenix*

      I would do that sometimes when Inworked at the store. But I at least cleaned up the mess!

    8. Ilsa*

      We used to have problems because sometimes someone (occasionally me, I admit!) would forget to empty the (opaque) coffee carafe from yesterday’s old coffee, so the new coffee would overflow and create a coffee lake on the floor. Not to mention the carafe was then full of half old, half new coffee…

      …oh, and we had the cheapest pre-ground coffee. But my boss would always tell clients we had really good coffee.

    9. RottenRedRod*

      Our carafe broke and we had to order a replacement, which isn’t QUITE the right shape, so you have to put it in slightly off-center or it does this. I made a sign with photos showing how to do it and it hasn’t been a problem since!

    10. Snickerdoodle*

      That happened in the breakroom at a theatre where I used to work. Somebody flooded the coffee maker, resulting in instant signage on correct coffee maker usage. I am glad I am a tea drinker.

    11. Tuesday*

      I’ve twice set my personal, at-home coffee machine to brew in the morning…then forgot to put the carafe in place at all. So I got up in the morning to the smell of freshly-brewed coffee and the sight of a huge mess. And no coffee to drink.

      You’d think that would be the kind of dumbass thing you would only ever do once, but nope.

      1. dawbs*

        the problem with making coffee in the morning is that I have to do it before I’ve had my coffee.
        (says the person who occasionally runs the keurig without the cup in it)

    12. MusicWithRocksInIt*

      At oldjob we had a huge problem with people making a new pot of coffee without throwing out/finishing the old pot of coffee, so the entire thing would overflow everywhere. Which I have had to clean up a bunch of times even though I don’t drink coffee.

    13. vck*

      On two different universities campuses, I’ve worked in pretty old buildings. In both places, my office was located directly underneath one of the faculty lounges on the floor above. When folks were careless and spilled or overflowed their coffee pots, the excess liquid would drip through the ceiling onto my desk. I have been known to infiltrate other departments specifically to leave extremely miffed notes in response.

    14. bohtie*

      I did this exactly once, in grad school, and actually TWO of us were involved and we still messed it up and got coffee everywhere. The irony of being too tired and therefore in need of caffeine in order to correctly operate a coffeemaker was not lost on either of us.

      My grandboss at that job used to always ask me to make him coffee, which I found incredibly annoying, so one time I politely asked him (to the best of my ability anyway) why he didn’t do it himself, and it turned out that the guy with two PhDs literally did not know how to operate a coffeemaker. We had a very enlightening training session and he never asked me again.

  6. Penny*

    This isn’t that egregious, but at my last job, people would get pissed if you left your K-cup behind in the Keurig. I never take them out right away at home because they’re hot enough to burn you if you’re not careful – I just let it cool down and then take it out next time I make a cup. So I’d forget to do it at work too, and then people would passive-aggressively complain about it. I never understood what the big deal was about having to take a little piece of plastic out of a machine. At my current job, most people leave theirs in and the next person removes it, and it’s fine.

    1. MLB*

      Yeah that’s a little extreme. I have a baby Keurig in my office and the K cup is in there from last Thursday because I don’t take it out until I make a new cup.

    2. Breda*

      I think this is like reclining airplane seats: as long as everyone’s in agreement, either way works perfectly fine. It’s when you get caught in the middle that problems arise.

      1. TootsNYC*

        or like removing the lint from the dryer screen. In my small apt. bldg, we had a new family move in. The print on the dryer screen says, “remove lint before operating” or similar, so when they were done w/ their laundry, they didn’t clean the screen. (That’s how I remember doing it at laundromats before I moved in here.)

        but everyone else is programmed to clear the lint screen before they walk away–to leave it ready for the next person. “clean up your own mess” that kind of thing. I’ve never seen the lint screen be uncleaned when I’ve gone to use it.

        So the people who came after them would just start the dryer without checking the screen, and they’d end up with double the lint, which means that their load was a bigger fire hazard. Plus, less effective.

        It wasn’t THAT dangerous, but our laundry-room caretaking tenant was emailing people about cleaning the screen. (I don’t think she realized that it was simply a matter of the new folks cleaning the screen before, and the rest of us cleaning it after–neither is morally superior, it’s just best when everybody does it the same)

        1. Cedarthea*

          I remember using the dorm/apartment dryers and I always check the lint trap before I start and I always clean it after I was done just because I was so afraid of setting everything on fire!

        2. Iris Eyes*

          This is exactly where my mind went. Dryer lint, check before, clean after. Usually means I clean twice but oh well

          1. Jesca*

            Yeah, even at home I check before and after. A good friend of mine lost her house due to dryer lint, so I guess the fear is in me now!

        3. Anon Chemist*

          Yes, but it can be dangerous if they were to do several loads without cleaning the trap. I personally know two different people whose dryers both caught fire. Damaged the laundry rooms too. So I’ve been paranoid about the issue myself. Obsessive about emptying the lint trap!

    3. Rogue*

      This drives me batty when my husband does it at home, because why can he not throw his trash away?!? So, maybe that’s where your coworkers are coming from. They don’t want to be someone’s maid or mother at work.

      1. LouiseM*

        At my office, everyone leaves the K-Cup in the Keurig and the custom is for the next person to throw it away (but not their own). I think the idea is not to put something piping hot into the trash.

        1. Robin B*

          Our office has 2 large Keurig machines that automatically removes the pod after each use. Pretty good idea.

      2. Rusty Shackelford*

        But if *everybody* does it, you throw away the cup from the person before you, and the next person throws yours away, so it’s not like someone is acting as your maid.

      3. mediumofballpoint*

        At a previous job, it was usually the tea drinkers who objected to leaving the pods in. Sometimes they wouldn’t remember to check for a pod before they ran hot water for bagged tea, so they’d get a cup of second pass coffee + tea.

        1. StrawMeatloaf*

          At my office we have a Keurig and a hot-water maker (a clear kettle-boiler thing that doesn’t whistle and you just press a button it to work) so that doesn’t happen.

        2. Typhon Worker Bee*

          IME, every cup of tea made from water from any coffee machine tastes like coffee, no matter what you do. Thank goodness both my current offices provide kettles, too – I had to bring in my own in my last two jobs!

          Now to get North American hotel rooms to provide kettles as well as coffee makers… I had a kettle in my hotel room in Banff a few weeks ago and was so incredibly happy!

          1. Annie Moose*

            Yeah, if you want to get hot water out of a Keurig that doesn’t taste like coffee, you gotta do two or three pod-less runs. Even then, it’s still got a coffee tinge.

            Source: did you know they make hot apple cider K-cups???

            Anyway, my current job thankfully has kettles so I can get whatever temperature water I want, whenever I want, no gross coffee flavor involved.

          2. blushingflower*

            My solution to this is that I have my own collapsible electric kettle that I take with me when I travel.

        3. tinyhipsterboy*

          That’s so odd to me–I love both coffee and tea, but the few times I’ve used a Keurig for tea, my first instinct has been to run it empty first to make sure no coffee gets into the tea. I guess that’s an unusual instinct?

          1. MusicWithRocksInIt*

            Nope – I always run it empty before I make hot chocolate. But that is mostly because I don’t want it infected with the taste of coffee.

        4. essEss*

          My husband did this to me at home. I was really hungry, not much left in the house to make quickly (we needed to do a grocery run) and I scrounged and found 1 single bag of instant oatmeal in the back of the cupboard. I was really looking forward to that oatmeal. So I dump it into a bowl, and go over to our Keurig and set it to pour hot water. I took one bite and discovered that he had left the coffee grounds in it. I tried to eat it anyway but gave up after 2 bites. I was really upset.

      4. JB (not in Houston)*

        Eh, I’m with you. It feels different somehow–it’s not the effort of throwing away someone’s trash because that could balance out by leaving mine behind. It’s the fact that I’m throwing away someone else’s trash. Plus, that’s one extra step standing between me and my coffee. Plus, what happens to the kcup for the last cup of the day? It sits there breeding bacteria and mold.

        No, none of these are that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things, and no, I wouldn’t pitch a fit about it at the office. But it would irritate me for sure. We all have things that irritate us that don’t bother other people.

      5. Teapot Tester*

        Same, though it’s my sister-in-law when she visits. The Keurig at her office is one of the ones that automatically disposes of the K-cup, so she forgets she has to take it out of ours.

        IDK, I have no problem taking a hot K-cup out, they’re not *that* hot that you’ll burn your fingers. Sometimes I’m lazy when I’m the only one home and don’t take it out until the next time I’m making a cup, but if my husband is around and will also be using the Keurig, I try to remember to take it out when I’m done. Because it really is annoying to have to take someone else’s K-cup out of the machine.

        1. Dove*

          I usually wait until the next time I make a cup before I toss the pod out, because the machine does give an explicit warning of “please wait, the pod is hot enough to burn”. And it probably only takes about five minutes for it to cool enough to safely touch it, but…without setting up specific reminders for myself, I am *not* going to remember to go back in five minutes and toss the old K-cup. It’s not going to happen.

          So instead, I’ve just created the habit of always checking if there’s a used cup in there. If I weren’t the only one in my house who even uses the coffee maker, I’d be more embarrassed about it and try to put more effort into not leaving used pods sitting in there.

      6. chocolate lover*

        Rogue, that’s kind of my thought. I don’t want to be tossing someone else’s trash. I use the office keurig for hot cocoa, and I just wait a few seconds after it’s done and throw out the cup. I don’t have to wait that long at all and it it’s not even warm enough to register on my fingers (though I don’t know how hot other machines get.)

      7. Ray Gillette*

        I always throw it away because I have that thing where I can’t remember if the cup is a new one or an old one.

        1. Aunt Vixen*

          My one-year-old likes taking the old one and throwing it away for me. It’s the only time he’s allowed to touch the big kitchen trash can.

      8. RJGM*

        Neither Mr. M nor I drink coffee, but he has dubbed himself the “Keurig police” at work — anytime he walks into the break room and sees the Keurig closed (not running), he opens it up to check for an empty pod. He’s found several!

        There used to be a “Keurig Rules” sign up, since the machine is someone’s personal one that they brought from home, but someone else took the sign down…

    4. BlueWolf*

      We have the big Keurigs that have a disposal bin inside, so when you go to make a new cup the old cup automatically gets dumped into the bin within the machine. No touching of Keurig pods needed.

      1. AMPG*

        But then you have the standoffs over emptying the disposal bin. I’ve definitely chosen to forego coffee that morning rather than deal with it. I understand and accept that this makes me a bad person.

        1. BlueWolf*

          We have people who stock and clean the kitchens, so I think they take care of that (it’s a large office).

        2. Luna*

          Yeah I hate cleaning the disposal bin (even though I realize it’s not hard). It annoys me when someone makes the last cup before the bin needs to be emptied and then just walks away!

          1. Just Employed Here*

            We have a machine that grinds the beans and makes espresso, with a little refrigerated milk thermos attached to it so you can make (an approximation of) lattes as well.

            The machine may run out of water or beans, or need to be cleaned. There is frequently a 2 or 3 person line for the machine. It’s become a bit of a sport to joke about whether your cup is the one that leads to one of the aforementioned issues, leaving the person behind you to fix it. If “you’re lucky”, that person will even have to do all three.

            No one ever assumes it’s the person who used up the water or whatever who should fix it after they’ve made their cup. Everyone understands it might go the other way next time around.

      2. Penny*

        Fancy! Ours is connected to the water line, so you don’t have to fill up the water chamber, which is really nice. But I didn’t know there was a type that disposed of the cups automatically.

        1. rldk*

          The bin does need to be emptied, but it just tells you when it’s full and it’s easily removable. Would definitely recommend – you can get the kind with the water line with the bin too!

          1. OlympiasEpiriot*

            Apparently, there is a panel at the bottom of the machine that can be removed because we have removed it, cut a rectangular hole in the counter top and have a tall cabinet underneath with a trash bin behind the door into which all the cups fall.

            Even easier.

    5. Bea*

      There is a sign reminding everyone to remove their kcup. I never knew it was a thing until I saw the sign.

      There’s even the snark on the sign that “because your mom doesn’t work here.”

      I don’t get it and people don’t say anything when it’s forgotten. I think an old employee made the signage. I just roll my eyes and try to remember.

      I don’t let most minor things get to me so I just shrug but can see it’s a peeve for others.

      1. Ms. Annie*

        Giggle on the “mom doesn’t work here”.

        I used to work in a large doctors’ office and about half a dozen people had mothers that did, indeed, work there.

        Someone put up a “your mother doesn’t work here.” sign and someone wrote on it “Yes, she does.” and added a list.

        The sign came down.

        1. Bea*

          LOL This backfire delights me.

          I have had moments where I’ve stated “I need to remind you that I’m not your mother despite my mother like qualities.” when co-workers would complain bitterly that were BEC level stuff.

        2. Traffic_Spiral*

          I would have doubled down by adding “well then, ask your mom if she’ll clean it for you – otherwise do it yourself.”

        3. Little Twelvetoes*

          I’m a mother who doesn’t clean up after her kids. (Not because I trained them right; because I am a lazy slob.)

          So my kids would wonder what that sign meant…

      2. Manager-at-Large*

        We too have a sign – but it explains that leaving K-Cup can drip in the internals and this leads to issues in the machine. And this is with the kind that has a water line and an internal waste bucket – so all you have to do is open the head to eject the cup afterwards.

      3. Plague of frogs*

        I never understood the “your mom doesn’t work here” thing. My mom was the one who always made me clean. If she’s not here, I can be a slob.

    6. Samiratou*

      What’s the difference between taking your own cup out of the machine afterwards and taking a cup from someone else out when you put yours in?

      Does not compute. People make no sense to me, sometimes. Leaving your cup to cool down make sense to me, and if you need to remove a cup no matter what, who cares whether it’s yours or the previous person’s?

      1. I can do it!*

        I’m with you, you’re either removing a pod before you make your coffee or after. One trash per transaction either way. Who cares? I do know people who get FURIOUS about this issue though.

      2. Teapot Tester*

        It’s all about cleaning up after yourself, and not making other people do it. Take the K-cup out is part of making your own cup of coffee. Taking someone else’s out is cleaning up after them.

        3. essEss*

          It’s the principle of being an adult, and a professional and it is easy to get furious when you feel that you are following the rules of being an adult but your coworkers aren’t. You clean up after yourself and you dispose of your own trash. Its the same as flushing your own toilet in the office, picking up your trash from the table after your meeting. You are deliberately leaving work for the next person (cleaning up YOUR trash) instead of completing your task.

      3. Breda*

        The problem is when it’s not “either throwing away your own cup or someone else’s” – it’s when you’re throwing out both. A minor annoyance, but the kind of thing that can build!

    7. Ella*

      This is like complaining about people who take food out of the microwave before the time is up and fail to his “clear” on the pad to clear out the remaining time.

      1. Penny*

        Haha, I remember a post about that on passiveaggressivenotes back in the day. Seriously, what is the big deal?

        1. LCL*

          I think, speaking as someone who always resets the timer, that machinery should always be left in its ready to use state, unless there is a reason not to. Or rather, as a tech person, that is a core belief I don’t normally have to think about. Seeing time left just looks wrong, because the job is not finished.

          1. Marillenbaum*

            This. I am not a tech person, but years of church summer camp burned it into my brain that when you use a communal thing, you leave no trace of having used it so it’s ready to go for whoever comes after you. Works with nature, works with the office kitchen.

        2. blushingflower*

          Well, I don’t really understand why people would set a timer for more than they actually need and then stop it (except when making popcorn).
          But mostly it’s because as other people have said, if you’re used to using the clock on the microwave, the remaining time on the timer can be misleading (esp if it’s like 1:00). And depending on the microwave, how loud it is and how bright the internal light, it can make it seem like the microwave is still in use when it’s not, and someone might end up waiting longer than necessary.

        1. Just Employed Here*

          I guess there is a risk that not clearing the time could break the microwave if it was accidentally started while empty. The microwaves have to go somewhere and if there is nothing in it to heat up …

          Hmmm, I was always taught this, but as I’m typing it out it seems to me that microwave manufacturers can’t be that oblivious to how stupid and easily distracted human beings are.

          I guess I just lost my reason to keep pressing cancel both at home and in the office.

        2. Kristy Lane*

          My mom thinks that too!
          And god forbid you don’t run to the dishwasher the SECOND it finishes to open it and press the stop button. Because otherwise the “done” indicator light stays on and, well, we just can’t have that. I’ve double washed many loads of dishes because I thought it was dirty.

      4. Lizzy*

        I CAN’T STAND THAT!!! lol – if you’re going to take the food out before time is up, PLEASE press “clear” so it goes back to the clock setting. But I’m at least aware it’s a quirk.

        1. tj bag dog*

          my work microwaves don’t have a clock setting, but the microwave at my mom’s house does and it is our main “clock” for the kitchen. we both go nutty when my dad doesn’t clear his timer/microwave time, because then we can’t see from the living room what time it is, and have to get up and walk all the way over to clear it.

        2. LavaLamp*

          You aren’t alone. I HATE it because I have a thing about clocks needing to be on the proper time.

        3. Alli525*

          THANK YOU. This is my biggest office-supply pet peeve at my current office. Also sometimes there will be HUGE amounts of time left, like 7:34 minutes, and what on earth are you microwaving that leaves that much time left??

      5. Meg Murry*

        I’ll admit that this is a pet peeve of mine, but since all it takes to correct is one quick push of the “clear” button, I just push the button and move on.

      8. Elizabeth H.*

        Yes! I agree completely. I also have a major thing for setting the time accurately on microwaves, ovens, coffee makers, rice cookers and the like. I am constantly going around fixing the times in my boyfriend’s house and at work. I don’t know how people can stand to have them all be different.

      9. smoke tree*

        What used to annoy me much more was when my desk was right next to the kitchen and everyone would abandon the microwave, letting it beep until infinity unless I went to turn it off.

    8. Viktoria*

      Yeah, I think the method of removing the previous person’s k-cup is far superior. Both because you don’t have to touch it when hot, and because it’s impossible to forget that way. Each person still has to remove 1 used cup per 1 cup of coffee brewed, so it all works out in the end.

    9. SNS*

      one of my coworkers told me leaving the k-cup in longer leaves grounds behind that clog up the machine, so you should always remove it after. but considering he never remembered to remove his k-cups, there’s a good chance that was bs

      1. Bea*

        LMAO that’s not how a pod works. It’s confined to a POD and doesn’t clog anything up. Worse case the grounds are flushed out and end up in a cup. The system is set up to make clogging not an issue.

      2. LBK*

        But…how….unless you have a very unusual Keurig where the hole is made in the bottom of the K-cup?

        1. Browser*

          All Keurigs make a hole in the top *and* the bottom of the pod. That’s how the coffee comes out.

          If you leave the pod in until the grounds have dried, there is a chance that some loose grounds will be shaken out as you remove the pod. Remove it right after when the grounds are still wet, it won’t happen.

          1. LBK*

            Huh, I guess I never realized it makes a hole in the bottom, only in the top, but that does make sense.

          2. Victoria*

            I know this because I’m the only person in the office that will take the paperclip to the needle and clean it out so we can have coffee again.

    10. Pollygrammer*

      Speaking of K-cups: I had a coworker who was a fairly intense environmentalist, and started putting out a bin for used k-cups so she could take them home and compost them. It was accompanied by a big self-righteous sign about how terrible k-cups were for the environment, and the fact that she would go absolutely insane if she saw someone absentmindedly put one in the trash.

        1. Pollygrammer*

          Oh, she’s absolutely not! I would definitely have preferred a normal coffee maker. (Or a coworker who composted them but wasn’t…incredibly aggressive about it).

      2. Work Wardrobe*

        The time spent opening the cup, fishing out the grounds and composting them, then (presumably) throwing away the plastic…?

        1. Teapot Tester*

          There are companies that make compostable K-cups – you just toss the whole thing in the composter.

        2. Starbuck*

          Coffee grounds can be a needed/wanted item if you’ve got a worm bin or whatever going, so especially if she wasn’t a coffee drinker they can be useful to collect. Better than throwing away the whole thing, anyway.

      3. Bea*

        I would spitefully dump the whole thing into the trash each time I saw it. That’s my kind of shht stirring.

        And I taught my mom to recycle while in Kindergarten. I came home and told her all about the program the school used and she was like “damn good idea, I’m in.” However do not get self righteous, my love for the environment is not as strong as my loathing for being told what to do by someone else who isn’t signing my checks.

        1. MusicWithRocksInIt*

          Oh man the drive of Kindergartners. When I was in Kindergarten I started bullying my dad into wearing a seat belt. They said we had to wear one at school so he had to wear one too. It took years of me forcing him to buckle up every time I went anywhere with him, but now he wears one all the time, no prompting.

      4. Elizabeth H.*

        We recently switched to compostable K-cups which I am even more resentful of (and I think I have legitimate reasons). First of all, YES, I am aware that “compostable” K-cups are, as best as I can tell, only rated for industrial composting which is very different from backyard or home composting. I believe that a lot of people think that “compostable” means “backyard or kitchen compost” which it doesn’t. So, I did the research into how my employer collects trash, recycling and compost, and what facilities they send it to, and was pleased to learn that we DO send the compost to certified industrial composting facility. So that checks out.

        However, my objections are that no matter whether they’re compostable or not, it creates waste that takes energy to compost, uses packaging to ship, and uses a ton of fuel to ship compared to a coffee pot setup. You could pack the same amount of coffee for many, many coffeepots into the same size box as it takes for 14 K-cups. Not to mention the costs of producing K-cups with processed components. It’s so much packaging. And I feel that people like the idea of compostable K-cups because it makes them “feel good” and they can forget about it. Research shows that people who believe they’ve done something virtuous tend to compensate for it in other ways, like “Oh, I composted my coffee cup, so it’s not a big deal to leave my house lights on all day or that I never carpool.” I think that focusing on the compostable cups which barely make a difference, is an opportunity cost for caring about initiatives that have more impact. If the energy was focused on switching us to coffee pots instead, or to a coffeemaker that didn’t use individual packaging, it would make a bigger difference. Argh! I have become really obsessed with this lately.

        2. anycat*

          as someone in the environmental services industry you are correct. ;) even the “plantware” items have some form of plastic coating over it that takes longer than 30 days to compost, so we recycle them.

        3. PersephoneUnderground*

          Lol- but the cost of switching the system may be an escalation of coffee wars that keurigs otherwise (mostly) obviate the need for. Though of course I have to plug the more obvious re-usable K-cups that you fill with coffee if you want a better but almost-identical single-serve system. The composting thing seems like an inefficient way to deal with the problem. Oh wait! I remember this from elementary school! It’s Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle (or compost) in that order of priority! So composting the cups is way inferior to getting re-usable cups in the first place or one of your other suggestions. I feel like I just earned a gold star for actually remembering that!

        4. MsSolo*

          It’s like lego switching to bio-plastic for the bricks. Sure, it’s better than using oil, but actually it’s a whole ‘nother energy intensive process, doesn’t allow for recycling, and they still don’t biodegrade, which is a really big issue with plastics.

      5. Former Govt Contractor*

        I am one of those annoying environmentalists (9 BILLION K-cups went into landfills last year ALONE) so I bought the office a new coffee maker that has a single-brew feature. You just put your little grounds in the holder with a screen, brew your single cup of coffee, toss (or compost, if you’re at home) the grounds. Bonus – it’s cheaper, and you can choose the coffee you like and the strength you prefer. Alternatively, they make re-usable K-cups that work in Kerig machines.

    11. Q*

      I would prefer everyone remove their own K-cup but I wouldn’t make a big deal about it. I feel it gives the chamber time to dry out and thus is less likely to be gross.

    12. Al Lo*

      I have, on more than one occasion, run the Keurig for hot water without checking for a used pod and ended up with old-coffee flavoured oatmeal. Gross.

    13. Lujessmin*

      Oh, that was one of my biggest pet peeves at my former office – one guy NEVER removed his K-cup when he was done. I know I passively-aggressively snarled a few time, “Boy, I wish whoever left their K-cup in the machine would take it out!”, but it never worked. I often wonder how they are making their coffee now since I was the only person who filled the water bottle for the machine.

      P.S. – I was also ther person who bitched about people who didn’t clear the time on the microwave when they were done.

    14. Lola Banks*

      At my last job people would remove their K-cups…and leave them on the counter. So at the end of the day there’d be a dozen or so used cups just sitting there and staining the counter. Not sure what their rationale was for that.

    15. Faith*

      My office has the Keurig model that automatically disposes of the old K-cup when you pop it open to insert a new one. There is still a sign asking people to pop the thing open when they are done brewing their cup because leaving it in will clog the nozzle. But you don’t actually have to touch the hot K-cup. The disadvantage is that sometimes you end up inadvertently disposing of the new K-cup if you insert it and the machine doesn’t work right, so you pop it open to check what’s wrong.

    16. Dunder Mifflin*

      I work in workplace supplies, including office coffee, and there actually is a reason for this. Hopefully I’m able to provide a decent explanation here, as I don’t manage our technical services department, but I have heard from them why removing the cup matters. There’s a tiny needle that punctures the bottom of the k-cup through which the water runs to get into your mug. The longer you leave a k-cup in the machine, the more that little needle gets clogged with tiny grains from the k-cup that are then just sitting there, and eventually (over many cups) it has to be flushed. It’s not complex, but generally we have to send out a tech to do it for people. Of course, that’s a long explanation, so our customers generally just put out the snarky notes instead.

      TL/DR: Yes, there is a reason to throw away your used k-cups.

    17. ALBA*

      well…. i have to admit. I am someone who did this. My office does not have a large amount of use on the Keurig. Maybe 4 or 5 drinks on average a day.

      What happens with our office Keurig is that if a kcup is left in the coffee drippings dry blocking the hole and make it a mess for the next person. It also flavours the next cup made. There are varrious types of beverages made from regular coffee, flavoured coffee, hot chocolate, to brewed over ice drink. Trust me, there is nothing worse than having a nice refreshing glass of lemon iced tea ruined by the leftover slightly burnt taste of Hazelnut Coffee.

      Our biggest culprit of leaving kcups in and just messes in general in the kitchen is the company president. It is a smallish (20 – 25 people) “family” business so everyone is on a fist name basis and knows things about peoples lives outside of work from top to bottom. He is the type to pout and carry on if something is mentioned to him directly that is not rah rah positive (trust me i know what you are thinking) so a passive aggressive way was the only way to go. It was mentioned when he was in earshot and the kcup cradle was taken out and washed in hot water when he was around so he could see the caked on dry coffee that was left over. The point got across and myself and other were able to stop tossing our badly 2nd hand flavoured drinks.

    19. Tea*

      My boss buys ground coffee for the refillable Keurig cups and won’t buy K-Cups. The staff freaks any time someone loves the refillable pod filled with old grounds. One girl bangs the pod as hard as she can against the trash can when dumping it, “HOW-bang-HARD-bang-IS-bang-IT-bang-TO-bang-CLEAN-bang-“and so on. But that’s worse than just dumping the k-cup, having to shake the wet ground out of the pod.

    20. Oxford Coma*

      A lot of people at my job have the re-usable cups, so if they forget and leave them, they get stolen (in a light-hearted, badge of honor sort of way). It’s an excellent motivation to clean up after themselves.

    21. Kate H*

      It’s the same way in my office. I’ve always left the K-cup in my home Keurig because, like you said, the thing is hot enough to burn. Taking it out of the work Keurig makes me anxious that I’m either going to burn myself or set the trashcan on fire.

    22. Anon Chemist*

      We have a few Tassimos at our place. Those evil pods explode if you take them out right away, with coffee grounds and hot water spilling everywhere! They seem to be pressurized. I mostly leave them to cool in the machine and toss them upon brewing the next cup. But I also dislike the thought of them mouldering in there overnight, that’s for sure. Quite a conundrum!

    23. Shortie*

      The people in my office complain about this too and put up passive-aggressive signs, and it drives me batty. I comply so I’m not seen as the jerk, but it makes no sense at all to me to sit around and wait until the K-cup is cool enough to throw out. Makes way more sense to leave it for the next person (including when that next person is me).

  7. PNWCoffeeFiend*

    I had a coworker who forbade us from using the company coffee pot. The smell of coffee was unpleasant to her so she made a big deal with our boss and HR till they removed the coffee pot. Employees were told to bring from home – thankfully a coffee kiosk went in down the street around the same time.

    2. LouiseM*

      WOW. That’s looney tunes, although I feel like we’ve had a letter about a similar situation before.

    3. blackcat*

      The only thing that would make this not crazy is if she were pregnant. Coffee is a common source of sent-induced vomiting in the first trimester.

      1. Teapot Tester*

        This was me during my first pregnancy. However, I just avoided coffee myself and didn’t take it away from an entire group of people.

      2. Luna*

        I could understand someone asking to not have the coffee pot near them if they were bothered by the smell, but banning the entire rest of the office from being able to make coffee at all is a whole other level.

    4. Lorelai Gilmore*

      I would start a revolution over this. Wars have been waged for less serious offenses.

    5. Q*

      When we moved office locations they tried to put the coffee pot on the cubicle next to mine. I politely explained that I don’t like the smell of coffee and could it please be moved elsewhere. They moved it a few rows over. I could still smell it but that’s my issue and it was nowhere near as bad as it would have been right next to me. It’s not like it was fish in the microwave!

    6. Dragoning*

      That’s crazy. The smell of coffee gives me migraines and I’ve never demanded to get rid of someone else’s coffee pot. I just won’t sit anywhere near them while they have it.

    8. JerryLarryTerryGary*

      I would be tempted to put used coffee grounds in the office plants. Because I care.

    9. Jules the 3rd*

      I can’t comfortably be within five feet of coffee. But the solution is for *me* to move, not to get rid of everyone else’s coffee.

      1. M_Lynn_K*

        Right? Also I LOVE the smell of coffee and would happily sit next to the machine. That is a prized seat for some people!

        1. Rebecca in Dallas*

          Same! I love the smell of coffee. I’ve had to cut back on my caffeine intake for health reasons but being able to smell it would make me happy!

    10. Kate H*

      My fiancee’s mom is like this. I’m only allowed to make coffee at work as long as she lives with us.

  8. Amber Rose*

    What about donuts? One coworker got so mad at people who would cut donuts in half that he bought a huge box of donuts and cut a quarter piece out of all of them.

    1. Jam Today*

      I used to have a mystery coworker who would slice the muffin tops off whenever someone brought in muffins, so if she got their first all that would be left were the paper-wrapped muffin carcasses. The pure selfishness of that act enrages me to this day.

      2. Future Homesteader*

        That’s a crime against baked goods. I know people here often jump to legal solutions when things aren’t illegal, but I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that *MUST* be actionable!

        2. Luna*

          If I was a manager I would seriously fire someone over that if I could. I mean, what kind of a person does that?!

        2. Alice Ulf*

          Ahahaha, muffin stumps.

          “It’s not Top of the Muffin TO YOU!!1!1!”
          “No, no, it is!”

          1. Rebecca in Dallas*

            I mean, the top is the best part. Even the food kitchen didn’t want those stumps!

      5. Clever Name*

        She’d take ALL the muffin tops? Taking one is weird, but technically, it’s not that different from taking half. Taking all of them is truly bizarre. Like, how many muffin tops can one person eat?

        1. Rusty Shackelford*

          It is *very* different from taking half. If you want half a muffin, you slice it from top to bottom, so both halves have part of a muffin top.

          1. Triumphant Fox*

            I think I would take the whole muffin and just eat the top if I only wanted the top…no one wants your topless muffin stump.

            1. pugsnbourbon*

              Thanks for making me giggle at “muffin stump.” I know you can buy just muffin tops now, but muffin stumps seem much less marketable.

              1. Just Jess*

                This thread is baffling to me. If the muffin is good then it is soft and scrumptious throughout. I’d be perfectly happy with any part.

                1. Anon Chemist*

                  It’s because the top is both soft and scrumptious, and also crunchy and delicious! But I confess I’d eat either part…

              2. Younger Sibling*

                No, I do too. My older sister is convinced it’s because she convinced me when we were young to take the bottom half of a muffin so that she could have the top half. But I like the bottom because the top is spongy and has a weird texture.

        2. LBK*

          I mean, I could probably eat a solid 20 muffin tops before I started to feel sick. I wouldn’t, but I probably could.

      6. Midge*

        Ack that is so rude! Years ago when I was volunteering at a non-profit, I went into the break room to heat up my lunch. I noticed that there was a basket of leftover baked goods on the table, clearly up for grabs. But when I got close I could see that the only thing left was muffin bottoms. I just don’t understand who’s like, “Oh someone will definitely want the bottom of my muffin so I’ll just leave it here.”

      7. Amber Rose*

        To me, that’s much worse than eating a piece of a donut. It would be like slicing the donut in half lengthwise and eating the icing.

        2. CMart*

          That… is a genius way of eating donuts I have not previously considered. *takes furious notes*

      10. Where's the Le-Toose?*

        I would go totally mental if someone did this at my work. Must … control … fist of death!

      12. Iris Eyes*

        *raises hand

        Yes, Yes it really is that bad. Baked (and in the case of donuts) fried foods have a shell that contains their moist delightful interior. When you cut the darn things and expose them to the air within a short time they start getting all dry and crusty. I want my muffins moist dang it not half way to a crouton.

        Don’t even get me started on the bagel shards that some people think are appropriate or desirable.

        Especially donuts, they already have like an 18hr period of decency when you cut them that fractures into maybe 2 hrs, maybe.

        1. Elizabeth H.*

          I prefer my donuts slightly stale, so I like the “exposed to air” effect of cutting a donut in half – the remaining half is chewier and more enjoyable to me.

          It takes all kinds!

      13. Rachel*

        I’m the weirdo who actually prefers the bottom part of the muffin. The top often has a sticky texture that I don’t like. But knowing that someone touched the food would bother me.

        1. All. Is. On.*

          Ah, I didn’t read down the thread far enough! I also prefer the bottom part of the muffin!

      14. Robin B*

        That sounds just like South Park when Cartman stole all the skin off the KFC chicken pieces… but wait.. that’s a cartoon.

        2. Dove*

          I could understand the horror of having the fried chicken skin stolen! (But not, specifically, the *KFC* fried chicken skin; I never seem to manage to get any fried chicken from there that actually has crispy skin! Which is incredibly disappointing, when I’m expecting something with some crunch to it.)

      15. A Nony Mouse*

        Related: I have no fewer than two coworkers that will take the top half of a bagel with toppings and abandon the unseasoned remains. Monsters, I tell you.

      16. MusicWithRocksInIt*

        Huh. Just yesterday there was a leftover box of baked goods in the kitchen which had only half a pastry and a muffin cut in half (both half’s were there) with the top removed from one of the halfs. So someone cut the muffin in half, then took the top off of one half and left the rest. I was so puzzled. Ate the in-tact half though.

    2. Kyubey*

      I don’t get that… did he just not like them being cut in half but he didn’t mind them being cut in quarters?

      I did have a coworker at my last job who complained when someone brought donuts but no flavors she liked left/ ordered in the first place. She claimed they shouldn’t buy any jelly filled or Boston creme donuts ever.

      1. Amber Rose*

        I think it was like a passive aggressive “see how annoying this is” message. I didn’t really care though. 3/4 of a donut, as long as it was cut with a clean knife, is fine with me.

        1. Where's the Le-Toose?*

          I love my donuts and hate it when people take half a donut, but maybe donut quarters are the new donut holes?

          1. CanCan*

            What’s wrong with half-donuts? Would you rather somebody take a whole donut, eat half and throw out the other half?

            If you don’t like halves, just pretend the person took the entire thing.

            2. SignalLost*

              Because it’s frequently a component of food morality, and I am a staunch advocate of removing morality from food. I don’t, per se, care about half doughnuts, but they are so often accompanied with the knowledge that a woman cut it in half because she’s being “naughty”, and also, she couldn’t possibly eat a full doughnut because only fat cows do that. That grinds my gears.

              1. Owler*

                Not morality, but a sense of adventure! I love half doughnuts, but mainly so I can try all of the flavors.

        2. EddieSherbert*

          +1

          I’d pause for like 2 seconds in confusion (why did someone cut ALL the donuts?)…. and then eat the donuts anyway and be happy I got 3/4 of a donut!!

      2. Falling Diphthong*

        You people secretly want 3/4 doughnuts! Like taking half is oh-so-diet-conscious… but put a 3/4 doughnut before you, and we’ll just see who cuts it in half now… *rubs hands* *shuffles to cave*

      3. CMart*

        That’s crazy talk. Boston creme are the only donuts worth eating! I’m the jerk who sees a donut box being carried through the hallway and then lurks like a creep nearby to ensure I can swoop in and get the Boston creme.

    3. Manders*

      As weird as this is, a part of me would LOVE to have a tasting flight of donuts instead of choosing just one.

      2. Kathleen_A*

        At the office where I work now we sometimes have what we call a “truffle buffet.” There’s this place not far away that makes amazing truffles in all sorts of flavors – conventional flavors, slightly odd flavors and very odd flavors – and they’re delicious, but they’re also about a zillion calories each, and anyway, with all those flavors to chose from, it’s very difficult to chose just one or two. So what we do is get a selection that includes mostly conventional and slightly odd flavors and maybe one or two of the very odd flavors, and we slice them up, like teensy little cheesecakes, so that everybody who wants to can get a taste.

        Which is how I found out that gorgonzola-dark chocolate truffles and balsamic truffles are *amazing*, at least as made by this place.

        1. Midge*

          Sea salt olive oil truffles are one of my all time favorite things. Sadly, the place where I used to get them no longer makes them.

          1. Snark*

            When we were in Barcelona recently, my wife ordered a dessert that was three little dollops of a firm dark-chocolate mousse, doused in forest-green olive oil, sprinkled with flaky salt, and served with three crispy little toast rounds. It was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.

                1. new day new name*

                  I live in DC….and work adjacent to a Jaleo… apparently I need to peruse their dessert menu more often

                2. Snark*

                  Jaleo is friggin’ amazing. I had one of the best coffees of my life there, to bring this full circle, and the food was great too.

                3. SarahKay*

                  Sadly I am in the UK, so a very long way from DC indeed, but useful to know if I ever visit :)

            2. zora*

              At Zero Zero in San Francisco, they have a soft serve icecream dessert where you can select your toppings, which include olive oil, sea salt, a homemade brownie, etc. It is really that amazing.

        3. JanetM*

          I must admit it took me a minute to correctly add “chocolate” in front of “truffles.” I was briefly very confused.

      3. Detective Amy Santiago*

        We did this in my office once! Boss went to one of those trendy little donut shops and picked up four different varieties and we cut them in quarters so each of us could try all four.

        1. SoCalHR*

          Did I used to be your boss? lol We totally did this once for a team members bday. It was fun (and kind of pricey cuz its a super hipster donut shop)

          1. Fergus*

            Yea there’s a place in DC called Georgetown cupcake. There are lines around the corner sometimes.

            1. LBK*

              There’s a Georgetown Cupcake in Boston that used to be down the street from my office, and I admit that for a while when it first opened I would be there at least 3 times a week to get the secret cupcake.

              1. LBK*

                I always liked Hello Cupcake in Dupont – the cupcakes weren’t quite as good, IMO, but the punch cards for free cupcakes evened it out, especially as a broke college student.

        3. Teapot Tester*

          We’ve done this with a place that sells bundt cakes in different sizes for our bi-monthly birthday celebration. We got a bunch of the muffin-sized ones in several flavors and cut them into quarters so people could try different ones.

          1. motherofdragons*

            We have a place like that (Nothing Bundt). Before our wedding, we invited a group of friends over and bought a bunch of different flavors of the mini cakes and cut them into quarters. People got to taste them all and vote on their favorite flavors, and the 3 winners were purchased for our wedding! We also had a couple of different types of sparkling wine to try out, same deal, people got to vote. It’s our best-attended party to date.

        4. Parenthetically*

          Yes, this is what you DO! We did the same at my work when a new donut place opened up the street.

      4. paul*

        We’ve done that here a few times. It’s frigging glorious. Quarter them, everyone grabs 4-8 pieces of all different flavors.

        I’m feeling a bit like Homer Simpson now…I really want a damn donut

      5. Adlib*

        At the last Yelp event I attended (last weekend), we did a wine and donut tasting. Yes, it was fabulous!

      6. CAA*

        We do that at home and at work. We have this amazing donut place with unusual flavors like maple bourbon, cap’n crunch, chocolate euphoria, lavender lemon, etc. Most of the donuts are huge and everybody wants to try multiples, so we cut them in quarters before diving in.

      7. Detective Amy Santiago*

        This reminds me that I saw an advertisement for Rita’s Italian Ice that you can now buy a flight of Italian Ice.

        Tasting flights should definitely be more of a thing.

      8. CMart*

        I feel this way about soups. My office cafeteria usually has 3-5 really good sounding soups/stews/chilis on any given day, and I hate that I have to get 12oz of ONE. Why can’t I get 3oz of four of them for the same price??

      9. bookends*

        I once saw this referred to as “donut charcuterie” and I’ve wanted to do it ever since.

    4. the_scientist*

      Hahahahahahaha this is an inspirational level of pettiness.

      We don’t have coffee wars at my office, but we did have a period of cake thievery! The cake for someone’s baby shower mysteriously vanished from the fridge and the organizer was understandably livid.

        1. Liane*

          Worse than the story I’ve told before about the third-shifters at Old Job who mutilated and/or had a food fight with THREE full sheet cakes (2 clearly labeled for the other shifts).

      2. Falling Diphthong*

        Stealing cake is bad, but stealing cake from a pregnant woman… I will stab this plastic fork through your hand.

      3. gmg22*

        Great story: My dad was a teacher at our local high school, and when he turned 50, my mom ordered a nice bakery cake and dropped it off in the teachers’ room with a note that people should help themselves to a slice of cake — but didn’t let my dad know in advance she was doing this. Dad arrived in the teachers’ room an hour later. Cake was gone. Box was in the trash. We still LOL about this 25 years later.

    5. fposte*

      The anger people have at slicing always surprises me, and I’d be perfectly pleased with a box of precut donuts. I mean, I get it if people are taking the top half of a cupcake, but the left half of a plain bagel is perfectly reasonable. Lots of people don’t want the full American-sized portion of things, and if the objection is that it means the other half sometimes gets thrown away, it would get thrown away at the person’s desk if they took a whole one anyway.

      And yes, I work in an office of half-takers. It works fine :-).

      1. ContentWrangler*

        I agree. My office has donut Wednesdays and people cut the donuts in half all the time. People bring them in from all sorts of different bakeries and sometimes they’re huge – cutting them in half is necessary.

      2. Rusty Shackelford*

        Exactly. Half a donut (nicely cut, with a knife) means the next person can take half a donut too. It also means I don’t have to decide between cinnamon and blueberry, since there are halves of each waiting for me.

        2. TootsNYC*

          at my church’s coffee hour, they routinely cut all the donuts into quarters. It works. And if you got a variety, it would work even better. If you want the equivalent of an entire donut, you take 4.

          1. Parenthetically*

            My grandparents’ church did this when I was a kid. A dixie cup of Tang, half a cinnamon donut, and half a powdered sugar jelly filled donut were all I needed in the world.

      3. Teapot Tester*

        I don’t understand the ire here either. We do donut Fridays and while whole donuts are consumed in the morning, if there are any left later in the day they’re often cut in half.

      4. WillyNilly*

        If someone wants half a donut, go ahead & cut the one you want half of. But its beyond rude to cut all the donuts.

    6. ballpitwitch*

      I would never do anything about it, but I do find it enraging when people cut donuts in half. The other half always just sits there until it is the only thing left and gets thrown away. Because no one know what was done to that half so no one will eat it! You don’t know if it was halved by a dirty knife or dirty fingers – or by the one of the notoriously unhygenic people in your office. I totally sympathize with only wanting half a donut – when I feel that way, I get one of my friends in the office to split it with me so I know I’m not wasting it.

      1. ContentWrangler*

        When we put out the donuts, we also put out a handful of plastic knives – maybe that would help in your situation? Overall I think my office just trusts we’re being careful not to manhandle the donuts.

        1. Antilles*

          My office does that and nobody AFAIK is super crazy about hygiene issues and the like…but even so, any time someone cuts a donut in half, that other half donut lasts forever. I think it’s just that people sort of view it in the “well, if I’m going to have a donut, I’m already being unhealthy, so why am I bothering to get half a donut anyways?”

      2. Sara*

        I shamed someone into taking both halves of a doughnut the other day by telling her no one was going to eat it. I felt bad afterwards, but come on, just eat the whole thing.

        1. fposte*

          But then you’re getting into shaming people into food habits–shaming somebody into eating something they don’t want seems uncomfortably analogous to shaming somebody out of eating something.

          1. AMPG*

            I agree. Maybe YOU won’t eat that other half, but someone else might (I certainly would), so why should your own desire for no half-donuts on the plate override theirs to not eat a whole one?

          2. The New Wanderer*

            Yep, your leftover donut half will never just sit there if I’m around. Unless it has coconut on it, and even then I would probably just pause for a second.

            (My definition of will power is not eating a third donut.)

          3. GG Two shoes*

            me too! As a calorie counter, I can make room for 150- 175 calories of donut. 300 or more is not worth it to me.

        3. Parenthetically*

          Eh, policing people’s food choices seems an odd response over something that cost AT MOST a buck, honestly.

        4. Let it go*

          I hate when people do this. Just let people eat what they want and leave what they don’t. Maybe they’re on a diet. Maybe sugar gives them bad headaches so they just want a little. Maybe they have a problematic relationship with food or are recovering from an eating disorder. I had an old boss who would comment on every. tiny. thing. I would eat. Just leave it be.

      3. AMPG*

        I’ve never really understood the hygiene argument here, unless you know your coworkers are like, licking the knife they use before cutting the donuts, or something. They’re already touching all the same surfaces throughout the day that you do. Maybe I’ve just generally been lucky enough not to work with gross people?

        1. Where's the Le-Toose?*

          I’ve got one coworker puts their fingers on say, the left side of the donut (usually leaving a divot with their finger), cuts the donut in half with a plastic knife, and then grabs the right half that doesn’t have the finger divot.

          That’s the moment of rage!

          1. AMPG*

            OK, that’s genuinely infuriating. But if I saw someone doing that, I would just call them out in the moment.

        2. LBK*

          I’m one of those weirdos who wouldn’t like eating the other half of a pre-cut donut and there is absolutely no logic to it – I know it’s irrational and that I probably eat much less hygienic things all the time without thinking about it, but it is what it is.

          1. fposte*

            That I get–I don’t feel the same way, but I understand the “I wanted an unopened one!” impulse. It’s the feeling that people who take half are somehow despoiling the landscape that I can’t get my brain around. (OTOH, my bitterness about people who don’t clear the microwave timer isn’t a ton more logical.)

          2. Amezilla*

            Same! I would rather have no donut than half of a pre-cut one, and I love donuts SO MUCH. I have no idea why I feel this way.

            Although, sometimes they do get all dried out where they’ve been cut.

        3. Oxford Coma*

          Only about 1/3 of the people I work with sit at a desk and shuffle paper all day. The rest are running greasy machinery, working with caustic chemicals, or covered in tiny metal shavings.

          1. As Close As Breakfast*

            Same here. And maybe it just /looks/ like they don’t wash their hands all day… but yeah. I have genuine fear (chemicals, metal, etc.) of what might be on that already cut donut half.

      4. fposte*

        But it’s still going to waste if it’s thrown away by the person eating the other half–that’s the part that perplexes me. Is it ultimately that people feel that if you’re not going to eat the whole thing you shouldn’t take any at all?

      5. TootsNYC*

        That’s why it works if the organizer cuts every one of them in quarters==it’s easier to trust that the cuts were all made with a clean knife, etc.

          1. ballpitwitch*

            Honestly, most of the time I am going to eat a whole donut if I am eating any at all. If they were all cut into quarters, the people who want a whole donut would be irritated that they can’t just pick it up and walk away. They now have to waste a paper plate to put their donut pieces on haha. It’s an unsolvable situation – but luckily I just moved to a very small office where I am not constantly tempted by donuts and bagels so this is no longer my problem.

          2. Where's the Le-Toose?*

            Representing the whole donut camp, part of the enjoyment of eating the donut is the way I eat it. Maple bars, for instance, I eat whole starting at one end and going to the other. Old fashioned donuts are my favorite because it’s like two donuts–I first eat the tapered outer ring, leaving a remaining inner ring as second donut. I wouldn’t mind if cake donuts were cut in quarters though.

            But for me, donuts, oranges, bananas, sleeves of Fig Newtons, are all the same–it’s either the whole thing or not at all.

              1. Where's the Le-Toose?*

                Sounds like the making of a weekend thread of how people eat various foods! Bento boxes, burgers (bite of burger and then some fries versus whole burger then fries versus fries in the burger), home made pudding (in a mug, then eat the center, then eat the edge), etc. I could go on all day!

            3. smoke tree*

              I’m with you. I can’t really enjoy something unless I have optimized my strategy for eating it. If there is no clear best part, it’s very frustrating!

            4. As Close As Breakfast*

              I’m here for this! I eat old fashioned donuts the same way, because is there really any other way to eat them? My preference is chocolate bars though, and this is where you and I diverge. I like to eat around the whole edge, bite by bite, until there is just the long center part that I then eat from one end to the other.

              I want a donut now. I already made myself a rare afternoon cup of coffee…

              1. Where's the Le-Toose?*

                I will have to try that technique. What I like about eating straight through is that I go left/right left/right (very organized) until the very end and then the donut nub at the end gets consumed in one bite.

            5. Elizabeth H.*

              I’m so confused! I always thought that old fashioned donuts are CAKE donuts. A google search for “old fashioned donuts” (with quotation marks) reveals mostly, but not entirely, cake donuts and Wikipedia also identifies “old fashioned donuts” as cake.
              I’m a firm believer in cake donuts – I will not eat yeast donuts. I am always a fan of the outside or the “crust” of baked goods, but it’s never occurred to me to eat around the outside before going after the middle. I was trying to describe what I thought the difference might amount to in terms of amount of outside per bite, but am now getting confused thinking about donut physics.

    7. RottenRedRod*

      I like it when people cut donuts in half – I’m usually happy to eat the other half.

      1. beanie beans*

        Plus, if I eat one half, and then another half, it feels like I haven’t eaten a whole donut because they were just these two small pieces.

        I know the logic doesn’t make any sense, but neither does getting angry that people are cutting donuts in half. Seriously.

        2. Dorothy Zbornak*

          reminds me of that episode of The Nanny where Fran stacks two pieces of pizza on top of each other, to look like one thick slice, and says, “The body doesn’t know!”

      2. AMPG*

        Me too. My current office seems to be the opposite, though, so I’ve become a whole-donut eater since working here.

    8. Allison*

      I think some people do this because they don’t want a whole donut*, and I don’t mind that. We once had a whole bunch of donuts, all different kinds, and pretty much everyone was cutting off a piece of this and that so they could sample different kinds.

      However, sometimes I wonder if taking only half a donut is expected, and I wonder if people think I’m a greedy pig when I do take a whole one.

      *I keep thinking “don’t get me started” but I feel like getting started so here we go: every time there are pastries, donuts or otherwise, up for grabs in the office I have to hear a whole bunch of people recite the “oh they look so good, but I shouldn’t . . . I’ll just take a piece” monologue, or they declare that they won’t have any because they need to be good today. Eat it or don’t, take a half or whole or small piece, do what’s best for you, do what you want, but I am so sick of the diet talk. I get the assumption that this is how all women bond with each other, but it’s not true, I actually have a hard time bonding with someone who thinks eating a donut is “bad.” Please, just stop.

      1. Parenthetically*

        I haven’t lived with my food-shamey mother for a LONG time, which is perhaps why cutting donuts into pieces no longer registers to me as “oooh this is so baaaaad I really shouldn’t oh I guess just a half is fine” but as, “OK, donuts are GREAT, how can I taste as many as possible without hogging them from everyone else and making myself sick — hey Coworker, want a fourth of this apple fritter? Should I just cut them all in pieces?”

        1. Allison*

          Oh no, I think cutting them is fine! If you want some donut but not a whole one, for any reason (maybe too much sugar gives you a stomach ache, or you already had a donut earlier), taking some and leaving the rest for someone else shouldn’t be a bad thing, although I get why it bothers people so it’s sort of a know-your-office thing I guess. It’s when people bring their diet talk into the process that makes me mad.

          1. Parenthetically*

            Oh no I didn’t mean to seem to disagree, just a reflection that it’s nice not to be in that mindset like the women in your office. It feels freeing to see a half a donut as a purely neutral or pleasant thing, rather than “I MUST NOT GIVE IN TO BAD EVIL CALORIES!” :)

        2. Fur Princess*

          NOOOO! You have it all wrong. You cut the things that are baaad for you in half so all the calories drain out. Didn’t your mother tell you that?

    9. StrawMeatloaf*

      The only problem I have with half donuts is that whenever I see someone do it they’re always like “Oh I’ll have the other half later…” and they never do.

      Just take the whole donut with you, it will last a few hours. I also won’t take a half if I haven’t seen in cut in front of me, but I don’t mind if someone is like “Hey, I’m only taking half of this anyone want the other half?” So they’re at least offering it.

    10. AvidReader31*

      I worked with someone who would do this, but instead of cutting them in half, she would take a third or some other odd fraction. It didn’t matter what it was – cupcakes, pizza, cookies, etc. – she would always take an odd section and it looked like someone just took a bite and left the rest. Finally, someone yelled at her and told her to take the whole piece and divide it herself – stop leaving it for others. She was an odd duck.

    11. Cacwgrl*

      HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! One of our fellow managers here would die at the passive agressive/outright aggressiveness of that action. I’m gonna go read him this the next time he’s losing his mind over stupid shht in the office.

    13. Liz*

      I came in the other morning to find half a Tim Tam (the high king of chocolate biscuits in Australia) in the fridge. Half.

      It looked like it had been snapped, not bitten (CSI: Office Fridge), so I can only assume that someone was doing the biscuit version of cutting the last doughnut in half?

      I was confused, but not so confused I didn’t eat it.

  9. Manders*

    I’m currently in one of those trendy coworking spaces. They provide both hot and cold-brew coffee, and every time they make a change to the beans they set up an event to allow people to taste-test new varieties and vote on the best one. We’re in Seattle, so people take their coffee seriously, but that surprised me.

    I knew someone who worked at a Starbucks within the Starbucks HQ building. She said that every floor of the HQ had its own coffee-making stations with all the trimmings, but employees would come down to get a coffee made for them anyway. She served the CEO a lot, apparently he’s a pretty nice guy.

    1. Fergus, Stealer of Pens and Microwaver of Fish*

      “Starbucks within the Starbucks HQ building”

      Mind. Blown.

      2. Meh*

        Well, it makes sense to have it for guests and folks who don’t want to make their own. But it is still pretty wild.

        But now I’m picturing Starbucks HQ and having their little interior coffee shop be … Dunkin’ Donuts. And now I just can’t stop laughing at that mental image! XD

      3. Manders*

        Yes, she had to explain it to me a few times too! It looks like they now have an extra fancy Reserve store: https://news.starbucks.com/news/starbucks-reserve-sodo-store

        Seattle is full of really odd Starbucks experiments–the Starbucks that serves wine, the Starbucks that’s pretending to be a different store called Roy Street Coffee, the “Roastery” with a rope out front like it’s a nightclub. I don’t even like Starbucks coffee!

        1. smoke tree*

          I went in the Reserve store when I visited Seattle! I don’t like Starbucks coffee, so I didn’t want to pay the big bucks for a Starbucks tasting flight, but it was an interesting place to look around.

          1. JustaTech*

            The nifty percolator with the light show is pretty awesome to watch, even if I don’t want to drink it.
            And the Roy Street thinks they’re being all sly with the Starbucks connection, but you can still pay with the app. (It’s actually a really nice shop.)

            1. Manders*

              Hah, yes, the Roy Street location is a pretty nice store. I actually think Starbucks isn’t so bad as big corporations go, it’s just weird to see them pretending they’re not really Starbucks.

        2. former foster kid*

          I worked at an east coast (boston!) starbucks that was based on the seattle reserve store….but with fewer new things (we were the east coast test market tho).

          seattlites would come in all upset that we didn’t have wine etc. we had a bunch of stuff literally no other store within 2000 miles had, but not wine and we’d get yelled at :-(

      5. LCL*

        Starbucks HQ is a giant multi story brick building that used to be a Sears store. There is a lot of foot traffic in the area during lunchtime.

      6. Fergus*

        Yea there’s a starbucks at the CIA and the pentagon. You want coffee with your morning terrorist briefing and is that one or 2 sugars.

      7. essEss*

        Our office has a starbucks coffee machine that dispenses free starbucks coffee. I still see my coworkers in line getting coffee at the actual Starbucks store in our lobby. I have a valid reason for being there because I prefer chai which I can’t get from the freebie machine, but I watch my coworkers paying for the same thing that our office supplies for free .

      4. Tuckerman*

        We bought a simple $15 cold brew pitcher and the coffee we make is seriously just as good as the expensive coffee shop cold brew.

    3. Some*

      Can confirm. Have been to an interview there. The problem is that most of the drinks that people get are pretty complicated and they can’t make them. Professional espresso machines are not easy to work with.

      On the other note, Starbucks is a customer of mine. I went to a meeting there – 8 am in the morning, the meeting began with french pressed coffee. We were ask to smell the coffee before tasting and tell them what we smelled and what we noticed when we drank it (think wine tasting). Then processed to tell us what we should have smelled and tasted. The meeting had nothing to do with coffee.

        1. Free Meerkats*

          One of the companies that I work with produces smoked salmon, all meetings there have a platter of various types of smoked salmon, some kind of bread, and usually cream cheese.

          I have more meetings there than I should.

    4. Antilles*

      Your story actually reminds me of something I heard from my dad a ways back.
      In the early 2000’s, my dad worked at the world HQ of a Fortune 200-esque corporation (we’ll call it MegaCorp). This is when Starbucks was super-hip and trendy, particularly among younger employees. As a service to their employees, MegaCorp set up a subcontract with Starbucks to provide coffee for the employee cafeteria. Starbucks provided the coffee machines, beans, and even baristas to make the coffee for you – just like going to a store except it was free. The only catch was that they didn’t have the Starbucks logo cups, so you’d have to either bring your own mug or they’d put it in one of the usual plain white styrofoam cups used in most offices.
      Despite all this, there was still a regular contingent of people who would stop at the adjacent mall on their way into work at a Starbucks and pay their own money for the *exact same coffee* you could get in the building for free.
      Still baffled by why; we ended up concluding that some employees were so interested in being SEEN with the then-trendy Starbucks logo on their cups that they were willing to pay for the privilege of having people see that they drink Starbucks coffee.

      1. tinyhipsterboy*

        That’s not surprising to me. When I worked at Starbucks, we tried for a short while to restrict water cups to refillable containers only; our location was incredibly heavy in foot traffic to the point where we’d have to give out 3 water cups for every 1 drink served at times. People would throw the biggest fits even when they clearly had an empty water bottle on their person–they just wanted the green straw and Starbucks logo.

    5. tinyhipsterboy*

      God, the bean-voting sounds heavenly. I used to work for a tech company that had plenty of free food and cold brew, but whatever coffee they used for the cold brew was…… not the best. It wasn’t even that it was a blend I disliked (I don’t like African coffees much, too tart), it just actively tasted old.

    6. Le Sigh*

      I dreamed a dream in times gone by
      When coffee was hot (or cold-brew) and life worth living
      I dreamed, that beans would never die
      I dreamed that votes would be (un)forgiving
      Then I was young and unafraid
      And coffee were made and used and wasted
      There was no ransom to be paid
      No bean unsmelled, no coffee untasted

    7. MrsJ*

      In Seattle, as well. We also do taste tests when it’s time to switch to new beans. The voting gets rather heated!

  10. Collarbone High*

    Not so much a war as a one-time Braveheart-level battle, but while I was out on medical leave at OldJob, my colleagues moved the coffee machine to my desk for some reason. The machine frequently malfunctioned and spewed coffee everywhere, which they did not clean up.

    I returned to find coffee soaked into the carpet under my desk, molding coffee spills in the drawers and in my keyboard, and pretty much everything on the desk stained. Did I mention the smell of coffee makes me dry heave?

      1. Collarbone High*

        I told them I was working from home until they got the carpet and desk cleaned and replaced my keyboard. We weren’t technically allowed to work from home, but I was so mad I didn’t care, and it got done within a week.

  11. AnonEMoose*

    I’m not a coffee drinker myself, but one thing I have learned over the years is to never, ever get between people and their coffee.

    At my current workplace, the company supplies the coffee, sugar, powdered creamer, etc. Some departments have purchased Keurigs, and mostly don’t care if others use them as long as you don’t leave a mess and supply your own coffee or whatever. I’ve tried a couple of non-coffee things, but mostly wasn’t impressed; if I want hot chocolate, I’d rather go to Caribou.

    The biggest coffee controversy here seems to be that, as mentioned in the OP, people were putting two bags of coffee into the coffee maker, because they wanted it stronger. This doesn’t always work out well with the coffee makers, and can result in wet coffee grounds all over the place. So for awhile, there were post-it notes on the machines, telling people not to do that. I haven’t seen them lately, so maybe people have learned not to do it.

    1. Breda*

      You’re not alone on that; Keurig coffee is just…not good. But it is EXTREMELY easy. (I’m not a coffee snob! In fact, I don’t like most coffee, so when it’s real bad I find it a very unpleasant experience.)

          3. Big Person*

            Anything marked BOLD. That is as opposed to being darker roasted. I hate dark roast myself, and finally investigated the difference between bold and how it’s roasted. I learned that bold means they have put more coffee in the pod. Also, if you can choose the level of water in the cup, press the 8 oz. size with a bold coffee, and you’ll get it a bit stronger even. I find the No Name brand, while not marked bold, is pretty strong.

          5. kimberly*

            Newman’s Own
            It is extra bold and medium roast, so it is strong enough to brew on the large setting but not bitter at all. I love that stuff.

          6. Not Seriously?*

            I am not Seriously, but Major Dickason’s Dark Roast from Peets is my current favorite. But I am not a coffee snob and have been knows to put a peppermint in the cup before brewing coffee into it.

        2. Dove*

          The ones I tried, when I first got a one-cup machine (Tassimo, not Keurig, because the Tassimo was on sale), had a very…distinct taste that reminded me of the instant coffee I used to make myself during college. It was memorable enough that I actually did wonder if the contents were just instant coffee!

      1. Iris Eyes*

        *grasps pearls* you take that back right now!

        Powdered creamer is amazing esp in that it allows you to not actually water down or cool down the coffee.

        1. gmg22*

          How do you keep it from forming little lumps of powder once you get it in the cup? Am I adding too much creamer at one time?

          2. Browser*

            Put the creamer in the cup before pouring the coffee. As you pour, the hot coffee will dissolve the powder and mix it in at the same time.

            2. As Close As Breakfast*

              I like to put my sugar in with the powdered creamer before pouring the coffee, too. I mix them together, not sure why tbh. If I’m using a Keurig, I find that it’s a good idea to give a quick early stir while it’s dribbling in the cup because otherwise it can form a sort of crystallized lump that becomes hard to break up later as it feels like the bottom of the cup. This is maybe due to mixing up the cream and sugar… so I’m really questioning why I do this…

        3. Fur Princess*

          Powdered creamer = handful of sand in your coffee. If I go to a client site and that’s all they have, I decline coffee, no matter how caffeine starved I may be.

        4. Elsajeni*

          On, like, August 15 last year, my husband brought home a jar of powder creamer. “I don’t know,” he said, “I just feel like we should have some. For emergencies.” Creamer emergencies. Okay, fine.

          On August 29, our power came back on after a multi-day Harvey-related outage and we could run the coffeemaker again, but we’d lost everything in the fridge — BUT BY GOD, WE HAD EMERGENCY POWDER CREAMER. I will never question his grocery decisions again.

          1. Rebecca in Dallas*

            I think that is the only situation where powdered creamer would be acceptable.

            1. Kjtrue*

              Not true. Powered creamer is also acceptable when backpacking, as powered milk is not tasty. Powered creamer makes everything richer when you have been hiking all day with 40lbs of gear on your back.

  12. Jen*

    Our department has a Keurig and we all pitch in to supply the K-Cups and supplies. Other companies have a Keurig too, but instead of buying their own supplies, they sneak over to our area early in the morning and steal our stuff!

    1. MLB*

      It always amazes me why people feel so entitled to steal from others at work. At my last job we had a department Keurig, but I always kept my K cups, sweetener and creamer at my desk. I didn’t mind if someone used some, but ask first. I also had a mini fridge because I was tired of people stealing my lunch from the kitchen fridge.

    2. mediumofballpoint*

      That’s one of the few perks of being a decaf drinker: even a hard up thief doesn’t want my fake coffee!

      1. SarahKay*

        I genuinely like instant coffee. My huge jar of Kenco instant (basic, not millicano or anything like that) is likewise entirely safe from coffee scroungers.

        1. Nescafe!!*

          I do too. I also like really good hot brewed coffee, and a nice strong espresso – I’m not a person who knows nothing about coffee. But I love the taste of instant dark roast nescafe, mixed with just a tiny amt of water, a pinch of salt, a sugar, then shaken with ice and milk. I discovered this when I got a $4 greek iced coffee frappe drink at a little bakery near my house and I watched them make it with a jar of nescafe and whole milk and an industrial milkshake-shaker machine and was like “I CAN DO THIS AT HOME!”

          1. SarahKay*

            Hmm, that sounds tempting. I don’t like milk in my coffee, but a milk drink flavoured with coffee and salt and sugar could be rather good.

            1. Nescafé!!*

              It’s very strong but also really milky. You use the amt. of coffee grounds you’d use for a huge cup, but just a little bit of hot water so it’s extremely concentrated. Then add the salt and sweetener, and pour over ice and milk, then shake! I make mine in a cocktail shaker then pour into a to-go tumbler. :)

    3. Not a Morning Person*

      I used to work at a place where our department had one of the Keurig machines that was attached and water was piped in directly and we also had a hot cocoa one, a separate machine. It required a special hot chocolate pack that would make like a week’s worth of hot chocolate. The packs were big and only fit into the special hot chocolate Keurig. We were the only department that had the hot chocolate machine and for whatever reason, the hot chocolate packs got stolen ALL the time. We’d get a new order and before the next morning they would all be gone. The admin had to lock them in his desk to keep them from disappearing. It was ridiculous.

  13. Ihmmy*

    My favourite was how our boss behaved about coffee at Old Toxic Job. She would continuously ask us to make coffee for her in the afternoon but would only drink one cup, and no one else did (we were a team of 4). She asked the new guy to make coffee one time despite him saying quite regularly that he never drank coffee, but no one else was in the office and she didn’t know how to operate the coffee machine.. despite regularly drinking it. He figured it out through googling it but suspected it was the worst coffee our boss had ever consumed.

    We got a Keurig shortly after that because we didn’t want to fuss with her coffee needs anymore

    1. Cacwgrl*

      I once was in that position, prior to my coffee drinking days. We had three prior military managers who loved dark, thick nasty coffee. Typically, someone in the office would come in before them and make the coffee and whoever those people were, would cater to them so everyone suffered through their coffee standards. One day, we had a bunch of people out and I filled in at reception until one of the interns came in. The worse of the three managers came in subtly complaining about the coffee not being made because usual suspects were out. I simply confirm those people aren’t there so they obviously didn’t make it. He continued to make a fuss until the head of the company, one of said three, quietly asked me to make it. He knew how I’d take that and was fine with what he knew would happen and at that moment chose to walk over to Starbucks for his coffee, which was like a block away. I honestly didn’t know how to make coffee, and still don’t if were being real as I am a Kcup girl, so I filled the pot up with tap water and put way less than what I knew the @$$hole liked and set it to brew. When he complained, with the big boss in ear shot, I stated again I don’t know how to make coffee and he should redo it himself if he can’t live with it because that will never be part of my job in the office. Knowing he couldn’t take it too far with HR, my boss, and seeing the big boss turning away to walk up the hall before he got caught laughing, caused little man to literally spin on his foot and STOMP the other direction back to his office. It’s truly a highlight of my time working my way up the chain of HR…

    2. PersephoneUnderground*

      Baha- she would have regretted asking me to do that (until recently I didn’t have a coffee maker at home and was a 90% tea drinker). I used to always pour the water in the basket if I had a random need to use a coffee maker (like trying to make hot water in one in a hotel) since that *made sense* (I assumed it wouldn’t go through until you pressed the on switch, I was wrong!) and make a huge mess since of course it would immediately pour through cold. It still seems counter-intuitive to me to pour water into what looks like the guts of the coffee machine, but now I know. I would always forget what my mistake had been by the time I needed to try again, and then make the same mistake. Ooops…

  14. Kyrielle*

    I kind of wish we’d had a water club with water bottles at $PreviousOffice. Instead we had a company-supplied water dispenser that used tap water with a filter.

    It had a problem after a while where the water came out really slowly…which is when we learned that no one had been in charge of changing the filters, or even really aware that this was a thing. It had been _years_ with a single filter.

    I wish I’d just been going to the sink and getting tap water directly. *shudder*

    1. Rosemary7391*

      I’m kinda baffled by this water club concept. I mean, isn’t that what taps are for? I get the need for a filtered machine if you’re somewhere where tap water comes with a healthy helping of chalk, but how that becomes a club I do not know…

      1. Woman in Finance*

        It’s also nice to be able to get water that’s colder than tap.

        How it becomes a club is cheapskate offices (or government ones) that can’t/won’t pay for it…

          1. pandop*

            Also, H&S legislation in England and Wales requires that your employer provide drinking water. I am not certain if this covers Scotland, but if it doesn’t I am sure you have something similar.

            We have water coolers in our building, as not all the tap water is mains, some of it is tanked (technically non-potable), and those taps that are mains are clearly labelled as drinking water.

          2. Media Monkey*

            also tap water in scotland is delicious! my brother still lives there (i live near london now) and they buy bottled water and i am always like NNNOOOOOOOOO!

      2. Kyrielle*

        If you’re someplace the water is gross (it isn’t here, but besides chalk, I’ve lived places where the metallic taste is overwhelming) and you’re working for an entity that can’t (government) or won’t provide water at their own expense, I gather.

        I really, really wish I’d just drunk the tap water at that last job. I mean, the water dispenser could dispense water hot or chilled, so it was good for tea and a nicer temperature than the tap water, but having to microwave my tea water would’ve been better than learning I’d been drinking water that had been ‘filtered’ through years of detritus.

        And that’s STILL better than Boo Bradley’s Keurig story just below. Ew.

      3. CAA*

        Water clubs usually form at places like government offices where employees prefer chilled and/or filtered water and the employer can’t pay for a water cooler because they aren’t allowed to spend taxpayer money on a luxury.

      4. Guacamole Bob*

        I’m in a water club at my office, where we all chip in for a water cooler with water from a delivery service. It’s government, so water coolers are not provided. The water in our building tastes a little off, can be cloudy and suspicious, and the water fountain nearest me seems to be used as an ineffective garbage disposal far too frequently. Plus the water from the cooler comes out actually cold, unlike the water fountains, or hot enough to make oatmeal or tea without a microwave. When I was in a different department with no water club it wasn’t that big a deal (I bought an electric kettle for my desk), but I would only drink the tap water as tea because of the off taste, so the cooler is a nice convenience. The water cooler is also much closer to my desk than the bathrooms and water fountains.

        I feel a bit bad about the environmental impact – it’s better than buying disposable bottles, at least. If my organization had better water available from the tap and clean, cold water fountains I’d skip the water club.

        1. caligirl*

          Gov’t location too – our place is OLD and the pipes are lead (!) I try not to think about it when washing hands.

      5. PuffleK*

        In my old unit, we had a water club, and it was fantastic. We would all pay a nominal monthly fee for a water cooler + jug delivery, so we had access to clean, filtered water with hot and cold tap options. The city I live in is notorious for having not super clean tap water, so drinking filtered water is kind of a must (my friend has actually been experiencing medical issues she believes may be related to the tap water in her office). The club aspect is necessary because no one person could afford the water cooler on their own. In my new unit, everyone just has their own filter pitchers, kettles, etc, and it’s just more of a PITA. Also, since I can’t keep my filter pitcher in the fridge due to space issues, so my water is never very cold. Not having the water cooler isn’t a super big deal, and I manage just fine, but having it sure was nice!

        1. HeyThere*

          I have a hydroflask I bring from home. It keeps water cold for something like 24 hours, and it has changed my life.

      6. Det. Charles Boyle*

        The water where I work is suspect. It comes out of the tap pretty cloudy and I wouldn’t want to drink it. So that’s why I joined the water club.

      7. Cacwgrl*

        I work in one of the gov mentioned spaces. While our water “technically” meeting environmental standards, even our environmental guys won’t drink it. But because it’s not technically unsafe, the gov’t cannot use tax payer dollars for water. We choose to not want to dehydrate or bring gallons upon gallons in for each person, so we pay something like $5/month for delivery. We’ve got hot and cold water on demand and we all love it.

      8. Cornflower Blue*

        In some countries, it’s not safe to drink the tap water.

        My home has a water dispenser and we get huge barrels of water delivered weekly so we can drink safely. If the week’s delivery doesn’t come for some reason (riots, floods, etc), then we have to boil water, wait for it to cool and then drink that. Of course, if the water and power have been cut off, then that’s not an option either and we all resort to buying small bottles of water.

        Officer has the exact same set up and same water supplier.

    2. sssssssssssssssss*

      Ohhhhhhhh……no, no, no. We had a filter and it got changed every six months or once per year (can’t quite remember). And if I recall correctly, it was provided by our coffee supplier!

    3. a*

      When we moved to a new building, we got a new refrigerator with a built-in water filter. But since I work for state government and our building engineer was a jerk, I knew that filter changes were unlikely. I just fill my water bottles at home and keep them in the refrigerator.

      I did have a passive aggressive war going with one of my coworkers, because I also kept a 12-pack of Mt. Dew in the fridge. He thought I was taking up too much room. It got pretty epic when we started leaving notes with calculations of square footage/cubic footage of space that should be allocated to each person. I have considered getting a mini-fridge, but haven’t had to do that yet.

      1. essEss*

        Unless you are drinking 12 in a day (2 days tops), that does seem excessive space to put into a communal fridge. unless you only have 2 or 3 employees using the whole fridge.

    4. CanadianDot*

      Even water dispensers with the jugs of filtered water need to be cleaned on a regular basis. In my first office job, one of my colleagues had her own personal water cooler, but she’d never had it serviced until it started running really slowly. The guy showed me what he was cleaning out of there, and it reminded me of tapioca pudding. I have a strong stomach, but even the memory of that makes me want to throw up.

  15. Boo Bradley*

    Not a war, but at my husband’s last job, people weren’t cleaning the Keurig. Finally one day, someone decided to take the thing apart and clean all of it because it was looking nasty. In the chamber between where you put the K-cup in and where the liquid comes out, they found a dead cockroach.

    All their coffee had been filtered through a cockroach.

    I told my husband they were getting La Cucaracha blend.

    4. sometimeswhy*

      I’m not sure I realized I had muscles in my face that would make it do the things it’s doing now. yeeeeeeeeaaaauuuuuuuuuuugh.

    5. SoSo*

      I friend of mine saw this happen with one of those coffee-brewing vending machines you see at hospitals and other large waiting areas. To this day when I see one I get a little queasy.

      1. Teapot Tester*

        This is apparently very common in those coffee machines in hospitals and other waiting areas. I refuse to use them no matter how bad I want a cup of coffee.

      2. MsSolo*

        Way back when, when I was at school, the GCSE students were bestowed the privilege of one of those big coffee vending machines, which we all used for hot chocolate because 16 year olds aren’t actually that into coffee, especially cheap and nasty coffee. One day we thought it had had an upgrade, because the hot chocolate had these little dark brown lumps in – like, it came with chocolate sprinkles! Only it didn’t come with chocolate sprinkles. It came with macerated ants. Lots of little pieces of ant, because the thing that broke up the lumpy chocolate powder had torn their bodies to pieces.

    10. TheCupcakeCounter*

      I have a Keurig at home I clean regularly so I am not squicked out right now. I am, however, laughing so hard at La Cucaracha blend that a coworker came over to read this and she is very green at the moment. Apparently she did not realize that she should be cleaning her 2 year old Keurig.

    12. Hank*

      I had a Bunn Machine in my office – Same thing. Cleaned the thing after a few years and found the huge cockroach body – it was almost translucent by then.

      3. Like The City*

        We have that same type at our office…given how well the rest of the building gets “cleaned” sometimes, I’m now giving some serious side-eye to the coffee maker. Good thing I make mine at home!

    13. AnonEMoose*

      When I was in college, the campus had those machines where you punched in what you wanted, it dispensed a cup, and then the drink would get brewed and dispensed into the cup. One day, someone got a bonus cockroach with their hot chocolate.

      To the college’s credit, they did clean the machine and investigate the issue, and it turned out that the roach had gotten into the hot chocolate powder at the originating company (which was, I think) in Texas. It was awhile before I used one of those machines again. But when it’s 3 am, it’s the middle of winter, and you’re absolutely FREEZING because you’ve been outside for several hours…the lure of a hot drink is powerful.

      1. The New Wanderer*

        Same, except the lucky winner of the cockroach cup only had some of the parts. As the evening office monitor, I taped a sign on the machine that it was out of order, not sure who got it fixed after that.

        1. MsSolo*

          Same, but with ants, and they’d got into the machine because it was next to an exterior door. Lots of pieces of ant in the hot chocolate powder that were initially mistaken for chocolate sprinkles…

    15. paul*

      Wait a second: I haven’t looked into this because I can’t stand coffee. But we have office keuric thingy that I *know* I’ve never seen someone clean. They’re supposed to get cleaned?

      1. Boo Bradley*

        I feel like any vessel/machine you’re getting consumables out of ought to be cleaned on the regular….

      2. Adlib*

        Yep, and descaled! Gook from the local water can clog things up so you have to let it soak with vinegar. I bet no one ever does that unless the light comes on or they’ve read the manual.

        1. PSB*

          My wife only uses distilled water in our Keurig at home for that very reason. It works but it sure seems like a lot of trouble and a (fairly small) unnecessary expense to me.

    17. Tableau Wizard*

      My sister had this happen to her home Keurig and made quite the stink about it to the company – that it wouldn’t be air tight enough to not let in a cockroach or something…. *Eyeroll* I just think she didn’t know to clean it and seriously grossed herself out when she discovered it.

    21. Liz in a Library*

      I have a friend who saw one climbing out of her home keurig one morning. The wet/dark/coffee smell are apparently very attractive to roaches. Clean your machines regularly!

    22. Elizabeth H.*

      Cockroaches in Keurig machines are really common! They crawl in there because of the warmth and humidity. I tell EVERYONE this when the opportunity comes up. I delight in sharing the knowledge.

      I should probably clean the machine myself sometime, because I am not afraid of or grossed out by or averse to cockroaches. Once one came into my yoga studio and someone found it on her bolster in the middle of class. (I agree that it’s somewhat horrifying to think that the cockroach remained on the bolster throughout the first half of class, and was only found when the bolster was flipped over into a different position or something.) It caused a brief commotion, the teacher quickly saw what was going on and then asked us if there was anyone OK with cockroaches who could deal with it, and I was like, I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT MY WHOLE LIFE. I said “I am!”, seized the bolster, calmly carried it out of the room and into the bathroom, opened the window, picked up the cockroach, and put it out the window onto the roof. I then wiped off the bolster with a paper towel and replaced it in the rack.
      I know the cockroach surely just came in again somewhere, but I didn’t want to kill it – not very karmically sound, no?

      1. Molly*

        I fully approve of your method! I wouldn’t have it in my heart to kill it, either. And I can’t stand cockroaches.

      2. MsAlex*

        I catch and release everything I find in the house, even stink bugs (and we are having lots of problems with stink bugs right now but I just can’t kill things). So you’re not alone. :-)

    23. EddieSherbert*

      Not an “at work” story but when I was leaving for work I college… when I lived in a really badly maintained old house… with mice… I went to pour myself some leftover coffee only to discover a mouse had drowned in my coffee pot overnight. *shudder shudder*
      Thank goodness I didn’t actually drink it. I probably would have cried (even without drinking it, I woke up my roommate who’s room was right off of the kitchen with my freak out!). *shudder*

      1. Typhon Worker Bee*

        Horrible flashback to the time we had mice in the basement of our old house (despite four cats living there at the time – seriously, you have ONE JOB, cats) and I ran the dryer without checking… There was this horrible smell when I came back down to get my clothes, and a dead mouse sitting on top of one of my towels. I feel so, so bad about that – not exactly a humane extermination method :(

      2. Mad Baggins*

        I had a major ant problem at home (turns out they were coming in through a hole in my bedroom wall) and would regularly spot ants marching across my tables, the floor, even my pillow…I started to get nightmares about ants.

        But the absolute worst thing was when I made a pot of coffee with my glasses off, and as soon as I turned it on, thousands of ants spilled out of the coffee maker in all directions like shaking an Etch a Sketch.

        I had successfully blocked out this trauma until you reminded me, so, thank you for that…

    24. Can't Sit Still*

      I’m very glad that I’ve personally seen housekeeping cleaning our coffee makers and coffee machines on a regular basis, or I might never drink coffee at work again.

    26. bweaver*

      I know I can’t be the only one who dropped everything and cleaned the machine after reading this.

    27. zora*

      When my mom taught in an elementary school the teachers went in together on a Keurig machine. And one day when my mom came in early and went to open the top to put in a new cup, a whole bunch of cockroaches came pouring out and ran down the drain of the sink right next to it. So horrifying.

      For a while they just started cleaning it with a bleach solution every morning, but when they thought about all the layers in between where there cleaning wasn’t getting to, they were too grossed out and finally just gave up and threw it out.

    28. Ray Gillette*

      We had an ant problem and ran a cup through that came out filled with drowned ants.

      So I went to Starbucks that day.

    29. Dove*

      I’m making a note for myself to google how to clean out my Keurig tomorrow. (Because it came with instructions on how, sure, but that doesn’t mean I still know where those are. And I suspect “just run hot water through it until coffee grounds stop coming out” isn’t sufficient.)

      1. Political staffer*

        Fill the reservoir with vinegar and just run it through the machine.
        (I put food dye in the vinegar so I know when it is complete as vinegar and coffee is a very nasty combination).

    30. Jay*

      This is actually pretty common. Roaches are really attracted to coffee. I won’t drink coffee from any machine that i don’t know for a fact is cleaned daily. Typically I just make instant at work, or I make my own in a French press at home. Commercial coffee shops that are regularly inspected by the health department should be ok; if the health department is halfway decent where you live they will shut a place down if it has a cockroach infestation or if it’s not cleaning the machines daily. But most workplaces have zero standards for cleaning the coffee machine.

  16. Rita*

    My old (open plan) office put the water cooler next to my desk – I could touch it if I stretched my arm. It was one of those that also heats up water, so it made this grinding, humming, headache inducing noise ALL DAY. I requested that it be taken back to where it was (a few feet away, behind a closed door) but was told that everybody was too lazy to “walk that far and open a door”. After a week of it, I picked the thing up, put it back, and told my boss that she could deal with the fallout herself.

    One month later, I gave my notice. They moved the thing back to my desk the day I left, and clapped.

    2. Q*

      At my new job I sit about 15 feet away from the water cooler. I thought all the bubbling from when people got cold water would bother me but I barely notice it. What I do notice is that grinding, humming, headache inducing noise when the hot water reserve is refreshing itself. Luckily its not all day though!

    3. WonderingHowIGotHere*

      My desk in our open plan office is next to the water cooler. It’s plumbed directly into the mains water supply and electricity, so my moving it isn’t an option. There’s one of these at ONE END of each floor of the office, so there’s a lot of traffic by my desk – I don’t always know who’s coming to me for a question, or getting a drink, so I’m pretty much always distracted. I do, however, have EXCELLENT bladder control – listening to that much running water all day, I pretty much have to, but at least I’m never thirsty.

  17. Cambridge Comma*

    If you don’t want to completely exclude the British readers, you will need to include tea-related conflict, such as the coworker who got out of the tea rota by claiming not to drink hot drinks, and was later caught red-handed.

    1. KimberlyR*

      Oh, definitely include tea wars as well! All beverages and the conflicts that arise should be included.

      1. President Porpoise*

        I heard about a bunch of guys who were so mad about the increase in the amount that they would have to pay for their tea that they dumped it all in the harbor and started a new country.

      2. Susan Sto Helit*

        You can tell who’s “in” at my office clique, and who isn’t, by who gets invited to go on the twice-daily tea pilgrimage to fill their mugs with hot water (we have hot water on the floor, but apparently it’s better if you go somewhere else).

    3. Kathleen_A*

      I agree, but in the U.S., we tea drinkers tend to be a self-effacing lot. We kind of have to be, though perhaps that’s changing. But currently, people around here get all het up about the kind of beans used or whatever, whereas I am reasonably content if I can find a tea bag for regular tea in addition to the mango-raspberry-green tea-antioxidant blend things that so many “tea” drinkers around here usually favor. I mostly just bring in my own tea from home, though.

      1. Code Monkey, the SQL*

        For a while, I was one of two tea drinkers in our office, and got basically the full ear of the secretary who did the ordering.

        Then came the Great Coffee Blend Debate, (emails for weeks! Polls! Complaints! Two carafes or one! The Coffee Making Video!) and everyone who was under-invested in the outcome switched to tea. The tea got very picked over, and the secretary started buying much cheaper stuff. Then, one of the new hires started bringing and making loose tea, and I suddenly developed a taste for it too. Own-brewed jasmine creme brulee beats out Bigelow every time.

        1. Kathleen_A*

          I am very much with you with the loose-leaf own-brewed part, although I prefer my tea a bit less fanciful. OK, a lot less fanciful – Earl Grey, Irish breakfast, etc. I recently got a couple of ounces of a new semi-fancy one (it has rose and cornflower petals in it), and it is pretty, and it’s not bad, but you can’t beat Earl Grey.

          And anyway, to drag myself back on topic, at least tea drinking isolates me from the coffee wars!

        2. Kathleen_A*

          Although I am not with you on fancying up tea with jasmine, creme and brulee flavors – I am a do-it-plain-but-do-it-*right* kind of gal, so I drink almost entirely Earl Grey or English breakfast, brewed loose-leaf in a pot, as God intended – we are as one on the own-brewed part.

        3. Beancounter in Texas*

          I visited a cafe a couple of times where mint was super cheap. They’d take a bundle a mint (on the stalk), the size of a bouquet that would fill your whole fist, stuff it into the kettle, and cut off the stems. They’d put a tea bag in and brew that in the kettle. It was like drinking liquid spearmint – no sugar needed. Delicious! Mint is too expensive here in the US to do that.

          1. Kathleen_A*

            It’s really easy to grow, though. So I can definitely do that during the growing season.

    4. Fan*

      I have two English co-workers and one Welsh co-worker and today at lunch they got into the most AMAZING row about tea that I didn’t understand a single word of.

      (Apparently people put milk in the teapot…or something?)

        1. Fan*

          Oh, no, I am well acquainted with the milk first or tea first debate. Timeless, much like Jaffa cakes. :-) This was something entirely different. Apparently there are people who put milk directly into the teapot, and even though none of the three co-workers do this thing, they still managed to have a fight about it.

          1. WonderingHowIGotHere*

            No, no, no, that’s all kinds of wrong!

            (although I love the fact that three people can argue the same side and still disagree!)

          2. Justme, The OG*

            One of my exes would do this. Or make tea entirely in milk. I somewhat understand this if you are having a tea latte, but not really.

            2. nym*

              Making tea in milk is acceptable if it is chai.

              I’m a bring-tea-from-home person; bonus: no office coffee wars. I even bring my hot water from home because the electric kettle at the office takes ~5-10 min to heat (it’s slow) and I am routinely running from meeting to meeting with only two min to stop in the restroom and also refill my teacup.

              I have the most amazing on-the-go steeper/strainer. I have never seen anything quite like it in America. Put the tea leaves in, pour the hot water in, let steep. Then there’s a screen that snaps tightly into the mouth of the steeper, and you pour the tea out into another mug, and all the leaves are left behind the screen for another round. Bought it off a roadside hawker in nowhere, Africa; made in China. I bring it to work every morning with fresh leaves in it, and my quart size thermos of hot water, and I’m set all day. Plus it makes it easy to carry my used leaves back home for the compost bin!

          3. Cousin Itt*

            I once put milk in the kettle and boiled it because I thought that was how you made hot chocolate… it did not go well.

        2. MilkOnTheSide*

          When I was living in the UK I used to get a pot of tea at one cafe that didn’t always have little milk jugs available, so if you wanted milk you either had to have a very milky first cup, keep going up to the register, or add it to the teapot…I always went with putting it in the teapot, but I hated it so much.

    6. NoMoreMrFixit*

      I had a nice selection of tea stored in my desk at one job. Too nice actually, as I started getting pestered by people begging for a teabag. Most of them would never repay the favour and the few who did replace a bag handed over the cheapest junk they could find at the grocery store.

      My revenge was to quietly take all the bags home one Friday and come back the following Monday with tins of loose tea. When the moochers came up to filch a teabag I showed them the tins and casually mentioned my strainer was locked away and not loaned out even under threat of death. Everyone was too cheap to buy a strainer of their own so I finally got left alone to enjoy my much better mugs of tea!

      1. Countess Boochie Flagrante*

        My grandboss at OldJob did this to me! He was the kind of person who really thought he was being cute and palling around, but given that I was living on a shoestring budget with two roommates, I had such profound resentment of him hitting me up for tea bags. I never actually spoke up to quibble because I was afraid of gaining even more of a “Boochie hates everyone” reputation than I already had, but boy did it piss me off.

    7. mediumofballpoint*

      I’ve always wondered why making tea for your colleagues became a tradition. It seems so much simpler for everyone to make their own so they get their modifications right. Is it a teambuilding thing? A politeness thing? A timing thing? I’m so curious about this.

      1. Finance PA*

        Brit here – it’s a mix. Mostly it means each person is only making tea once a day rather than 4 or 5 times, especially since our office culture leans more towards being stuck at your desk – easier for each person to escape just once. Usually it’s just people who sit together who buddy up, so you only need to remember how those few people like it. If someone gets it wrong they will be told how to do it differently in future and the person who made it pays attention because tea is Serious Business, so we aren’t really suffering tea that we don’t like. It does give some small sense of bonding, it’s a slight break in the day whereby we’re actually happy to be talking to someone because the result will be tea.

        It’s not that hard to get someone’s tea right, there’s only so many ways to have it and most people when asked say they want ‘builder’s tea’ so anything else sticks out. I do remember a coworker who would only drink out of the white cups ‘because it tastes better than from the blue cups’. That was over 10 years ago and I’m still wondering how that works. But we all complied!

        1. Marillenbaum*

          That’s amazing! I spent this last summer working in Barbados, and the office had communal tea, but it was this horrid cheap stuff that had clearly been bought by someone who didn’t know anything about tea–if your cuppa got cold, it would turn grey. Next day, I brought in my spare box of PG Tipps from home. I also kept a packet of rich tea biscuits in my desk, for snack-related emergencies (which were surprisingly many, since my coworkers had kids and would sometimes need to pick them up from summer camp and have them sit in their cubes for the last hour of work).

        2. mediumofballpoint*

          Ah, okay! If you’re having tea that often, it makes more sense. I was imagining once, maybe twice during a day. Thanks for the info!

        3. smoke tree*

          Everything that is in me calls out to the tea-obsessed office cultures of my ancestral home

        4. swingingaxewolfie*

          Always one person in the round that makes the most *horrendous* tea though (and not in an obvious “oh I take more milk than this” way). I hate having to decline tea when I’m desperate for one, but if Horrendous Tea Maker comes by you can bet I’m saying no and waiting at least 30 minutes before offering another round. Been one in every office I’ve worked in. Maybe I’m Serious Business tea drinker though.

          That said, I do love the culture behind it for the most part – really good for a quick social break in a world where we are pretty much chained to our desks as you rightly point out.

    8. smoke tree*

      I’m not British (although I am Canadian, so British-lite) but I am very particular about how I make my tea and the shape of the cup it goes in. I have engaged in a number of passive-aggressive battles with other tea-drinking coworkers for the best tea cups. The key strategy is to never stop drinking tea once you obtain the cup, so it never leaves your desk.

    9. Sam Adams*

      One time, our old boss had a penchant for getting into a lot of petty arguments with some nearby companies and it ended up running the whole company into debt. In order to pay it off, he decided to start deducting money out of our paychecks for it without consulting us. Only our branch.

      So, when the delivery guy showed up with the tea, we not only refused it, but destroyed the whole shipment.

      This made the boss completely mad so he decided to withhold our pay entirely. Well, the rest of the company got mad about it, so the boss decided to cut off everyone’s pay and then send new management to all of the offices to make sure everyone worked. It was kind of disturbing because all of us had been with the company since the beginning but, ultimately, the individual branch managers decided to form our own separate company.

      Old boss didn’t like that so he sent his own employees to take over our branches and try to force us to work for him. We had to fight for quite a while but we finally got our company to ourselves.

        1. Sam Adams*

          (In the interests of not confusing people, it’s just a joke – I described the Boston Tea Party)

      2. MissCarrion*

        As someone who is not from the US and somewhere that unless you specifically choose American history at university you don’t learn it, you’re the first person to explain the Boston Tea Party to me in a way that I could actually understand.
        All those tea in the harbour jokes now finally make sense to me!

      3. Cornflower Blue*

        As a non-USian, I took this 100% seriously and was agog wondering how the hell you FORCE people to work for no pay. So glad it was just a joke! XD

    10. KimberlyInOhio*

      US worker in financial services. Tea person.
      My company used to provide regular and decaf coffee for the coffee people and regular and decaf tea bags for the tea people. A few years back, they stopped providing tea bags for the tea people, so all that’s left is ancient decaf tea bags in PAPER WRAPPERS. Granted, the tea bags were pretty terrible, and I’ve always brought my own tea anyway, but still. Shocking disregard for the tea-drinking minority, who need caffeine as much as the coffee people!

  18. Elizabeth*

    As a cost-savings measure, my employer announced that the previously-free coffee in the cafeteria would now cost about $0.50/cup. Around 30 days later, they were surprised at not only how little coffee had been sold, but also how much the electric bill had gone up. Almost every office in the facility suddenly had sprouted a single-cup coffeemaker, all of which stay plugged in all the time.

    4. CAA*

      Hah, that’s great! At DH’s office, they would have confiscated all the coffee makers though. It was a LEED certified building and they had rules that you couldn’t plug in anything that wasn’t company issued so the security guys would go around nightly and take any cell phone chargers, electric fans, etc, that they found. It turns out that there’s an amazing number of gadgets that can run off your computer’s USB ports though.

  19. KimberlyR*

    Coffee cliques-
    I worked at hospital in an ICU on the night shift (nurses on night shift are SERIOUS about coffee!) There were different mini-nurses stations and nutrition rooms scattered around, so there were multiple coffee pots. This one nurse always brought her own coffee grounds and brew in her coffee station. She would only allow you to have some if you were a favorite. Otherwise, you had to drink the worst coffee ever! I would mix hot chocolate mix in mine just to make it drinkable. Obviously, I became a favorite of hers out of self-preservation.

    1. Nurse Ratched*

      Also a night shift ICU nurse here! God help the person who brews a too-weak pot of coffee! Our motto is “if it won’t put you in to SVT, you didn’t do it right.” We staff a circulating nurse who doesn’t have a patient assignment but assists all the other nurses on the unit, and one of the official duties of that role is to make sure there’s always a good pot of coffee on.

    2. Sigrid*

      Oh my god, the worst coffee I have ever had, bar none, was the coffee from the less-often-used break room when I was on the labor&delivery night shift. THE WORST. Its taste still haunts me.

    3. Marlene*

      Our daughter recently had to spend the night in the ER during a big snowstorm. We had to wait for a radiologist to make it in to run tests. The coffee vending machines didn’t take cards (we had no cash), the cafeteria was closed, and we weren’t venturing out in a snowstorm and leaving our daughter alone anyway. Finally at about 4 am, I got up the nerve to ask a nurse if I could use their coffee station to make a cup of coffee for myself and my husband. She made it and brought it to us with cream and sugar. THE BEST COFFEE I EVER HAD!!! She was an angel.

  20. sometimeswhy*

    We share our space with other organizations and there used to be one of those touch-screen made-to-order coffee/espresso things on each floor. Then one of the lease holders signed a non-compete contract with another company (who served coffee and espresso drinks) that was moving in and we were going to have to get rid of them. Except… we weren’t a party to the non-compete so we bought all the fancy machines and moved them out of public areas and into ours.

    At which point people from all the other companies started casually walking into our kitchenettes (we share other things like meeting rooms so there aren’t restricted access issues) and using the machines. There were polite reminders. There were pointed, “OH ARE YOU NEW TO [OUR COMPANY] WHICH SECTION DO YOU WORK FOR?” barbs. There were postits. There were signs. Signs got torn down. There were new signs. Someone in [other company] took a picture of one of them and sent it to their entire distribution list inviting them to come drink our coffee. There were executives talking to executives about how to stem the invasion. There was talk of PUTTING BADGE READERS ON THE MACHINES. It was bananacrackers.

    And it’s not over yet. We have no resolution. I think most of them have just gotten bored but we still see people furtively ducking into the kitchenettes periodically.

      1. sometimeswhy*

        You can set them up to vend for a fee (though we don’t have the money-accepting attachment) so I’d guess there’s a way to attach something that does RFID access then tie it to our badges. I dunno. It’s so much.

        Best? Everyone still has free, unlimited, brandname coffee to brew, creamers, an assortment of teas. It’s ONLY the fancy coffee/sugarbomb espresso drink machine that’s changed.

      2. Peggy*

        Our printers work that way. You can initiate the printing from your computer, but it won’t actually come out of the printer until you swipe your badge on it and it logs you into the printer.

        1. MissCarrion*

          Our printers do that too, and I can’t tell you how long it takes to explain to every new employee (especially the consultants) that they can stand next to the printer as long as they want, if they don’t swipe it won’t work!

  21. Coconutty*

    At my internship last year, somebody used the Keurig and threw away their K-cup after, but a piece of the machine came out with the cup and ended up in the trash! The next person didn’t realize the part was missing, tried to brew their coffee, and the coffee basically squirted all over the counter and floor. It took maybe 6 people (5 too many in my opinion) to figure out that there was a piece missing, and one person volunteered to dig the part — with the K-cup still stuck inside — out of the trash. This was after lunch too, so the trash was gross and full of food scraps. The whole ordeal lasted about 10 minutes but we will always be amazed at how somebody threw away their K-cup without realizing that there was a whole part of the machine attached to it!

    1. Coconutty*

      In retrospect, this isn’t a bitterly fought war, but it was definitely more drama than necessary for a Keurig.

      1. Irene Adler*

        But it was a tough fight for the person who dug through the trash to score the Keurig part. Yuck!

    2. Ihmmy*

      My boss at Previous Toxic Job also did this, but we didn’t realize it until our garbage had already been taken out…
      that place was an experience

    3. Alli525*

      This reminds me of the time my (now-ex) boyfriend and I were on a road trip in his car. At one point we got out at a rest stop to toss out our fast food trash, and an hour later I looked down and realized that my cup had been so large that it’d suctioned itself to an apparently detachable part of the cupholder… so that detachable part was now in a rest area trash can more than 60 miles away. Whoops.

      1. Rebecca in Dallas*

        That has happened to me, too, except I’m still unsure of where that piece of the cupholder ended up. My cups never fit in that cupholder correctly again.

  22. all aboard the anon train*

    At a previous company that was awful in a lot of ways, we used to have little individual packets of Starbucks ground coffee (imagine a much smaller version of usual ground bag coffee). Certain blends were so popular people began stealing them. Management would lock their preferred blends up in their office, people would take full boxes back to their desks, and a lot of people would shove it in their bags to take home. So most days the only thing left on all four floors was boxes and boxes of decaf. The company eventually moved towards catering sized carafes to deal with the problem, but a few of those were stolen as well. I left before they moved to whatever new coffee scheme as well.

    Granted, this was a place where the lower tiers (myself included) were so poorly paid that people regularly stole toilet paper, paper towels, utensils, and the gallons of milk or large cartons of creamer that were put in the fridge or the bags of bagels and bread put in cafeteria. It was also the place I mentioned in a former story about free food where people would go berserk whenever it was free cookie day and stampede down the halls and grab platefuls of cookies instead of one or two. It was almost always management I saw hoarding the free food or coffee.

  23. sfigato*

    I worked at a place where the COO was kind of a jerk that a lot of the junior staff hated. Said place also had an espresso machine. When it died, the COO decided that it was too expensive (which was accurate – it was a fancy machine and it was serviced pretty regularly and was kind of a significant expense given that we also had a nice coffee machine and could just drink that), and people could just buy their espresso at a nearby cafe if they wanted it.
    This caused a near-mutiny. The junior staff, who were already desperately trying to get the COO fired, used this to declare war on him. It got ugly. In the end, we got a new espresso machine, and it became a pretty significant dent against the COO, who was demoted not long after.

    On a similar note, at another place I worked, the Operations Manager, who many of us disliked, would buy the cheapest, grossest coffee beans, so we started buying decent coffee and using that in the coffee maker. Again, it was a proxy battle between junior staff and the Operations Manager.

    Finally, at my current place of business, we have like five coffee makers because of coffee wars among our board. X only likes Starbucks beans, Y only likes Peets, Z only drinks decaf, so we’d have three pots going at meetings. We finally bought a pod coffee maker.

    People have strong opinions about their coffee.

    1. Ella*

      Office coffee is one of those things that doesn’t seem to buy office goodwill or morale…until you take it away. After that it seems like a very sound investment.

      1. JustaTech*

        My coworkers and I (who have been through so many rounds of layoffs, mergers and de-mergers it’s not even funny) have said in all seriousness that the day that coffee is no longer provided is the day we quit. Because a company that is so cheap it won’t provide grounds for us to make our own coffee is a company that is likely going to be cheap on other things too, like safety.

        1. CristinaMariaCalabrese (do the mambo like-a crazy)*

          OH MY GOD, THIS IS REAL? My grandfather complained about this until he died at age 92, but he was a very grumpy man, so I just assumed he was justifying yet another baseless grudge.

    2. As Close As Breakfast*

      I imagine there were other things going on, but I’m tickled at the thought of a COO being demoted because he refused the masses espresso!

      Also, Peets is my favorite coffee and I can’t stand Starbucks (decaf doesn’t even deserve consideration) so I’m totally with board member Y here!

  24. ExcelJedi*

    Not that bad, but turning into a problem. At my current job the first person in usually makes the coffee in the regular drip machine. Unfortunately, the early birds here are also the ones who don’t drink coffee themselves. A few people will drink the swill they brew up, particularly one exec who always expects a pot of coffee going in the kitchen and who apparently has no problem with burnt, overly acidic coffee.

    The rest of us have a quiet arms war going on, filling up the kitchen cabinets with every alternative. Someone brought in a Keurig. Someone else brought in a french press and electric kettle. There are stashes of personally labelled fancy coffee in every cupboard EXCEPT the one coffee belongs in, because none of us will drink the Folgers or Maxwell House the office tends to buy.

    No one says anything, because it’s clear that the company won’t pay more than the absolute minimum to caffeinate their workers, and we know they think we’re divas. But our small kitchen is getting kinda cramped as a result.

    1. Enough*

      I had one place where I was not allowed to make the coffee. It was always bad. In my defense I am not really a coffee drinker. I drink tea at home and only drink coffee at work or with breakfast at restaurants.

    2. Tardigrade*

      Why would anyone expect non-coffee drinkers to make coffee just because they got to the office first?

      1. LBK*

        Yeah, this makes no sense to me – it should be the first person in the office *who wants coffee*, not just the first person.

      2. all aboard the anon train*

        I was wondering the same thing. I stopped drinking coffee a few years back and ngl, I’d be annoyed if I had to make coffee even though I didn’t drink it just because I happened to be first into the office.

      3. EddieSherbert*

        That used to be the set up in m office – and it was more like the first couple coffee drinkers just made enough of a BIG DEAL of it to us non-coffee-drinkers when they got in, that one of the other non-coffee-drinks just started doing it. He wasn’t TOLD or REQUIRED, exactly.

        But he did a crap job of it, and after like a month one of the early coffee-drinkers asked him to stop making it ;) and makes it himself now (as it should be!).

      5. Fiennes*

        25 years ago, when I took my first admin job, the boss told me that among my duties would be making the coffee every morning. I replied honestly: “I don’t drink coffee, so I don’t know how it’s made or what it should taste like, but I’ll try.”

        After a long pause he said, “someone else will make the coffee.”

      6. Kit Kendrick*

        I used to do that when before I picked up a coffee habit of my own and was simply using the hot water spigot to make tea. I figured that it didn’t take long, and I could just walk away instead of waiting the five minutes. I’d also re-make coffee if it was morning and someone had left less than half a cup in the carafe, because that’s just wrong. (Honestly! If you finish the pot, either turn off the burner or start a new pot, don’t leave the dregs on a burner to dry out and scorch!)

        Mind, one of my first jobs included being responsible for making sure there was always coffee for guests, so I know perfectly well how to make coffee in an industrial machine so that it comes out the way the local office likes it. This office likes one and a half packets of pre-ground coffee (one is too weak, two is too strong). The previous one liked a pinch of cinnamon in the grounds as well, but you’d mark the carafe if you did that (and whoever started the practice provided the bottle of spice.)

        In retrospect, I probably should have let it be the coffee drinkers’ problem, but it’s a reflex like wiping up spills or fixing paper jams instead of leaving them for the next person.

      7. Cornflower Blue*

        Same, it seems like a weird mini-punishment. Oh, you arrived early? Here, take some time out of your day to make a drink you won’t enjoy for other people, instead of using that time to set up, destress and get ready.

  25. Katie the Fed*

    As has often been the case in my career working in a fairly male-dominated field, I was the only woman in an office. When I started I would make a pot of coffee in the morning and then have some. After a couple weeks I noticed nobody else would make the coffee – they would just wait until I came in to make it.

    So I started bringing my coffee from home because I didn’t want to be the office coffee maker. The first day they just waited…and waited…

    “So there’s no coffee.”
    “Yup”
    “So…..?”
    “Guess you have to make some then.”
    “You do it so well!”
    “I sure do – this cup is delicious!”

    It was all passive aggressive as hell. Nobody made coffee that day. The next day someone finally did it.

    3. Coconutty*

      This is amazing!! I’ve made a huge point about how I don’t drink or like coffee, mostly to avoid becoming the office coffee girl. If someone asks, I tell them (truthfully) that I’ve never made coffee before and don’t know how. It’s so much easier for the guys to just make the coffee themselves rather than attempting to teach me something I’ll never even know if I’m good at.

      1. MLB*

        I do drink coffee but I don’t think I could make a decent pot of coffee from a regular machine. I always have to look up the water to coffee ratio and it never tastes right. I like the single serve machines much better. We have a Ninja at home and it makes 5 different sizes, and there’s a “cheat sheet” on the scooper so it’s very easy.

      2. Temperance*

        It’s honestly not that hard, and no one really needs to be taught how to operate a coffee maker, but by the same token, you really just don’t want to become the office Coffee Girl. The only reason they would “teach” you is because they think it’s a woman’s job.

        1. Guacamole Bob*

          I had a job at a small nonprofit where it made sense for me to be the one to make coffee for committee meetings and things. I’m not a coffee drinker so someone did have to show me how, but it’s really not that hard and I was fine with doing it. But I kept telling the rest of the staff to tell me if the coffee was terrible, because I really didn’t know if I was brewing weak brown water or total sludge.

        2. chocolate lover*

          I did have to be shown how to operate a coffee maker. At a work thing, someone asked me to make coffee (early in the morning when very few people were around.) I said I will, but you’ll have to show me how to do it since I’ve never made or used a coffee machine.

          Come to think of it, I think they just ended up doing it themselves once they realized I didn’t know how to use it.

        3. Persephoneunderground*

          I needed to be shown! I made the mistake of pouring the water in the basket whenever I tried to use a coffee maker, making a huge mess. Yes, I made that mistake repeatedly. In my defense there were usually months or years in between attempts so I never remembered my mistake. And it just didn’t occur to me to pour the water into the guts of the machine where it turns out it is actually supposed to go.

      3. Jules the 3rd*

        Heck, I use this excuse to get out of making coffee for my *husband*, much less for the office.

        1. Code Monkey, the SQL*

          One of my less-proud moments was having a friend come to stay with us, and needing to text my spouse for help getting the coffee pot working. Five college degrees under one roof, only one person capable of procuring the caffeine.

          1. I Like Pie*

            When I was visiting my parents with the BF last year, my mom and I left early to pick up pies for our Thanksgiving meal the next day. BF and dad were staying in, and BF wanted some coffee. But wasn’t familiar with their machine, my mom was making it for us. (Thanks, mom!) So he and my dad apparently spent a fair amount of time looking up and jiggling handles until they were able to brew a pot together.

            They’re bonded forever now.

    13. sometimeswhy*

      YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

      I did a similar thing with cleaning out the coffee pots–those big commercial ones . For a while I was the only one who did it. Except I work on a slightly different shift and set of days than the rest of my floor so if I did it at the end of the day at the end of my workweek, I’d often come in to a cold, gross half full pot that had been sitting there for three days. Once it was completely full and still sitting under the water dispenser and had to’ve been there all weekend.

      When I started making my coffee at home, buying, or drinking tea and bringing it in those pots sat… and sat… and saaaaaaaaaaattttt. Until someone complained to building management. Now the janitorial staff has it in their contract to do it which they probably should’ve all along but PHEW that was a mess.

    18. Yams*

      Oh god, I have the opposite story. I worked in a department with all women (let me be clear, I was usually late so this totally inadvertent, I also had the highest workload in the department so I was usually pretty busy) and I realized that I had never made a pot of coffee and always depended on them. After that I made it a point to get there early at least once a week so I could make coffee for my co-workers.

    19. Gayle Davidson-Durst*

      “You do it so well!”
      “I sure do – this cup is delicious!”

      You win the internet today!

    22. Sam the Fed*

      Ugh! I too work in an almost-exclusively male field, I usually ignore the pointed stares when someone is discussing who should buy the cake for so and so’s birthday, but one time the sexism was really egregious. I was at a meeting with about 75+ (mostly military or ex-military) men, all of whom I had never met before. Only one other woman is in the room. I’m sitting close to the coffee table, getting ready for the meeting to begin. One of the bigwig military dudes taps me on the shoulder and states “there’s no more coffee…” and then trails off, looking helpless. I ended up staring at him for around 20 full seconds and then saying “I don’t know how to make coffee, but I’m sure you could google it?” He gave me death stares for the rest of the 3 day meeting.

    23. Cornflower Blue*

      NICE WORK. A minor victory for women everywhere.

      In a similar note – and I work in a mostly female office – I am the person who turns on the lights in the morning for my open plan office. I show up at around 8:10AM, there are about 9 people (out of 80) already there and working on my floor.

      None of the lights are on. Everyone’s just working in the dim light that comes from the windows.

      I go over, turn on the lights, everyone looks up and smiles approvingly at me or says thank you.

      I have no idea WHY everyone else is allergic to the light switches but hey, it’s an easy way to earn good will for very little effort.

      1. Project Manager*

        About half of us like to work in the dark at my office (IT) and usually the person that turns on the lights gets some groans lol.

  26. EvilQueenRegina*

    There was the Tea Fund Wars at my old place – Willow, who was responsible for the tea fund, had been hearing lots of people moaning and groaning about the quality of biscuits provided. Eventually she got so fed up of it that she secretly decided that the next person to complain about the biscuits would have to take on the responsibility of the tea fund.

    So the day came around, Anya moaned about the biscuits and Willow promptly stuck the tea money jar on her desk and told her to take over, and they argued in the office. Anya appealed to Buffy the manager who said that she agreed that Anya didn’t have time to take it on, but didn’t intervene any further than that.

    Eventually Xander agreed he would take it over to keep the peace, but it went on for a few weeks with no coffee.

    1. Khlovia*

      Points for switching away from the GoT name-set.

      I have already named all of my Someday Chickens: Buffy, a Buff Orpington; Willow, a Rhode Island Red; Xandra, a Black Star; Giley, a Coronation Sussex; Angel, a Gold-Laced Wyandotte; and Spike, a Leghorn.

    4. Airkewl Pwaroe*

      I am picturing this situation with the actual Buffy cast members and it is making my day.

  27. SoSo*

    Not quite a war, but at my last job (a small college) I provided my personal kuerig for the office since 1) we didn’t have a coffee maker, and 2) I didn’t drink enough on my own at home to ever get much use out of it. We also had really hard tap water that would leave limescale behind, so after weeks of asking people to only use bottled water I ended up putting a bright red note on the thing that said BOTTLED WATER ONLY in capital letters. Without fail, it ended up getting clogged due to the limescale because no one listened. I took it home to “clean” and never brought it back.

    2. Beancounter in Texas*

      People leave dishes in the sink for days. When I finally clean them, I claim them as my own. I’ve gotten a couple of nice travel mugs and a chef’s knife this way.

  28. A Person*

    Ooh. I was the “bad guy” once. I bought a coffee maker to keep at the office and let everyone use it. No one offered to share the cost even when the pot had to be replaced a couple times when people let it burn, and while some people took turns bringing coffee I ended up buying most of that too. I wasn’t even a manager there, just a person who wanted coffee.

    The day I left I took that coffee maker out the door with me and left the office coffee-less.

    1. LiveAndLetDie*

      I always want to hear how the office managed without it in stories like these. Do you know how they did?

      1. Ella*

        No one ever heard from that office again. It is assumed they are still at their desks, desiccated and coffee-less. When one person does move, it is the blank, traumatized stare of one who knows they are missing a vital piece of something, they just don’t know what.

        We do not speak of the coffee-less office.

    2. Alli525*

      My old office brought in bagels on Fridays. After WEEKS of hearing endless complaints about how they weren’t toasted, I (an exec asst who had nothing to do with said bagels other than personal enjoyment) went on Amazon and bought a $15 toaster.

      Then they started complaining that there was no bagel SLICER, and also that the toaster was too slow and we should have an industrial one instead. Ha. No. Ungrateful jerks who all made literally at least twice what I did.

      The toaster is still there as far as I know. I asked my fellow assistants to refer to it henceforth as the Alli525 Memorial Toaster.

    1. Where's the Le-Toose?*

      I love Kathy and Cathy! And the Head Crusher versus Face Pincher fight is the best ever!

  30. Emi.*

    Not a war, but at my first undergraduate research experience, I tried to make coffee in the department lounge and did not realize that the water was already piped in. I filled a pot with water and poured it in the top, and then flipped the switch. Only it didn’t flip, so I tried it again. And again.

    Well, it wasn’t a switch. It was just a button. FOUR POTS OF WATER came cascading out of this coffee machine, across the counter, and onto the floor. Someone else’s research advisor helped me clean it up.

    1. raktajino*

      I’ve done something similar, though not quite as catastrophic! As a student teacher, I filled the water reservoir on a coffee machine that was up so high I couldn’t quite see what I was doing. I either spilled or overflowed the back and had quite a mess. Bonus, it wasn’t like I could easily move the table to mop it all up and I still had a class to teach, so I doubt I got it all.

      To my former coworkers: I’m really sorry.

    2. H*

      That happened where I work too! And unfortunately a coworker I tended to refer to as Hot Curator X just happened to come in right as I was making a HUGE mess all over the kitchen.

      I wasn’t allowed to make coffee at my first job because I do like to drink “mud,” but to be fair, most of my coworkers considered Iced Capps from Tim Horton’s (for those of you not familiar with living on the Canadian border, they’re an even more sugary version of a Frappuccino) to be their “coffee” for he day.

      1. AvonLady Barksdale*

        I haven’t been allowed to make communal coffee for a very long time. My partner, who loves coffee and worked in a Counter Culture shop for a while, makes even stronger coffee than I do. When we have guests, I don’t let him make the coffee without providing warnings and extra water.

    3. H*

      I was just commenting the same thing above! Most of the people at my work now joke that I’m a coffee “snob” because I bring in my own (thick,dark) Bustelo, but really it’s mostly because I need the caffeine on my commute.

        1. H*

          I discovered it when it was $2.69 a can when I was in college a decade ago, but I guess it caught on, so now I’m sucking it up to shell out $11 for the “party container” at Target every other week. :*(

          1. AvonLady Barksdale*

            That’s still much cheaper than a pound of Counter Culture and Stumptown! Bustelo is delicious. Now, I have been known to say things like, “I love single origins from Ethiopia!” and people should feel free to roll their eyes at me. But Bustelo? That gets a, “this person knows that good coffee doesn’t have to cost too much.”

            1. H*

              It’s mostly teasing… my office mate’s wife manages the local chain of hip, fair-trade coffee shops in our city, and he’s always like, “Royal Cup is good enough for me!”

            2. Marillenbaum*

              This might be a dumb question, but can you make Bustelo with a French press? I had a friend from the DR who made me Bustelo once, and it was MAGICAL, but she had one of those fancy moka pots that went on the stovetop.

                2. marcellajoleen*

                  Is bustelo the right grind for a french press? I’d love to try that but be worried about making a mess.

    4. LBK*

      That’s just…not how coffee works, though. The flavor comes from what beans are used and how they’re roasted; it’s intended to be prepared a certain way. I guess you can try to force a mild roast to taste darker by making it this way, but you’re not really getting “actual coffee flavor,” you’re mostly getting bad coffee flavor. Try a darker roast if you want a richer taste.

      1. zora*

        With the industrial sized coffee makers and the packets of pre-ground coffee that some offices get delivered, this is literally the only way to get a real coffee flavor into a cup of coffee. Trust me, I have run many experiments on every conceivable variable, and this is really the only option. Unless you are able to get better coffee makers and better coffee delivered.

        1. Tavie*

          Yes, this. We have the “dark roast” flavor and that’s the only one that tastes like, you know, coffee. Everything else is sort of weakly, mildly coffee-flavored… doubling those up helps.

        2. LBK*

          Valid – I was thinking from a broader brewing perspective, not just with the limited resources available at the office.

          1. zora*

            With “real” coffee I totally agree with you, I’m the weirdo who likes the really dark roasts with tons of coffee oils, yummmmmm

      2. Buffay the Vampire Layer*

        For me it’s about density. If you don’t use enough grounds you get watery coffee. I want opaque coffee so I use more grounds than you’re supposed to.

    5. Samiratou*

      At my office we kind of have the opposite problem. We have a big machine that can make 3 different sized batches of coffee. Instructions are to use three bags and always brew a “size 3” pot of regular (whoever uses the last of the coffee in the pot).

      We occasionally get people who “don’t like it that strong” (hint, it’s really not strong) who will only put two bags in or something, pissing everyone else off.

      Dudes and dudettes: there’s a hot water spigot literally right next to the coffee spigot, and an ice/water machine on the other side of the sink: If you don’t like your coffee that “strong”, dilute it.

  32. Katie the Fed*

    OH! Another one:

    When I was pregnant the smell of coffee made me suddenly and violently nauseous. I used to love it. There was a coffee pot right next to my desk that several people used. I quietly asked the owner of the pot if he could move it elsewhere, and explained why (I hadn’t yet announced my pregnancy). He was happy to do so. Then people just kept complaining – LOUDLY – about it. “Why was it moved?” “Who asked for this?” I got so sick of it I finally just had to tell them all I was pregnant well before I was ready to announce. Sigh.

    2. Jubilance*

      OMG that was me – I normally love coffee and was all set to keep drinking it during my pregnancy, and then I couldn’t stand the smell of coffee until late in my 3rd trimester.

    3. Parenthetically*

      One of my close friends is like this — first four months of her pregnancies coffee smells like (vivid and disgusting descriptor of very bad things) to her, but she’s a coffee addict in real life. Thankfully her Extreme Coffee Snob husband has the equipment to make his pourover at work!

    4. einahpets*

      I had a similar problem with my pregnancies — it was the first sign that I was pregnant, a sudden aversion to coffee. Immediately upon coming home from the hospital I enjoyed that first cup of coffee SO MUCH.

  33. LiterallyPapyrus*

    Not really a war, but I’m still bitter about the time I went on a medical mission trip to Nicaragua with the church I also worked for at the time. Brought back a delicious bag of Nicaraguan coffee–rich, dark, delicious–and brewed a pot for the office. Nobody would touch it because it was too dark and they preferred Maxwell House. I ended up valiantly trying to drink the pot by myself so as not to waste it and then couldn’t sleep for what felt like the next week.

    5. Aiani*

      I’m not a big coffee drinker but I would have at least tried that coffee because I like to try things from places I haven’t been to. Your co-workers are no fun.

  34. VermiciousKnid*

    I work in a very small (8 people) office of tea drinkers. There are a handful of people who will drink coffee, but they’re more of a “I enjoy an occasional cup” group of people rather than a “I NEED IT TO SURVIVE.” Except one guy. He is at 5+ cup a day person.
    So until recently, our office manager would buy cases of K-cups so the coffee drinkers could brew up a cup if the fancy so struck them. Tea is not provided because we’re all particular and keep ourselves stocked. Well, we discovered that our coffee monster was going through the cases in a matter of days. When they would run out, he would very vocally complain about how he cannot function without his coffee, he needs it, he has to run out to get a cup, he’s bringing in K-cups from home, etc etc etc.
    He and the office manager are now engaged in all out war regarding coffee. She refuses to restock until he shuts up. He refuses to shut up until she restocks. I brew my cup of tea and turn on a white noise machine until the battle settles down.

    1. TheCupcakeCounter*

      yeah…I’d say 1-2 k-cups a day is the MAX an employee should expect to be provided. The little suckers are expensive and 5+cups a day is quite excessive. Bring your own dude.

    3. LiveAndLetDie*

      Good lord. I’m on Team Office Manager here, that guy sounds like he needs to be funding his own habit.

      1. StrawMeatloaf*

        Yep Team Office Manager.

        If coffee is so important to that guy, he can go and buy his own.

        1. Cornflower Blue*

          Ditto, especially since he is the ONLY person in the office whose caffeine habit is being paid for. None of the tea-drinkers are having their drinks comped, why should he?

    4. Lizzy*

      We have a reusable K-cup thingy and regular coffee grounds. Makes it easy and not so expensive.

    5. RottenRedRod*

      There’s even a really easy and cheaper solution to this… He can get the attachment for the Keuirg that lets you brew using your own ground beans, and make coffee without buying K-cups. It’s not that hard to do, you just have to clean it out after brewing instead of throwing away the used K-cup.

  35. Wonderland*

    Our coffee pot, hot water dispenser, and filtered cold water faucet operate off the same water line, so for awhile before they fixed the water pressure if you used either the cold water faucet or hot water dispenser while the coffee was brewing it would lower the water pressure for coffee maker. One day I went over and a co-worker was just standing in front of the coffee pot watching a pot brew (does that make it go faster?). I am a tea drinker at work (our work-supplied coffee is so so bad), and filled up my mug with hot water, which slowed down the water to the coffee pot for approximately 10 seconds. Our office is pretty large and there’s only one coffee maker serving about 100 people so it’s brewing almost constantly from 7:00 AM to 10:00ish AM. The co-worker proceeded to lecture me in a raised voice about how I was delaying the coffee from brewing, and complained to my manager.

    Our current drama is one department expensed a Keurig and now buys the pods for it on the company’s dime, and the same benefit wasn’t offered to other departments (nor would it be “socially acceptable” to go help yourself to the Keurig coffee). I expect World War 3 to break out any day now.

    1. Samiratou*

      Is it coming out of general company funds or that department’s budget? If it’s the latter, then other departments can decide if they want to use those funds for coffee or not, but if it’s the former that is pretty crappy.

  36. BBBizAnalyst*

    I typically bring my own coffee. The coffee out of the pods is disgusting. I’m also not sure if the filter on our machine is cleaned regularly.

    The only crazy story I have is that one of the senior folks around here threw a fit because decaf pods weren’t available.

    1. Whoa*

      Speaking of decaf, one of the kitchenettes in an adjacent department has a sign on the wall that says “The decaf carafe is for decaf coffee ONLY. Some of us can’t have caffeine for medical reasons and you’re risking our health .” I can only imagine the war that led to that sign being put up.

      1. Programmers Turn Coffee Into Enterprise Code*

        That happened at my old job too! Really though – I was friends with the people who couldn’t have decaf and it did get pretty bad if they were slipped caffeine.

      2. Fiennes*

        I take a medication that reacts very badly to excess caffeine. (VERY badly. The first time I had a reaction, I was driving and only barely managed to pull onto the shoulder without passing out.) Decaf coffee has caffeine, but at a low enough level that I can drink it. So it really is an annoyance when decaf isn’t to be had—like at every damn conference ever—and especially in a scenario where no other drinks are provided.

    2. TheCupcakeCounter*

      No one in my area drinks decaf so the 2 decaf pot we have are used for hot water and specialty brew (both are labeled and then relabeled in Sharpie each Friday at 5pm).

    3. Corky's wife Bonnie*

      Same here, I love my Cuisinart Grind & Brew so much, it makes the BEST coffee. I also have the peace of mind that it’s totally clean when I use it.

  37. Muriel Heslop*

    I bought my own coffeemaker/pot to keep in my office after the brutal territorial battles of the teacher’s workroom became too much for me. Word got around, and now many of my colleagues (in my department, who have access to my office) share my coffee, most of them contributing creamer and coffee.

    People around campus are outraged! Outraged that I keep my office locked at all times due to FERPA laws that require student documents to be secured. I’ve found sticky notes on the door, asking me to bring coffee to people in their classrooms, had people say rude (and quite stupid) things to my face and had multiple administrators come by my office to say: we’re investigating your office coffee pot on the basis of a complaint. Keep your coffee pot.

    The people who want my coffee are not my friends or close colleagues – they are people I barely know! And nothing is stopping them from using the break room or bringing their own coffee pot. When people complain about people acting “like they’re in middle school” sometimes I think they are talking about the staff.

    2. StrawMeatloaf*

      Eww, freaking weirdos. Sorry to say but wow. People asking you to bring coffee to them? Wtf?

    4. Marillenbaum*

      That is BANANAS. I was friends with one of our librarians when I used to work at my alma mater, and she had her own office (an actual office, with a door!) and it was lovely little oasis–she had put up curtains, scavenged a rug from somewhere, and had a demilune table on the side wall with a kettle, a teapot, creamer, sugar bowl, and tea. Our book club regularly met in her office.

  38. TallTeapot*

    So ironic this came up today, as I found out today that my manager has been leaving the previous day’s coffee in the pot overnight and just turning on the pot to warm up the previous day’s coffee! I was wondering why out office coffee has been so variable in quality–some days, wonderful, other days, like cat pee. NOW I know why!
    The office pays for coffee (i.e. it is not personal funds) and our collective coffee consumption isn’t that high (we have funds to cover it) so there is NO earthly reason to do this. Soooo gross!

    1. TheCupcakeCounter*

      My husbands grandmother only drank 1 cup per day but hated to throw away coffee so she would brew a large pot and then just microwave it all week. We bought her a Keurig for Christmas and she promptly returned it.

      1. raktajino*

        I make a batch of cold brew every weekend and then heat up my daily dose with the microwave and hot water. Maybe I should be just reheating it with hot water and putting it in a better-insulated cup for my commute. I think it tastes fine, but my fresh weekend coffee does taste better…

      2. Susan Sto Helit*

        When I lived at home, at least once a week I would open the microwave to discover a cold cup of coffee that one of my parents had forgotten about, put in there to reheat, then forgotten about again.

        3. JustaTech*

          I read somewhere that every time you microwave coffee some of the caffeine is destroyed. I don’t know if it’s true, but I drink my coffee faster now to avoid having to re-heat it.

    2. Kathleen_A*

      My sister, who adores coffee, often reheats coffee from the previous day. I am not a coffee drinker myself, so I’ve never tried it, but it sounds like an awful idea.

      Now, you can do this with tea, and it’s not bad. It’s a little…flatter, I guess is the word, than fresh brewed tea, but it’s still about a jillion times better than most of the tea that I, a tea drinker in America, end up drinking when I’m anywhere but my own house.

      1. ThursdaysGeek*

        I’m convinced that the tea companies make tea bags for Canada and NZ and England, and then take the floor sweepings and make tea bags for the US. Which is why I carry my own tea bags when I go out, ask for tea, and just use their water and cream.

    3. Pollygrammer*

      I’ve been guilty of drinking yesterday’s coffee, because I’m a garbage person, but I would never try to give it to someone else.

  39. Squeeble*

    At my last job, we had a water cooler with a scheduled water delivery service that was absolutely unpredictable for a while. If we were running really low and hadn’t had a delivery in a while, I might have to call several times to get a new delivery. Then they would overcorrect and start delivering multiple 5-gallon bottles every week, and I’d run out of room to store the extras. Then they would overcorrect in the opposite direction and we’d run out of water. It boggles my mind how long it took for them to just deliver the water normally.

    The other part of the debacle was that every time I, a medium-sized woman, went to put a new bottle in the cooler, the men in the office would wring their hands over how obviously frail I was, even though I did it every week.

    1. Snickerdoodle*

      I had the opposite problem at my last job. I’m short and skinny and cannot lift the heavy jug upside down over the lip of the water cooler.

      coworker: “Why do you need someone else to do it? You can handle that.”

      me: [spills five gallons of water all over the floor]

      coworker: [does it himself in the future]

      2. Rebecca in Dallas*

        It’s a leverage thing! I’m fairly strong but very petite and I just can’t lift the jug high enough without almost spilling it everywhere. I always had to get someone taller than I am to change it out.

    2. Discordia Angel Jones*

      I have to contribute the finest water cooler accident I ever did see. In one of my former offices we had a water cooler much like yours I would guess, Squeeble, with 5-gallon bottles which loaded in the top.

      At this time there were a few female colleagues, and one male colleague in the office.

      Female colleague went to replace the bottle, male colleague decided she would not be strong enough to do it, so he picked up the new bottle, took the sticker off the top, lifted it up to slot it in…. and dropped it.

      We expected it to bounce a bit but otherwise be unharmed but NO. It exploded. Water everywhere. Puddles in the carpet. Damp patch for weeks.

      We all died laughing and colleague never tried to refill the water again.

      2. Irene Adler*

        Wow.

        I asked the order person to include some 3 gallon bottles for those who could not lift the 5 gallon ones.
        I did this because the folks who could not lift the 5 gallon bottles would remove the empty bottle from the dispenser and walk away. They thought this would prompt someone to place a new bottle on the dispenser. Instead, the dispenser would sit exposed for hours until someone walked by and decided to install a new bottle.

    3. JanetM*

      At a long ago job, I was actually instructed by our office manager that I was not to change the water bottles (even though I could do it perfectly well) because that was a man’s job.

    4. Lilly*

      The hand wringing!! Woman in tech here, former rancher, climber, *much* stronger than I look. Told I was ‘just too girly to do (be carrying the jugs)’ a lot. (Idk, I wore a lot of dresses?)

      Every dang time I went to grab a few new jugs and bring them downstairs, I had to pass the dev floor and I’d inevitably get a flock of devbros following me, concerned that I was carrying not one but TWO jugs and how would I ever be able to carry them down the stairs/across the office/lift them onto the water cooler. (Of course, they never actually refilled the water, they were just very concerned.)

  40. LouiseM*

    Well, I already told the story about the boss who tried to auction off our coffee maker on eBay, and the couple who broke up because one of them drank coffee they didn’t pay for…so I think I’ll just sit back and enjoy the stories! Amazing how coffee brings out the worst in people–I can see why so many of us here prefer tea ;)

    1. fposte*

      Petty as it sounds, I can totally get breaking up with somebody who feels it’s okay not to pay for what they use. Though I can also see it as a solid sitcom plot.

      1. Grad Student*

        You can find them in the comments of “do good jobs ever leave room for outside artistic pursuits, coffee wars, and more” from last Friday!

  41. AvonLady Barksdale*

    At my last job, they did not provide coffee. I used to bring in a Thermos of cold brew concentrate, but when that ran out (i.e., my partner, who is In Charge of the coffee, would forget to make more before the weekend), I had to go either to a bakery across the street or to the fancy new coffee spot a few blocks away. It got pricey. I found a coffeemaker in one of the cabinets in the kitchenette, took it home, cleaned it out (ran it through the dishwasher AND did a vinegar rinse) and decided to bring in coffee. Other people used it. No one else cleaned it. No one else brought in beans. I asked my boss if I could expense the coffee and he said no because it would start coffee wars and he didn’t want to deal with it. Then I went on vacation and came back and found a moldy coffeemaker. Which I cleaned. No more coffee in that office, because eff that. I didn’t last many months longer there. I did, however, get a reputation for being “unusual”– with grimaces– because I would drink nitro cold brew from the fancy coffee spot black with no ice. You couldn’t do anything out of the norm there without people calling you “weird”.

    Now I’m at a place with a Keurig, and while I hate the idea of them, I do like that we don’t fight over making coffee. I also bring in my own ground beans and refillable K-cup to make myself feel better about the waste. I find that I actually miss the Flavia machines at two past jobs, because some of those brews were nice and strong and I could even make myself cortados.

    1. Ella*

      I used to make coldbrew for myself once a week, and stored it in mason jars in the fridge. Every morning I’d just grab a mason jar and go on my way. My coworkers thought I was making some new kind of moonshine. I was confused by their confusion. It’s coffee, all of us are drinking coffee, mine is just cold and in a jar and doesn’t have milk or sugar in it.

    3. DC*

      They make biodegradeable pods that have actually good coffee in them ( or so more-coffee-obsessed partner says), if you’re worried about the waste!

    4. zora*

      When I worked somewhere that didn’t provide coffee (a small, poor nonprofit), I brought in one of those small, single serve french presses for my desk and brought in my own coffee.

      Of course, I had that one coworker who thought we were BFFs (um, we weren’t) who started asking if she could “borrow a cup? I’ll bring in some coffee next week.” That went from a couple of times a month to all of a sudden almost every day. And she finally remembered to bring in a pound of coffee ONCE 5 months later. But being California, when I, very kindly said “Yknow, I’d rather not keep sharing my coffee, it’s costing me a lot of money, thanks!” she threw a whole fit about how she’s brought coffee whenever she remembered, and it can’t be that much, and she is sorry she’s such a terrible friend.

      Fortunately, I knew it was coming, so I managed to hold my ground and just keep calmly saying “I know, but I’d just rather not share anymore” Like a broken record and she eventually stopped whining about it. Well, really, she found something else to whine about, but whatever, I finally didn’t have to pay for her coffee and make it for her.

    5. Little Twelvetoes*

      You couldn’t do anything out of the norm there without people calling you “weird”.

      I was just discussing with someone how my office is the opposite. If you do nothing out of the norm, you are weird and we’d all be a bit suspicious about you. 100% normal people would not fit in here.

  42. sunbittern*

    I worked somewhere where one of our vendors couldn’t pay their ad fee in money so they paid us in cases of their really nice, delicious, farmer-co-op-grown-and-owned coffee for about nine months (coffee that usually retails for about 20-25$/pound). Every day, one of my coworkers would loudly complain to everyone that the (free and abundant) coffee was garbage and he hated it and would rather drink instant coffee although he never brought his own…which, I understand that expensive doesn’t always equal good or better and people have their own tastes, but come on! This was reflective of the general entitlement a lot of people there had about the really nice food and beverage perks we had – always finding a way to complain about it or criticizing the person ordering snacks/drinks/meals, and never saying thank you for any of it.

    1. TheCupcakeCounter*

      I was really hoping that would end with “then we found out he was stealing the coffee beans and taking them home”

      1. sunbittern*

        Ha! That would have been a good ending. Sadly no, he just kept up his complain train FOREVER.

    2. Construction Safety*

      I had a PM tell me that there are certain folks who, if you gave them a $100 bill, they would complain that it wasn’t 5 x $20s

      1. AnonEMoose*

        Sad, but true. Let’s just say that I developed my Personal Rule #1 of Organizing Anything – which is “No matter what you do, you will never make everyone happy” for a reason.

      2. IForgetWhatNameIUsedBefore*

        Ha! I once said of one of my exes “if a million dollars fell into his lap he’d complain that it gave him a bruise”

    3. Let's Talk About Splett*

      As an admin who orders food and beverages for day-to-day, meetings and parties I can tell you there is always someone who has to complain about the free food/drinks.

  43. Laura in NJ*

    This makes me glad I don’t drink coffee. I never have to deal with this kind of middle school drama.

    2. Aphrodite*

      Same here. No coffee, no tea. Never learned to like them. But the stories are wonderful and I am loving this, especially the cockroach stories which are both gross and hilarious.

  44. Wannabe Disney Princess*

    We used to have a coffee machine that broke, regularly, once a week. There was no warning signs it would just randomly die. In order to keep the masses happy, someone would be dispatched to Starbucks/Dunkin Donuts/etc and bring back brewed coffee. It never too more than an hour, tops.

    THE FUSSING THAT WOULD COMMENCE.

    Oh my God. “How were they to cope?” “Just couldn’t function without it.” “This is criminal.” (Dude. Buddy. I saw you get a cup an hour ago – you’re fine until the cavalry arrives in ten minutes.)

    They were also the same group that would mob my desk if we ran out of dark roast and only had light roast in the machine. One of them even sent an email to our Grandboss telling them I wasn’t doing my job. (He laughed hysterically and then threatened to completely get rid of the coffee.)

    I do not miss that machine.

    1. fposte*

      It’s also funny how people who will die without their coffee would still rather wait (and bitch) than drink instant.

      1. Wannabe Disney Princess*

        To be fair, the one guy we have who is a coffee nut does keep instant at his desk for emergencies. He was not the problem.

        They’d stroke out when they’d see my travel mug of coffee. When the machine would break, I’d quick slap a post-it on it saying that I brought it from home.

      2. LBK*

        In fairness, I don’t consider myself an especially picky coffee drinker but instant is pretty disgusting.

        1. fposte*

          As long as you don’t make a case based on physical need for coffee and turn your nose up at it because of the taste, I have no problem with the preference. It’s when somebody basically says “I need to be hydrated first thing in the morning or I get sick” and then insists it has to be Fiji and not tap that I roll my eyes.

          1. LBK*

            I suppose that’s fair – but to me, suggesting instant as a holdover for drip would be less like suggesting tap water over Fiji and more like suggesting sucking the moisture out of a dirty sponge. It pushes the boundaries of being humanly palatable.

      3. Ugh*

        For coffee snobs like me, drinking instant coffee in place of dark roast is like telling a craft beer drinker to have a Bud or PBR. But I wouldn’t complain, I would just go get a cup of coffee I prefer somewhere else.

        1. Little Twelvetoes*

          But I wouldn’t complain, I would just go get a cup of coffee I prefer somewhere else.

          And that makes all the difference.

  45. Old Cynic*

    I worked for a family owned $50million/yr company in the 90s, 150 employees. The coffee was kept in the owners credenza and you had to go ask for a can. The response was invariably “I just gave you 5 pounds last week!”

  46. Anonymous Academic*

    We just got an all-staff email sent around to say that someone had taken some other team’s milk from the fridge and it had not been returned. Our building has been consumed by milk wars because the kitchen is shared by a university department and a bunch of charities who all have different rules and milk clubs (especially since the university USED to provide milk for staff for free but now does not). The fridge is literally stuffed full of half-used, meticulously labelled milk bottles to the point where you can’t put anything else in there.

    I mean, I know the British love their tea but it’s reaching levels of parody.

    1. Lizzy*

      I think British offices should stock tea and milk, just as American offices should stock coffee and creamer/sugar. It’s a basic human need.

    2. Aunt Vixen*

      When I lived in Britain I had a co-worker who had a housemate who was astonishingly possessive of her things in the kitchen – the particular story was about how she would lock up her milk to stop anyone else using it. By which I mean, she poked a hole in the jug and the cap and padlocked the cap onto the jug. Which of course meant there was a lot more air circulating over the milk, and it went bad a lot faster, and she ended up replacing it twice as often as she’d have done otherwise. Which was what she was trying to avoid by keeping it to herself.

    3. Adlib*

      The Australians I work with are SUPER snobby about their coffee. They actively hate ours. That’s fine, they don’t have to like it, but I wish the ones I work with would shut up about it. (My boss included, heh.)

      1. Liz*

        Australians are obnoxious coffee snobs, and I know because I am one. In fact, I’m surprised the comments aren’t full of Aussie Aeropress lid wars, and can only assume that will change as the timezones roll on (and I keep scrolling down).

        (I do not like drip coffee or pods, but I promise I will drink my instant and shut up.)

    4. MsSolo*

      Milk clubs are the worst, because it goes off so quickly. We have milk provided at work (semi, not my preference, but as someone who easily gets through 8 cups of tea a day I’m not kicking up a fuss about free milk) but I volunteer at a museum where each department has their own milk club, which means on any given day there are a minimum of five different milks in the fridge, at least four of which are the same type of milk, and at least three of which have turned to yoghurt. The whole thing is topped off by multiple clip-art covered posters passive aggressively warning people not to drink any one else’s milk. Also, a lot of individuals have left and their roles haven’t been replaced yet, which means there’s milk in there belonging to departments that don’t currently have any employees.

  47. KatieKate*

    Reading this makes me SO HAPPY I don’t drink coffee. My tea bags and I are perfectly happy to stay away from this drama…

    2. SarahKay*

      I do drink coffee, but am just as happy with instant as with real (and real or instant, I only like it black, no sugar, so no milk/creamer worries for me).
      My large jar of Kenco instant and I will also join you in avoiding all the drama.

  48. Caffeine Cowgirl*

    When I worked as a newspaper reporter, the paper had a Bunn-like coffee machine that cost 25 cents/cup. You’d insert a quarter to get it to dispense a cup. Woe betide you if the brew pot had been sitting there a couple hours for the machine would dispense a sour, muddy cup of joe. OTOH, there were no Starbucks in the world then, so wanting a freshly brewed cup merely marked one as picky, rather than as an aesthete.

    When I entered the legal world, coffee improved markedly — possibly because that’s what law offices (and many of we lawyers) run on. In my current legal job, I put a small Nespresso machine in the office kitchen and, while I supply my own (off-brand) pods, it’s a pleasure to have a good cup of java while grinding away.

    1. gmg22*

      At my first newspaper gig, there was still a composing room, and those guys were in charge of procuring/preparing the coffee for the evening shift. It was likewise 25 cents, but an honor system. Unlike the story I recounted above, no one DARED to abuse this system because you’d have a dozen snarky New Yorkers giving you the gimlet eye.

  49. Sleeping or maybe dead*

    Not drama, unfortunately.

    One of my coworkers has a furiously red 2-litter thermos on his desk, complete with a yellow and black caution sticker that reads “fill with Diesel only”.
    I’m never asking him for a sip of coffee.

      1. rldk*

        I’m giggling because Boston has a coffee store called Diesel – they might even make stickers like that!

  50. zinemin*

    Both happened it academic environments, with very head-in-the-cloud type of people.
    Job 1: People threw their used coffee powder from their Italian espresso makers and/or their green tea leaves into the sink. There were many e-mails warning us not to do this. But people continued anyway and eventually the pipes cloaked so badly that they had to be taken out and replaced. :)
    Job 2: At some point it was discovered that the coffee maker was full of mold. The profs who had installed it hadn’t considered that they needed to assign someone to clean it. I don’t remember why people who refilled the water tanks hadn’t noticed. Or maybe they saw and didn’t care. Since then I’m very suspicious about office coffee.

    1. Murphy*

      Oh yeah, this happened when I was on maternity leave, but apparently people were throwing coffee grounds (and I think other food waste) in the water fountain. Our facilities guy said it caused a serious plumbing issue. There are now signs up. Unbelievable.

        1. Emily, admin extraordinaire*

          We also have signs up not to dispose of coffee grounds in the water fountain. Which is really ironic, since I work for a state government agency and there is no agency-provided coffee. A few departments have formed coffee clubs and bought Keurigs, but there aren’t any regular old drip-coffee machines in the whole building.

    2. Priscila*

      Brazilian here, a lit of people here throw coffee ground (albeist very fine/small) down the sink, people believe it helps to unclog the sink. My family has done it forever (so have my inlaws), never had any issue.

  51. Irene Adler*

    Coffee-related.

    Our CEO used to make her own coffee-several times a day. I believe she drank instant. Or she added something in granule form to an already poured cup of coffee. Not sure. For this, she would pull out a plastic spoon from the drawer, scoop some granules into her cup, and then place the spoon in the far corner of the counter top. The idea was that she would re-use this spoon all day long. Folks were supposed to just leave the spoon alone and she would toss it after her last cup of the day (which she did do-she never intended to leave a mess for others to clean up). We used to refer to her spoon as “The Corporate Spoon”.

    Except, folks were constantly tossing The Corporate Spoon into the trash when they tidied up the counter throughout the day. The CEO would get upset over this. “Just leave it be! I’ll take care of it at the end of the day!”, she would cry.

    So, for her birthday, we all chipped in and bought her a gold tone spoon. Even had it engraved with “The Corporate Spoon”. It had a little gold chain attached where she could hang the spoon on a peg on the wall.

    She loved this spoon. And she adored that we’d all gotten together to give this to her. She was very touched.

    One day later, The Corporate Spoon disappeared. Never reappeared. She was crushed.

    2. Murphy*

      Actually, this happens with my husband and I when I drink water. I’ll just put the glass on the counter, planning to use it again later, but he always puts it in the dishwasher.

      1. AvonLady Barksdale*

        We have a weird thing in my house and we have yet to iron out the rules. My partner and I both drink from the same glasses throughout the day/evening. What I apparently haven’t quite figured out is that he will put his water glass in the dishwasher when he goes to bed, and if he needs a drink in the middle of the night, he takes out a new glass. I usually put that glass in the dishwasher in the morning, since that’s when I go around the house and collect any errant coffee mugs or glasses (including my water glass from the evening before, which I usually leave out in case I want a drink at 3am). He gets so annoyed when I do that. I still haven’t adjusted my habits to that rhythm. Also, we have more than enough glasses, so he can just get out a different one.

        1. Red*

          Ah, we have a thing for this at home now! We bought a set of coloured glasses, each person has assigned colour(s) and it’s their job to wash/not wash their colours on their own schedule, and they’re lined up next to the sink. Awkwardly, sometimes guests will choose those glasses instead of the ones in the cupboard (why?? Is it because they’re more visible? Is it because they see us exclusively choose glasses from there?), but that’s the only risk in this system.

      2. EddieSherbert*

        My SO does the same thing. It drives me batty! I can use a glass more than once :P

      3. The Schwa*

        My partner keeps a cup on the counter all day. He gets a new cup in the morning and uses it for his morning glass, dinner glass, bedtime glass. Repeat. It drove me batty before we even moved in together and I noticed it at his parent’s house. Now I just ignore it.

        1. Budgieman*

          Ah reminds me of what first happened when I was dating.
          I was at my GF’s house. I went to the cupboard and got a glass out and put it on the bench.
          Went to the fridge to get juice out. Glass not on bench. Ah! thinks I. I haven’t got a glass out.
          Put juice on bench. Go to cupboard to get glass out.
          Go back to bench. Juice is now gone…..
          My mother-in-law to be (I’ve been married 28 years now …but she did this again recently at age 85)… has been behind me the whole time, putting things away as soon as I put them down.
          And no, she wasn’t trolling me. she is just a neat freak. (Gotta love her!)

    10. Anonymous Ampersand*

      This is the one time that gifts should flow upwards!

      I’m so sad at how the story ends though!

    12. Cornflower Blue*

      Oh no, what a horrible thief! I’m so sorry for your poor boss and all of you who chipped in for it.

      It was still a super sweet gesture though, and at least nobody can take away the knowledge that her staff loves her enough to do something like that for her.

  52. ZuZu's Petals*

    Ok, I will cop to some terrible office behavior. Three weeks after starting a job at a new company, I found out I was pregnant. At that point, the smell of coffee made me utterly nauseous, to the point I would gag every time someone ran the Keurig. Between new job and unexpected pregnancy, I was very stressed, and when I was the first person in the office one morning, I unplugged the Keurig in a fit of panic. I couldn’t handle the thought of smelling coffee that day. This was one of the Keurigs that is tied into the water line, and I had to dig into a cabinet for a switch. I just wanted a gag-free morning, but they ended up calling in service because despite the multiple PhDs and the MD in the office, no one checked the power switch. I felt guilty, but never admitted to it. I did however buy everyone Starbucks one afternoon as a way to assuage my guilt until the machine was “fixed”.

    1. Isben Takes Tea*

      I think this is hilarious, but then I’m not a coffee drinker. (I am one who frequently gets roped in to fix things because I think to check things like power buttons and plugs.)

    2. fposte*

      Now I’m seeing somebody totally plan this to make themselves a hero, like a firefighter who sets a fire to dramatically douse.

  54. Discordia Angel Jones*

    We are currently having coffee machine drama at the office.

    It’s a fancy coffee machines that makes cappuccinos, lattes, espresso, etc. So it has a milk unit which heats and froths the milk.

    At the moment nobody is emptying the milk bit on a Friday night so on Monday the first person to make a coffee has to deal with the resulting cheese one way or another, either in their coffee or by cleaning the machine (and by that stage it has to be properly taken apart and cleaned to get rid of the old milk from the tubing etc).

    … and this is why I drink instant coffee.

    1. Alternative Person*

      Honestly, I’ve never understood the snobs who refuse to drink instant. It’s perfectly drinkable, requires little prep/maintenance and super easy to store.

      1. LaurenB*

        I love instant coffee! That was the first coffee I ever drank, which my mother would make me when I procrastinated and had to stay up late writing papers in high school. Instant coffee with milk and sugar tastes of a mother’s forgiveness of my terrible work habits.

        1. Marillenbaum*

          This is really sweet! I started off drinking instant coffee when I first began making coffee at home–I wasn’t sure I would like it, and I didn’t want to buy an expensive machine. It’s still kind of lovely.

      2. Birch*

        Because it tastes like burned dust. The whole point of coffee flavor comes from volatile oils, which aren’t preserved in the preparation of instant coffee. Each to their own preference, but there’s a huge difference between beans and instant. IMO it’s not even at the level of snobbery, it’s basically a different product entirely.

        1. Discordia Angel Jones*

          I totally get it, and when I drink good coffee (which I do at home), I appreciate it.

          But for me the options are crap coffee from the machine or instant. The instant is better than the machine coffee. Best of a bad bunch?

          I would bring my own but would have to bring my own coffee maker too, and I’m already considered to be weird because I bring in my own tea and don’t drink black tea with milk (yes, I’m in the UK). LOL

          1. Birch*

            Bring your own French press! It just uses water from the kettle and even tastes better than filter coffee. I get it, I’m that weirdo with both really nice coffee and also tins of Chinese tea on my desk (because the coffee room cannot be trusted), but people get used to it. Embrace the weirdness!

        2. SarahKay*

          I’d agree that it’s almost a whole different product. I like both equally, but at work I drink instant because it’s cheaper, faster, and avoids any squabbles over whose turn it is to clean the coffee maker. Also, I make it by the large mugful and drink it absent-mindedly, often lukewarm or cold, while I’m working – it seems a waste to do this with ‘real’ (and rather more expensive) coffee.
          At home on weekends I make real coffee and take time to savour it. Also this thread has just introduced me to cold-brew coffee which sounds awesome and definitely something to make this weekend!

      3. gmg22*

        I don’t care for the taste of instant, but it’s what my parents drank at home when I was growing up, and I still very fondly remember a ritual I shared with my dad: He’d yell “New jar of coffee!” and I’d run into the kitchen so as soon as he pulled the seal off, I could get the first, strongest whiff of “fresh” coffee smell. (Okay, I was kinda sheltered.)

        2. pandop*

          My Dad, who loved coffee, would always let little me, who didn’t/still doesn’t like coffee, smash the paper seal with a spoon when he had a new jar of coffee – because that’s the best bit :)

      5. Gigglewater*

        I recently realized that there’s a huge cultural component to why i like instant coffee. In India whenever we used to drink “cold coffee” which is more similar to a coffee milkshake than iced coffee it’s made, with instant. My parents and I literally never bought non-instant coffee until the first time my BF came over and was like “WHAT IS THIS” about the instant coffee. I’ve talked to a few of my other friends who are also Indian and all of them confirmed that for the longest time they didn’t understand that instant coffee wasn’t the only option.

    2. Ama*

      Heh — this is exactly what I feared in my story. I’m glad my boss listened when I asked we put in a “no one uses the dairy features ever” policy.

  55. Koko*

    Why would someone make a whole pot of coffee just to pour one cup and dump the rest?? Does she not realize that you can make less than a full pot? Every morning I pour 1 coffee mug’s worth of water into my 12-cup coffee maker and brew enough to fill my mug. No dumping needed!

    1. StrawMeatloaf*

      Exactly! It’s why they have little markers on the side saying “one cup/6 cups, 2 cups/8 cups, etc.”

    2. TeapotSweaterCrocheter*

      It depends on what kind of coffee machine you have. Our office has one that is hooked up to the water line, so when you push the “Brew” button, the machine supplies the right amount of water for a full pot – no options to change it!

      Our office doesn’t have terrible coffee wars, but periodically someone will complain about the people who leave the burners on with barely any coffee left in the carafe, so it burns and stinks and (although this hasn’t happened yet) the pot might shatter. There are very few culprits, everyone knows who they are, and… periodically there’s just a sign posted on the coffeemaker. “Do not leave tiny amounts of coffee in the pot with the burner on!”

      1. Let's Talk About Splett*

        Or some coffee services only provide a pot’s worth of coffee in their pouches (that of course don’t re-seal).

    3. JanetM*

      Some coffeemakers can make less than a full pot; others can’t. The style we have at my office will cheerfully make a half pot of coffee — and then the next pot will overflow all over everything.

  56. WellRed*

    NOt a war, but in our tiny office there’s a Keurig and a pot. Only two of us use the pot daily, but we do make coffee every day and drink it (a third person drinks it as well, but flies under the radar). When I was going to be out on vacation, the office manager asked my coworker if she could refrain from making coffee that week so as not to waste it. Keep in mind none of use have had raises in several years. I now pride myself on making financially ruinous pots of coffee.

  57. Amylou*

    We had a perfectly fine filter coffee machine that all the daily coffee drinkers were happy with – everything was good, life was good! Then two non-coffee drinkers started getting cappuccino’s and espresso across the street. They complained it was expensive to get coffee across the street, that they had to get coffee from outside because our coffee wasn’t strong/good enough (it was pretty strong). Then they spent ages discussing better coffee makers than our current coffee machine (which the coffee drinkers were happy with!!). Then tried to convince the operations manager to purchase a new one, even though operations was a happy coffee drinker and happy with current inexpensive but good coffee – of course the company didn’t buy a new one. Then the non-coffee drinkers proposed to buy a coffee machine, and tried to have everyone pitch in, even the people who were happy with the current arrangements! (I totally wouldn’t have minded if they brought in their own machine… it was all just so pointless… and I sat next to them and overheard everything…)

  58. Seal*

    One of my inherited employees had a coffee pot in her office, which she made available to everyone; others occasionally brought in coffee for her to brew. Except it was obviously a distraction for our part-time employees, who were invited to have a cup of coffee when they came in and wound up spending far too much time chatting rather than working. So when we moved to a new office space, I told her that if she wanted to continue to have a community coffee pot, she would need to keep it in a shared space away from her office. After a bit of grumbling, she agreed.

    A few weeks later, another employee pulled me aside to tell me about an incident with the coffee pot. She had come in early and decided to make the coffee that morning. Since this was a 12-cup coffee maker, she put in 12 scoops of coffee, the same amount she normally uses at home. But when she mentioned how much coffee she had used to the coffee maker owner, the woman went ballistic, loudly accusing her of wasting coffee and ranting about how expensive coffee was and on and on. Apparently the coffee maker owner only used 2 scoops to make a 12-cup pot of coffee and it never occurred to her that if someone else made the coffee in her absence they would use quite a bit more than that. Since I had a meeting that morning, I missed all of this.

    Shortly thereafter, I told her the coffee maker needed to go and the she could bring in a thermos of coffee for herself or get it from the nearby coffee shop like everyone else. Aside from wanting to nip a potential coffee war in the bud, if you’re only making c0ffee-flavored hot water, why bother?

      2. anon coffee drinker*

        That’s hot water and a splash of coffee, LOL. But, IMO, 12 scoops is too much.

        Our coffeemaker at home can fit 4-5 scoops for a full 12 C of coffee. I can’t put anymore in or else it overflows (and my DH can drink coffee all day so I use 4 scoops to cut down on our intake).

      2. Seal*

        I never drank it myself, but I suspect the attraction for our part-time employees was that it was free and gave them an excuse to hang out rather than working. That particular employee (who has since left our department) was a bit odd anyway.

    4. PSB*

      Completely OT, but I initially read your first sentence as “One of my inbred employees,” and then “One of my inebriated employees” before finally reading it correctly.

  59. Podfaster*

    In my first job out of college, we had a communal coffee maker in the lunch room. Someone spilled sugar all over it one day and didn’t clean it up. The Director of Operations announced to no one in particular, I just happened to be in the room, that she was getting rid of the coffee maker due to this. A few weeks later the communal pot was gone, but the DOO and CEO had new Keurigs in their respective offices…

  60. RottenRedRod*

    Not so much a coffee war as a little example of my narcissistic former boss’ actions. We had a public showroom (for ergonomic office chair sales) and the best option for us was a Keurig, so anyone could easily make themselves a single cup without worrying about making a whole pot. We sometimes had events where we had 30+ people there for a presentation, and my boss insisted we ALSO needed a standard coffee maker for that, because we’ll need more coffee ready for them!

    Except a standard coffee pot only holds enough for like 3-4 people, and it would mean we’d have to grind beans, pour water, etc. in the middle of someone doing a presentation. And he already didn’t like us (the employees) doing back end office stuff while the presentation was going on, as he wanted us out participating and socializing with the attendees. I told him no one would use the standard coffee pot because the Keurig was way more convenient for our needs and he’d be wasting his money. But he’s the boss and what he says goes!

    The first time we used it, my idiot coworker ground the entire bag of beans, wasting it completely. No one took coffee from the pot, they ALL used the Keurig. We never even filled it again, it just sat there, as I predicted.

  61. Juli G.*

    This is lame but it infuriated me. We used to have someone from a different location come to our office regularly. Her location provided free coffee and ours was employee funded – 15 cents a cup. She refused to pay it because at her place, it was free and the company needed to provide it here. I pointed out that it was our fellow employees getting screwed, not the company. Still refused.

    I would watch her like a hawk (she came to our location specifically to work with me) and whenever she got coffee, I’d throw 15 cents in. It would make her so mad but the two of us made 10k more than the other employees and it just felt mean to let her take it for free.

    1. Juli G.*

      The update was that eventually, the company realized making employees provide coffee for the office pot was ridiculous and it became free to all.

    2. TheCupcakeCounter*

      I can definitely see both sides of this and good for the company for FINALLY ponying up.

    3. EddieSherbert*

      I think that’s great you just covered for her! Andddd even better update – companies should def just provide some freakin’ coffee!

  62. IHaveANiceCat*

    We have a keurig. My office manager made fun of me when I suggested we start buying compostable cups for it. One of my coworkers had already starting composting in the office and I wanted to feel less guilty about the plastic waste. He did buy them, but regularly makes fun of me and my other coworker for ‘wanting to save the environment.’ Okay…

    Also, he refuses to stock any milk in the fridge that isn’t soy (he is not vegan he just thinks it’s ‘healthier’ wth no explanation). I don’t mind soy milk in coffee, but as the sole British person in an office full of Americans I NEED normal milk for my tea. So I have to buy my own. Also, I asked for a kettle so I could properly boil water and was told I had to use the hot water function on the keurig – which always tastes like coffee – or microwave my water for tea. Which anyone who regularly drinks tea will tell you is NOT okay. So I bought my own coffee, and I buy my own milk – which everyone uses because no one wants soy. My office manager is a mini dictator, haha.

    2. Detective Amy Santiago*

      I bought an electric kettle when I started at my current job. It will be going with me when I leave.

      1. IHaveANiceCat*

        Same. I just thought it was so weird they wouldn’t have one in the otherwise fully-stocked office kitchen. Mine onl

      1. IHaveANiceCat*

        It doesn’t make a proper cup of tea. It’s hard to get it the proper temperature without getting the mug very hot too. And I always find that microwave water makes my tea scummy and the bag doesn’t brew properly. Teabag should be in the mug with water that’s just reached a rolling boil poured over it. Electric kettles are so convenient and take almost no time at all. I don’t understand why Americans don’t use them more.

        It’s like…if I told you to microwave water for coffee and then pour it over the grinds, do you think it would taste as good?

        1. Sarah*

          I mean, compared to kettles in the UK, they’re not nearly as quick. When I lived in Scotland I could have a water boiled in 90 seconds. Kettles in the US take way longer (likely because we run on 110V instead of 220V) and it takes for.ev.ever. I’ve ended up switching back to coffee instead of my tea because the convenience just isn’t there for me.

        2. synchrojo*

          I blew my partner’s mind the first time I made her tea with an electric kettle (although I’m American, my family has strong ties to the UK, and I’ve had an electric kettle around as long as i can remember). She described the experience as life changing, having grown up with microwaved tea

          In addition to the challenges IHaveANiceCat mentioned, the other thing that annoys me about microwaved tea water is that you end up having to do the annoying repeated poking/prodding/dunking to get the tea bag to actually submerge into the hot water if you microwave in the mug you intend to drink out of. if you use a different container, then you’ve got another container to deal with drying and putting away.

        3. Marillenbaum*

          I found out about electric kettles when my sister moved to the UK–magic! As soon as I came home, I bought one for myself. Then, I got one for my mother, who is also a tea fiend. I’m pretty sure it’s one of the top three Mothers’ Day gifts I ever gave her.

        4. Elizabeth H.*

          My boyfriend is really particular about tea – he’ll only drink one specific kind that is hard to get and needs to be ordered from UK – and he prefers it made in the microwave. Really! At my house, I use my kettle for it which he will drink, but even though he has an electric kettle at his house he says it tastes better with microwave. Specifically, I think what he prefers is that as the water heats, the tea absorbs more gradually into the water and is more slowly diffused through it so it brews over a longer period of time in the microwave rather than all at once with boiling water. (He is a chemical engineer by training, I don’t know if that factors into it though) I drink it that way too at his house. It’s good but I feel like the kettle is a better overall experience in my book.

          1. IForgetWhatNameIUsedBefore*

            I make it that way too, but mainly because I have ADHD and it takes less time than heating the water & brewing separately.

      2. MsSolo*

        Black tea should be made with water at a rolling boiling. The agitation is important to getting the flavour out of the tea leaves. Microwaved water can be got hot enough (depending on the microwave!) but it’s usually superheated, rather than boiling, which means you get all the tannin out of the tea and none of the aromatics. Result – a bitter, highly caffeinated tea that’s weirdly flat.

        (It’s a similar issue to using a hot water tap or coffee machine – it’s the difference between a nice cup of tea and that hot brown water you get on a train. I have a real soft spot for train tea, but it’s only to be drunk while in motion!)

        1. IForgetWhatNameIUsedBefore*

          “highly caffeinated”

          That must be why I prefer to nuke mine then, lol!

          That and being too impatient to do it the regular way.

    4. Mythea*

      The first thing I brought to my new office was a good electric kettle for my desk. I have a selection of 20 or so different loose leaf teas and I am more than willing to share…for some reason no one ever takes me up on it.

    5. Lise*

      I have the opposite problem when I go to England (1-2 times a year) — I seriously miss my half-and-half for my coffee. The only alternatives seem to be powdered coffee creamer (which you folks rightly call “whitener”, because that’s about all it does), or milk. And milk just does not stand up to coffee as well as half-and-half.

      (I’m told that the equivalent in the UK is getting light cream from a supermarket, but I’m usually limited to touristy places. Also people sorta look at me odd when I suggest doing something like that).

      Brewed coffee seems to also just be less of a thing? Like it’s hard to go to a coffee shop and just order a regular brewed coffee. It’s all espresso drinks of some stripe. (I’ve learned to order a flat white to sorta approximate what I want).

      But I guess this has been the Travelodge tour of England.

      1. Bleeborp*

        In France (at least where I visit family) drip coffee is also just not a thing, and while I enjoy espresso, I’m very accustomed to having a big ass cup of drip coffee and half and half (I settled for milk there, too.) There was one coffee shop in town that sold “American style” drip coffee but when we went…the machine was broken!

      2. AcademiaNut*

        That’s the problem where I live – dairy products go from whole milk to UHT treated whipping cream with nothing in between, except in high end groceries that specialize in imported stuff, and most coffee shops, including Starbucks, provide little containers of liquid non dairy creamer, but not cream. Starbucks is also one of the only places that actually sells brewed coffee, and I’ve had trouble explaining that brewed coffee with cream is not the same as a latte.

      1. Close Bracket*

        I wondered if OP literally meant “composting in the office” bc that would be a very bad idea, not just bc of flies, but bc you wouldn’t get a the right mix of materials. At Old Job, one of my co-workers brought in a large plastic container with a lid for people to put the grounds in. He took it home when it was full.

  63. Amber T*

    We have one of those industrial K Cup machines that are hooked up to the pipes. The office provides about 20 different flavors of coffee and maybe 10 flavors of (K Cup) tea (not exaggerating). The thing gets emptied by a cleaning crew twice and it’s on a three month service call.

    And yet, people bitch.

    Listen, it’s a machine. It has it’s quirks, it breaks down or does weird things. Now I love my coffee, I don’t function well without my coffee, and if you’re being a butthead and coming between me and my coffee (my office’s Fergus), I’ll probably get mildly grumpy at you but quite frankly, I’m too tired to do anything about it. But it’s a perk, one of many that my company offers, and I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

    So it’s doing this weird thing where it keeps putting grounds in the coffee you brew, so if you’re the first one to make coffee, you have to run water through it once or twice to clean it out. Jesus, the reaction of some people. You would think you’re asking them to like, crawl into the sewers. “Look at this filthy water and all those coffee grounds! How disgusting! We drink this?” Yeah, Gladys, it’s coffee mixed with water and some grounds, just dump it into the sink that’s right there.

    Someone wanted to wipe down the K Cup area with a lysol wipe then make a cup immediately after. She was (thankfully) talked out of it by several people (I still avoided that machine for several days. Oh yeah, we have multiple coffee makers, people just like complaining.)

    And DEAR LORD when the machine actually crapped out one morning. The amount of crap aimed at our receptionist (for no reason other than the fact she’s stuck at the front desk and would have to greet the mechanic?) and the office manager (who’s in charge of calling the mechanic guy, but again, so not her fault)… again, I want to point out that we have one other exact same machine, two other regular Keurigs, and are within a five minute drive of at least three coffee shops (and our office is very lenient about stepping out).

  64. Sunny Day in the ADK*

    I had a co-worker scream at me for leaving dirty coffee mugs by the sink “everyday this week”. I only worked 1 day a week (which she knew) and really didn’t drink the coffee there, so there was no way they were my mugs.

  65. Tardigrade*

    I don’t drink coffee at work, but I use the ice machine beside it, so I notice when there’s things like small dead bugs around the pot as was the case Monday morning. By the afternoon, the buggy coffee maker along with 2 others had assembled in the floor around the trash can.

    Tuesday dawns not with a “new” coffee maker, but with something that could have only been pilfered from Doc Brown’s lab. While the contraption is free of small dead bugs, it is caked with a layer of dust and yellowed grime, the apparent preference of whoever has continued making coffee in it for the last 3 days.

    1. Tardigrade*

      I 100% forgot to include that all the coffee drinkers have been complaining about how dirty and weird the “new” machine is but nobody’s bothered to clean it yet, and there’s a couple people going full CSI about who threw the buggy one out and who (or same person?) installed the “new” one.

  66. cactus lady*

    My first job out of college was working at as a medical assistant for a doctor in a practice where one of the other (married) doctors had a very obvious crush on me. Mostly this worked to my advantage because it was a crazy toxic workplace with horrible management, so I’d just ignore it or pretend not to notice. But everyone knew about it and it was kind of the office joke. One day he decided to make a pot of coffee “for us”… and he didn’t put the coffee pot back in the coffeemaker correctly… and it overflowed ALL OVER the break room. The office manager made ME clean it up, even though it was technically her job to do that kind of stuff (and I was seeing patients at the time), because “he made the coffee for you.”

    1. copier queen*

      I bet the office manager was jealous of the doctor’s crush on you…and was punishing you for it!

      2. cactus lady*

        You know, in retrospect, that wouldn’t surprise me a bit. That whole workplace was so icky.

  67. I Wrote This in the Bathroom*

    I have a heartwarming coffee story. You will be needing a box of Kleenex. For a while, I went through a phase where I’d come into the office very early, make two pots of coffee, one regular and one double strength, label both, so people wouldn’t accidentally drink the double unless they wanted to, pour myself a double, and get to work.

    Around the time when I started doing this, we hired a new guy, who also came in super early and made coffee. His was very weak. He’d add so much water that a pot would on occasion overflow. I didn’t know it was him. All I knew was I’d come in every morning to two overflowing pots of coffee-colored water. Then one morning I walked in on him doing that. I showed him how much water to use so the pot wouldn’t spill over. Then asked him if I could use one pot to make a double-strong batch.

    Not only did he say yes! He started coming in every morning and making one regular pot and one double. I still came in super early, but my double coffee was already waiting for me when I did. He brought a marker and a stack of post-its into the breakroom and showed me where he hid those on an empty shelf. He’d use those to label the pots. I was honestly shocked at how far he went to meet my coffee habits halfway. I am not sure if he even drank coffee himself, he may have been making it for everyone else as a nice gesture.

    Then a few months later, he passed away unexpectedly from a heart condition that had suddenly taken a bad turn. He was missed by everyone. It made me sad to see the post-its and the marker in his hiding place. Then we moved out of that building and I don’t know what happened to the post-its and the marker.

    1. Detective Amy Santiago*

      Awww, this is a very sweet and sad story.

      I’m a tea drinker, but I used to frequently start pots of coffee brewing at OldJob when I’d go in to the kitchen to get my hot water because people would leave barely enough for one cup left in multiple pots.

  68. Laughing out loud*

    I work in a mid-sized law firm and after my last vacation i came back to find a label on our coffee maker “coffee maker is for coffee NOT tea” and a label on the kettle “kettle is for boiling water NOT milk”. If anyone has ever boiled milk they know the mess it makes. Amazingly, its still happening at least once a month since christmas that someone tries to boil milk in the kettle or brew tea in the coffee maker.

    1. JaneB*

      WHAAAAAATTTTTT???????

      Horrified British person cannot believe people would put milk in a kettle…

    2. Serin*

      The spouse likes to say, “Every sign tells a story.” I thought of that when I started at my new job and there was a sign over the sink that said PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE HARDWARE FROM THIS SINK.

  69. Alcott*

    My small unit had been moved to a new area that we shared with another small unit and we had our own kitchen. I was almost always the first person to arrive in the morning and always the first coffee drinker so I would generally just start a pot when I got in. No big deal. It was not my job, but I was trying to be considerate.

    Well I got one of those colds that knocks you out and ended up taking a couple of days off work. I don’t know what they did about the coffee on those days. I do know the day I came back to work, I didn’t make a pot. I wasn’t wanting any and figured I’d let someone that wasn’t just getting over being sick make it if they wanted. I start digging through my email and I hear someone come in and leave again and don’t think too much of it. Then the same person comes in again and kind of huffs by and lets out a loud, disgusted sigh right outside my door. She’s holding a coffee mug, doesn’t say anything, continues to her office, and huffs off again carrying her purse. When she comes back again I see she has starbucks cup.

    That was how I learned if you do something regularly, it will become your job. When they moved my unit 6 months later, I was pretty strict with myself about not making coffee more than twice a week so it wouldn’t happen again.

    1. Lizzy*

      I will admit, I’m sorta that woman… we used to have a pot of coffee every morning, because one lady would get here before everyone else. She just happened to be a coffee drinker and so would make a pot.
      She retired and now no one makes the coffee. While I didn’t huff and puff, I’m secretly annoyed that everyone uses the Keurig instead of the coffee pot because I’m too lazy to use the re-usable K-cup and am too cheap to buy my own and feel guilty brewing a pot for just me.

  70. V2*

    Not coffee wars, but at my last company we had an incident we called Bagelgate.

    The company had snacks in the kitchen for employees, including bagels. An employee went to the kitchen to toast a bagel, but there was already a bagel toasting in there. So he left, and some point later (he said a half hour) went back, thinking that the toaster would be clear. When he saw the same bagel in there, he figured it was abandoned and took it instead of toasting a new one. Within a few minutes, the person whose bagel it was stormed into the area where we sat (cubicles) and went on an enraged tirade about stealing food. It didn’t help that as she shouted, he looked at her but kept eating the bagel. Of course there was a kitchen full of bagels, and he really was just trying not to be wasteful, but I guess this was a sore spot for the person whose bagel it was, because that’s still the most shouting I’ve ever heard in an office.

    2. fposte*

      See, I’d have gone with laundry rules; somebody else put it in so I can take it out and replace it with mine, but I wouldn’t have eaten the bagel. (However, I’d have gotten over it if it had been mine and somebody else did eat it.)

      Apparently I am indifferent to coffee but have many thoughts on snack protocols.

      1. LBK*

        Yeah, I would have just left it on a plate/napkin on the side, at least until the end of the day. Taking it does seem a little weird (plus, who wants a bagel that was toasted half an hour ago? I’d want a fresh one).

      3. smoke tree*

        I wouldn’t eat the other person’s bagel, but mostly due to my hygiene paranoia. If there is a kitchen full of identical bagels, it seems like a philosophical exercise about who this individual bagel actually belongs to, once abandoned.

    4. The Ginger Ginger*

      Not to mention, a toaster or toaster oven really should not be left unattended. That’s a fire hazard. So Yeller McYellersen needs to sit down.

      Preferably by the toaster/toaster oven while her bagel is being toasted so she can remove it promptly and not start a fire.

  71. baconeggandcheeseplease*

    I’ve only worked at my office for about a year and a half, so I’m not sure whyit’s like this, but the ratio of regular coffee/tea to decaf coffee & tea is probably 30/70. I don’t know if it’s because my company is sort of a dinosaur in practices and hasn’t really made the jump into the 21st century or what, it’s WILD. If the amount of decaf/flavored coffee (Donut Shop is the worst, fight me) wasn’t enough to make me crazy, the tea is even more infuriating. We have a ton of herbal tea, which while not caffeinated, I understand, but WHY is all of the green tea (aside from one box hidden somewhere) all decaf as well?!? I get that people want to enjoy tea without the caffeine but no one is enjoying that much decaf green tea. I appreciate that our office provides coffee but I also view the semi shitty office coffee as a caffeine fix…

    /rant, I have a lot of feelings about this.

      1. Sarah*

        It’s tied with Breakfast Blend for me – so bad. I run us out of Southern Pecan all on my own, but I’m pretty sure we’re still on the same box of Donut Shop that we had when I started a year ago.

  72. LiveAndLetDie*

    Oh, we haven’t had any blowups, but we’ve had a few tense standoffs for sure!

    1) We used to have two Keurig machines, one upstairs and one downstairs (our old office was split between two floors). We went back and forth for weeks over whether you should remove the K-cup immediately after brewing before they put out an official office memo stating that the official policy was that because they were so hot immediately post-brewing, you were to leave your K-cup in the brewer and it was the next person’s job to remove it and place their own, which they could then leave for the next person to remove. It didn’t stop people griping about other people’s K-cups, but at least it was consistent.

    2) When we moved to the new office they took the Keurigs away because the K-cups were so expensive and replaced them with single-cup brewers that take any grounds. Then the office officially stocked one brand of coffee in a few different blends, all caffeinated. However, they also stocked a big bag of decaf, in case people needed it, but the office admin insisted that it only be disclosed to people upon asking for some reason. Anyway, I got pregnant and started bringing in my own decaf, because I didn’t realize it was there, and then one day the office admin revealed to me that there was a decaf bag but to “keep it on the down-low.” To this day I have no idea why she was so secretive about it. The whole time I was pregnant I’m pretty sure I’m the only one that used it (and I’m also the one that opened it. I bet it’s still there, at exactly the level I left it last).

    3) Our office also has a tea kettle. The “use filtered water from the fridge” people versus the “it’s ok to get water from the tap” people are likely the most embittered battlers in the whole office. I have watched one woman watch the whole process of a person fill from the tap, boil the kettle, steep her tea, and walk away, and then dump the hot water out of the kettle and refill it from the fridge filter, muttering angrily the whole time under her breath about filtered water. We live in an area where tap water is very good water, but for some reason it’s contentious.

    1. SoSo*

      I will chime in here about the filtered vs tap water war…. Even with decent/good tap water that’s perfectly drinkable, it will still leave limescale and grime in the kettle (or coffee machine) faster than filtered water will, and then it’s a chore to clean out. I was in this same boat with a personal Keurig (story above) at OldJob, and even though we had good city water it clogged up the machine until it barely worked any more.

      1. LiveAndLetDie*

        Yeah, I can definitely understand that (I use filtered at home) but the pro-filtered-water folks in the office aren’t very good at making their case!

      2. nym*

        Yes… but our water filter stopped working a month or two ago, and we eventually realized it was because no one had cleaned/replaced the filter since we moved into the space in 2010. And possibly since the building was built in 2004.

        Tap water for me, and boil a lemon in the kettle every three months or so.

  73. NewBoss2016*

    This probably doesn’t compare to most, but one time our admin forgot to re-order K-cups. Apparently there was a coffee riot happening when the coffee drinkers realized we were out. They were trying to rig regular ground coffee into old discarded K-pods, so my co-worker ducked outside to call me and beg me to stop at the grocery store to grab a pack on the way to work. I drink coffee most mornings because it is cold in the office, but I was surprised to see how outraged and upset everyone was that we were out.

    1. Snark*

      People get weirdly helpless and irrational when something like this happens. Any single one of them could have been like “y’all be cool, I’m going to head over to Wally World and pick up a case of k-cups” and taken care of things. But no.

    2. LiveAndLetDie*

      It’s amazing how useless people appear to get without their coffee fix. We once had a k-cup delivery get delayed to *later that afternoon* and in the interim we ran out–the boss got so many complaints that he sent our office admin to Costco to buy k-cups for a 2-3 hour window.

      1. NewBoss2016*

        I’m not gonna lie…that happened the 2nd time we ran out. UPS delivers around 2pm, and we only had a handful of k-cups left after the morning rush, so they sent someone to the store. There were whispers of a second revolt.

    3. Aunt Vixen*

      Remember that scene in Airplane! 2 where the crew is telling the passengers about everything that’s going wrong?

      ELAINE: Please, ladies and gentlemen, please calm down. Listen to me. We’ve been thrown off course just a tad.
      WOMAN: What exactly is a “tad”?
      ELAINE: In space terms, that’s about half a million miles.
      PASSENGERS nod and continue listening.
      ELAINE: The bumps you feel are car-sized asteroids smashing into the hull of the ship.
      PASSENGERS discuss this calmly.
      ELAINE: Also, we’re heading right for the sun and we can’t seem to change course.
      PASSENGERS put on sunglasses.
      MAN: Miss, are you telling us absolutely everything?
      ELAINE: Not exactly. We’re also out of coffee.
      RIOT.

  74. Rusty Shackelford*

    I don’t drink coffee, so instead I’m going to complain about the fact that if you don’t drink coffee, you’re just SOL. No one I’ve ever worked for felt they had to provide tea or soft drinks to people who also need caffeine but don’t like coffee. No one ever insists on ordering any other beverages for meetings. It’s coffee or nothing.

    1. Snark*

      SECONDED SO HARD. I’ll drink a really good cortado or latte with pleasure, but I’m a tea guy. Just a carafe of hot water and some Lipton, at least, please.

        2. Birch*

          It’s like PG tips bags though. Fine for the tea equivalent of Folgers, but you might as well just bring something nice from home.

          1. IHaveANiceCat*

            PG Tips is way better than anything you get in us, sadly. I keep PG tips and Yorkshire tea in my house.

            2. Snark*

              Hwah? You can get PG Tips fairly readily, and a wide variety of decent quality black teas at any decent supermarket in the US.

            3. LiveAndLetDie*

              No idea which parts of the US you’ve been to, but we actually have a massive selection of teas from all over the world readily available in most large supermarket chains. I’ve never had trouble finding good tea here.

            4. Fur Princess*

              You can buy British PG Tips at an ethnic Indian market. That’s what I do when I’m missing the London project.

          2. LDN Layabout*

            Our office gets giant bags of Yorkshire tea and a selection of Twinings in. Not fancy, but it’s good office tea.

            1. MsSolo*

              No lie, I’ve got one of those giant bags of Yorkshire tea at home. It just makes economic sense!

              Never been fussed about Twinings, especially their everyday brew. I don’t like PG Tips (too tannic for me) but I find Twinings every day to be on a par with supermarket own brand. Like, I’d rather just by Sainsbury’s red label tea, if I want an inoffensive cuppa.

        3. Marillenbaum*

          I dream of an office tea trolley. I can have my white without and a couple of rich tea biscuits, as intended.

      2. JaneB*

        Not hot water and Lipton’s bags, ACTUAL TEA… you should come to the UK and try the real stuff (I really disliked Lipton’s tea, which I don’t think I ever see on the U.K. but encounter a lot overseas, until I realised the issue was the water temp…)

        1. Rusty Shackelford*

          My favorite is Twining’s chai. I also had some really good Red Fruits flavor in Paris, which apparently isn’t a thing in the US?

      2. Xarcady*

        That is one of the nice things about where I work now. Coffee, tea and hot chocolate are free and abundant.

    3. Detective Amy Santiago*

      One of my biggest pet peeves as a tea drinker is that in some restaurants, you get a thing of hot water and one tea bag, but coffee drinkers get unlimited cups.

      Also, the quality of tea that *is* usually provided in an office is terrible. I’d rather bring my own.

      2. fposte*

        One nice thing for tea drinkers at our office is that the hot water spout on the coffeemaker is still free, even though they don’t provide coffee any more. So no restaurant body-temp water problem!

      3. Bay*

        Try asking for more water. My roomie does that as a matter of course to brew a second cup and just acting natural, ends up getting it most of the time without extra charge. I would never have thought to ask.

        1. nym*

          Yeah, I do that too – set my teabag off to the side of my plate and when the server-person asks if there’s anything else we need, “could I get another cup of hot water, please?” Never a question, never a confusion, and I never get charged for more than one cuppa. There was one place I used to be a regular at that after a while, our server would just bring me an extra hot water (it always came in a little one-cup pitcher to the side of my mug) when she brought our food out, because she knew that was about when I’d be finishing my first cup and I was gonna ask, so she was saving herself a trip to the kitchen.

          A colleague of mine also orders hot water in restaurants in the winter, instead of ice water. She sometimes gets funny looks, but they always bring it to her without charge!

    4. CBE*

      YES, YES, YES.
      I attended a work lunch/afternoon long meeting once where they had coffee and iced tea to drink, and that was IT.
      I was on a medication where I couldn’t have caffeine at the time, and they didn’t even have WATER to drink.

      2. chocolate lover*

        I once went to a conference in a hotel in Atlanta for a few days. At lunch, there was coffee, tea, soda, and water. Get to dinner the first night, and there’s only – sweet iced tea. I know it’s Georgia but if you had soda at lunch, why couldn’t you have it at dinner to? And I had to grab a waitstaff member to even get me some water.

        The second day, I grabbed a soda can while at lunch and just brought it to dinner with me.

    6. Al Lo*

      My dad didn’t drink coffee when I was a kid, and he used to get so frustrated that (in those days) restaurants offered unlimited refills on coffee but not on soft drinks. Coke is his poison of choice and he was so happy when bottomless drinks became the default.

    7. Enough*

      My husband has never drunk coffee and is very appreciative when soda is supplied. And while I’d drink cofee I prefer a coke.

    8. TootsNYC*

      I used to get so annoyed at the Women’s Ministries organizers at my church, because the ONLY beverage they would provide would be coffee. And at the time, I didn’t drink it. Of course I could get my own water, but it wasn’t that welcoming.

    9. LBK*

      My office has the tea drinkers covered! We have both tea packets that work in the fancy coffee machine and regular tea bags to brew normally. Soda has to be bought in the cafeteria, though.

    11. Fiennes*

      This drives me batty. You can have fully caffeinated coffee OR a small styrofoam cup of water, the end. It’s really irritating, especially when it happens in contexts where you’re not free to go off and get your own thing (conferences, mainly).

  75. Snark*

    I don’t know if this really qualifies, but there was a woman in my last office who used my electric tea kettle – mine, purchased with my own money – to make hot chocolate one day, left it dirty with crud burned onto the heating element over the weekend, and then had the weapons-grade gall to say “well, if it’s in the community kitchen, it’s community property” and in the next breath refuse to clean it.

    2. TheCupcakeCounter*

      Did it “accidentally” bounce off her head at any point? That would have happened had it been my kettle. Completely an accident of course.

    4. LBK*

      Having attempted to clean one of those after my own foolish attempt to make hot chocolate in it, that is super gross.

      (I learned my lesson: mix the hot chocolate in the mug, not in the kettle.)

    5. Tongue Cluckin' Grammarian*

      Oh, it would be on! Like, full-out physical warfare.

      I’m a tea-drinker too, and when our water dispenser (hooked up to the plumbing, has filters, gives cold and hot water, etc) went down and we had to wait weeks for the company we contracted with to replace it (they did provide bottled water in the meantime at least), I brought in my own electric kettle because microwaved water makes the tea taste funny. I told nobody it existed in my office because I knew somebody would muck it up and refuse to clean up after themselves.

    6. Rusty Shackelford*

      It’s community property, so she can use it. But it belongs to you, so you have to clean it. Gotta admit, her logic is flawless.

  76. Bunny Girl*

    I used to work in law enforcement administration. The sergeant and I would get in to the office around the same time and I swear we would race to get to the coffee pot every morning. I like my coffee strong, but I did dial it down a few notches so it was drinkable for both of us. When he made coffee, it was almost completely clear and just lightly tinged brown.

    The fun really started when my boyfriend got me “the strongest coffee in the world” for Christmas. It was seriously heavy stuff. Our overnight guys would drink it and practically rattle off their chairs writing a report. We ended up mixing it half and half with our other coffee grounds.

  77. CatCat*

    ExJob had two water clubs each serving the break room on opposite sides of the very large floor of the building. The water clubs collected monthly dues and paid for the deliveries to the water. Some people liked having the water because it was filtered, some people liked having it because the dispenser gave hot water on demand. Seemed to work well for everyone who wanted to participate.

    The Organization decided to go on a workplace wellness kick and installed water filters on every break room tap to encourage people to drink more water. No one asked for these filters to be installed on our floor, it was just a fiat from above and they were installed. Then the wellness program people sent out an email excitedly telling people the filters had been installed. This was all fine, except that employees were responsible for replacing the filtration parts. These filtration replacements were like $10 a pop. So we all just let the indicator lights turn red on the filters and never replaced the filtration parts. Because everyone who wanted filtered water was already in the water club. And everyone who didn’t care about filtered water just kept using the tap. Pretty sure no one was encouraged to adjust their intake of water based on the installation of filters that no one asked for or seemed to want.

  78. admin amber*

    From the woman who complained about the smell of coffee to spoiled engineers who had a fancy machine that made all kinds of drinks, people are just crybabies. The engineers constantly complained the machine was empty, but when I went in to service it god forbid they are trying to get coffee. Mind you I took care of the machine in the late afternoon. It requires opening the machine up to refill the beans, cocoa, creamer and any cleaning. It took time to do all of this and do it neatly. That office had the biggest bunch of jerks I have ever worked with.

  79. Free Meerkats*

    Way back in the Ford/Carter administrations I was a nuclear operator on the USS Enterprise. The engineering spaces’ (each engine room and each reactor engineering space had their own) coffee was brewed in huge (60 or 72 cup) percolators that would sit gurgling away until they were empty. During normal sea operations, a pot would last about 6 hours; in port on a weekend, it might last three days. And this was brewed from the 5-pound rectangular cans of coffee the Navy supplied. It wasn’t until years later that I acquired the taste for decent coffee.

    The biggest kerfuffle I remember was when someone new to the fleet decided the coffee pot was gross and scrubbed that thing clean to shiny metal. Judging from the condition of the outside of the pot, that pot may have been on the ship since it was commissioned. He was on the Senior Chief’s shit list from that day until the SC left the ship. When there was a dirty job that needed to be done, he got it. By the time I left the ship in ’80, the coffee from that pot still didn’t taste quite right.

    2. zora*

      Love this story. My dad was on a diesel sub a bit earlier than you, but he’s never told me about the coffee situation there, even though we are a family of coffee nerds. I’m going to ask him!

      1. IForgetWhatNameIUsedBefore*

        My friend was a hardcore coffee fiend for a long time and we used to joke that her coffee was so strong/thick that you could spread it on toast, like peanut butter.

  80. Apocalypse How*

    My dad was a middle school teacher. As the first one in the building most days, he was usually the one to get the pot of coffee going. I think at some point, a group of teachers wrote a note on the coffee maker that requested using half the number of scoops that he normally used.

    Then . . . my dad’s coffee sent someone to the hospital. Another teacher drank a cup from a pot that my dad made, and he started getting heart palpitations. This guy went to the school nurse, who suspected that he was having a heart attack. She called 911 and the teacher got taken to the hospital in an ambulance. Testing revealed that he thankfully hadn’t had a heart attack. He was just REALLY not used to the strength of my dad’s coffee. My dad got some sort of comedic “Dumb Ass” award for doing the stupidest action that month. I think he slowly gave up coffee making at work after that.

    2. Llama Grooming Coordinator*

      I think your dad and me could be very good friends.

      (Also, that is…impressive. At least the teacher was okay!)

    3. Jennifer Thneed*

      FFS! All they had to do was add hot water! The resulting coffee would have been better than regular strength because it wouldn’t get over-extracted. (Like an Americano. I’m in charge of coffee in my home and I make it as strong as my wife likes it, and then I add some water to mine. Everyone is happy.)

      I, too, would enjoy drinking coffee with your dad.

  81. hbc*

    My company makes coffee machines so we have a bunch of them, and we set up a cleaning rotation which included management. One of the management guys decides they’re not being cleaned well enough and gives the whole place a cleaning training. He spent most of the session condescendingly telling people how they should be grateful for the super high quality beans “we” provide (it ain’t his money, and he’s the coffee snob who insisted we upgrade), but still found time to make several mistakes running the procedure and get corrected by the hourly peons he was insulting.

    A few months later, after him managing not to be around for his cleaning days, the rotation went away.

    1. Fur Princess*

      Wait, hbc, are you Alison’s thoretical teapot inspector, only for coffee and that’s how she preserved your anonymity? OK, cat’s out of the bag now!

    2. Bahahaha*

      When I worked in a small office with communal, employer-provided coffee, the idea was “you kill it, you fill it.” There was one VP who seemed to think he was above this and would brazenly take the last of the coffee, or leave just a tiny amount, right in front of people. On the other hand, if the CEO poured himself some but knew there wasn’t a full cup left, he would walk around and see if anyone would take a top-up so he could make the next pot.

  82. Business Manager*

    Not at my work, but my partner and one of my closest friends work at the same small nonprofit. Apparently, my partner (who does not drink coffee) sets up the coffee machine every morning for those who do, so all they have to do is hit ‘run’ when they get in.

    I picked a good one.

  83. NGL*

    We had an attempted water coup at an old job. It was a small office, less than 10 people. Water was supplied via a Brita pitcher. A new person came in with medical needs that meant he needed to be drinking water constantly throughout the day, and the Brita pitcher just wasn’t cutting it for him. He would go through water faster than the filter could refill the pitcher, especially if anyone else also had water. He also thought it was disgusting how people could leave the pitcher half filled on days he wasn’t there, because if the filter isn’t constantly kept wet it gets moldy (allegedly). So he started sending emails trying to get the whole office to band together and force the boss to buy an actual water dispenser. We all declined, since it was already obvious the boss didn’t like this guy, and the boss was known for holding grudges. No one was willing to go out on a limb for him in the name of water.

    1. Jules the 3rd*

      Yeah… This is where New Person needs to supplement with some water from home. I have 3 24 oz metal water bottles, usually take one in a day.

  84. seejay*

    One of our clients that we built software for is a famous, popular coffee manufacturer. They gave us a very expensive coffee machine. There were signs up next to the machine indicating how to use it (ie, how to load the custom shaped coffee pods) and also the type of water to use in it.

    Invariably, someone busted the machine. I’m not sure if they used the wrong type of water or what, but part of what broke the machine was putting in a second coffee pod and when they machine wouldn’t close, they tried to force it down, thus breaking the handle. We got a second machine, either the company donated another one to us or the company bought another expensive machine to replace the old one, and there was an even bigger sign up with instructions on HOW TO LOAD A POD INTO THE MACHINE AND CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS ON NOT FORCING IT IF THERE’S AN EMPTY POD IN. Oh, and another call-out about not putting the incorrect water in the machine cause that would also bust the machine. And if you didn’t know how to load/use the damn machine, ask someone else to do it.

    There was also a very clear call out that if someone broke the machine, we wouldn’t be getting another one.

    There was a lot of drama centred around that coffee machine because people *LOVED* and went kookoo bananas for that particular brand of coffee. I really didn’t care because I don’t drink coffee and couldn’t be buggered if it broke or not but hooo boy were people mad about it getting busted and the threat of it not getting replaced.

  85. Green Goose*

    I taught at a business English language academy in Seoul for two years. It was a large, well-known corporation and the classes were very expensive. We taught mostly business people. I think students were paying about $60/hr to study there. Korea is known for being a big coffee drinking culture with many great coffee options, so…
    At our office we opened at 6:30am and closed at 9:30pm and the office managers would use the same coffee grinds all day. And the “creamer” was a Costco size jar of white powder that would get really dirty and then left out for months looking less and less appealing by the day. It was disgusting. By early afternoon the coffee was a translucent beige. I think I drank the coffee on my morning shirt for the first week or so and then stopped. I’d go to a local cafe and buy coffees there.
    The worst was fielding questions from my students about the extrememly unacceptable coffee situation. That corporation made so much money, (They charged $60/hr for my classes but paid me $18.50) so it was just really awful that they skimped so much on coffee. I haven’t worked there in years and I can still taste how bad that coffee was when I think about it.

  86. Xarcady*

    LastJob had a coffee club. I was not a member.

    There was one coffee maker. There were coffee wars over caffeinated vs. decaf coffee. Regular coffee vs. flavored coffee. Regular caffeinated vs. flavored decaf.

    This was slightly mitigated when the company expanded to another floor of the building and we gained a second break room and a second coffee maker. One floor’s coffee maker was designated for decaf only, and the other for caffeinated. The flavored vs. regular battle waged on.

    Two employees ended up getting disciplined (separately) for spending too much time each day “making coffee.” They were in the kitchen for hours, cleaning the carafe, waiting for coffee to brew, organizing the containers of coffee, walking around polling people about what flavor of coffee to try next.

    But the main battle was who made the first pot of coffee in the morning. The person who had always done this left, and no one stepped up to fill his shoes. Or rather, someone did, but everyone complained about their coffee–too weak, too strong, too something. On a daily basis. Or they didn’t make the coffee early enough for others to come in and immediately get their first cup of the day.

    I finally started making the coffee every morning because I was one of the first into the office. I do not drink coffee, but it was worth it just to shut them all up. I was tired of hearing about coffee.

    All this drama in a company of 32 people, 19 of whom were in the coffee club. It was unreal.

    1. synchrojo*

      a former office of mine also had separate flavored/unflavored coffee clubs. with separate coffee makers. and coffee grinders. in the same kitchen.

    2. AsItIs*

      Decades and decades ago worked at a place with about six people in an off-site department. There was a coffee club. I don’t drink coffee but was expected to pay in because “everyone pays in and it wouldn’t be fair” if I didn’t too! I was on the lowest salary but expected to supplement their coffee habit!!!

  87. whistle*

    My company staffs personnel at federal installations, so our employees are contractors working alongside Government employees, and they do not get the same privileges the Government employees do. We had a group of employees who asked if they could bring in a coffee maker and coffee for the contractors to use since contractors couldn’t take the coffee supplied by the Government. They were told they couldn’t use the Government’s water to brew the coffee. When they indicated they would bring in their own bottled water to use, they were still told no because they couldn’t use the Government’s electricity. (And they wonder why we have trouble staffing that service…)

      1. FrontRangeOy*

        A government manager who “hates” contracted employees, that’s who. My spouse saw this type of nonsense pretty regularly – have to keep your lunch in the car because the contractors can’t use the government fridge. Have to eat your lunch cold, because you can’t use the government microwave, etc. It’s taking the rules about separating public and private funds and pushing them about 5 steps beyond what any reasonable person would ever imagine.

      1. Freddy Fed*

        Exactly! I’m a 20+ year fed and coffee is never, ever supplied. We have clubs just like everyone else.

        1. poolgirl*

          I’m a contractor working at a large government facility, and our biggest problem is government employees stealing our lunches out of the refrigerator. To be fair some of my co-workers do it also.

  88. Bagpuss*

    Not a war, but I once had a colleague throw out my tea.
    We have a tiny kitchen area, and tea, coffee, milk and sugar are provided. However, if you want anything fancy you bring it yourself. I like Darjeeling, so I brought in my own tin of tea (which was clearly labelled with my name and what was in the tin) .

    Colleague did a rage-clean of the kitchen and binned anything she thought was old t out of date… including my tin full of expensive, quality, tea.

    (In fairness, she was very apologetic afterwards, but I’m still slightly baffled that she didn’t think to ask, given it was labelled)

    1. Book Badger*

      I’m just trying to grasp the logic of throwing out tea at all. Milk, sure, that can go bad, but sugar, tea, and coffee? They’re not going to expire! Why toss them out?

        1. Marillenbaum*

          True, but that’s hardly the same as going moldy, which is a reasonable ground for tossing something.

  89. John Payton*

    My story is about the signs about coffee.

    I work in a 24/7 office. The first sign to show up was a printed reminder to everyone to make a fresh pot when they empty one. When the sign had been up for a couple of months, I added a handwritten post-it which read: “On off-shifts too!” The sign disappeared within a day.

    The second printed sign to appear implored everyone to refrain from dispensing hot water for tea or cocoa while coffee is brewing. The reason for this, apparently, was that it would leave insufficient hot water to brew a full pot. But this is not how these coffeemakers work; they dispense hot water by a timer, and the reservoir holds more than enough. So I added a handwritten note, saying simply, “No, it doesn’t!” This time, the sign stayed up a whole week. Maybe to verify.

    The third sign asked everyone to use two coffee filters when brewing – one large and one small. This was because the filters tend to collapse inward and then the grounds get into the airpot. I don’t really care b/c I always use a top filter anyway – but the baskets are designed so that if you use the correct size filter, then a little wire arrangement holds it in place. They’d bought extra large filters, which caused the problem in the first place. This time I didn’t write any notes. Somebody else figured it out on their own.

  90. EA-or-Maid?*

    Not a war.. but this literally just happened (and has happened many times before): I am in the kitchen making myself a quick breakfast, not yet on the clock. Our CFO comes in and says ” Can I leave these with you [3 dirty coffee mugs]? I don’t really now how all this works.” You’re the CFO and don’t know how a dishwasher works. Right on, my good man.

    1. Snickerdoodle*

      I understood that as he doesn’t know how to respect others.

      Just leave them in the sink. “Oh, I don’t know how all this works either.”

    2. Peaches*

      Ugh, that’s super annoying!

      It reminds me of when Ryan on the office tells Pam that he doesn’t know how to clean the microwave and therefore “she’d better handle it.”

    4. OlympiasEpiriot*

      I once got something like that at a field office. (I’m in construction. I’m female. I also was in a trade before going to university and getting the degree that means I can do my current job. When I see something I don’t like in the hole, I remind the guys I can probably do their job better.)

      I got a mouth on me…my response was “I don’t know how to do that. I’ve got a man in a Speedo who comes to my place to clean up after me.”

      1. Snickerdoodle*

        Excellent. This is now my default response next time a man expects me to clean up after him.

        2. OlympiasEpiriot*

          Oh, I just realized you might have meant that to be the next thing I would have said…

          Nope, that guy was not my type and, uh, well, wouldn’t have looked good in a Speedo.

    5. The OG Anonsie*

      What is it about a certain kind of man* that tries to skirt doing basic human functions by pretending they just don’t know how to do it? Like dude, how do you not feel like a complete and utter moron gesturing some dishes towards a sink and going “How work?? How cleaning work??” I get that they’re trying to foist the responsibility off onto someone else and they know good and god damn well how to wash a dish, but how do are they not just embarrassed to try and play it like this?

      *Yeah I’m specifying the trend, there are exceptions to everything, if you have the impulse to interject as if I have asserted an absolute truth of the universe please feel free to just keep it.

      1. Student*

        Just one case, but – my brother learned this from my mother. My mother (and father) felt that cleaning was woman’s work. My mother taught me how to clean up. My mother required that I clean up after my brother. My mother taught my brother that women should do this for him, and he should never learn to do it himself. Her thinking was that any woman who wouldn’t clean up after a man didn’t deserve to be around her precious little boy.

        My brother, to my parent’s great surprise and frustration, hasn’t ever managed any sort of romantic relationship and is now in his thirties. I can’t imagine why.

        1. starsaphire*

          Your brother’s clone apparently married my ex-roommate. The only person in the house without a job (the rest of us had full-time jobs and at least one side gig), and he’d just walk into the kitchen, deposit his dirty dishes, and disappear.

          I miss her, but I was never so glad to see the back of someone as that dude.

        2. IForgetWhatNameIUsedBefore*

          My husband knows how to cook, clean, wash clothes, everything…and just DOES it.*

          He works with a ton of “mommy/wife cleaned up after them” types, and gets SO PISSED because they leave dishes, food, and trash all over the break room. The only women there are in the front office and don’t use that break room, so we have no idea who they expect to be cleaning up after them.

          *and if this wasn’t true, he would never have lasted long enough to *become* my husband lol

      2. WashingDishesCanBeCarthartic*

        I was taught very well by my parents that a man should not only clean up after himself but he should also clean up after his wife, in our house generally my wife cooks and I clean up. I was taught that if someone was kind enough to cook a meal for you , you should show your appreciation by doing the clean up. For the men who claim this to be “women’s work”, if I am reading you right you believe that means it is simplistic in nature and therefore beneath you, if it’s so simplistic then you should darn well be able to do it! I have tried to teach my step daughters that a man should do these things ( however they don’t do it them selves :( ) and now that I am raising my step grandson, he will be taught how to clean, cook, even sew if I can get the machine working again !

    6. zora*

      There are people in my office that just pile mugs in the sink even though there is a VERY LARGE sign clearly telling them to put dirty mugs in the bus bins next to the sink (which the cleaning staff then put in the dishwasher) When I can get the timing right, as someone is reaching for the sink, I just lightly say “Oh, actually, those go over here!” and point out the bins. I love how eyerolly some people get when I do that, but I just smile and walk away.

      That’s what I would have done with this CFO “oh, you can just put them in the dishwasher, so easy!!” and pointed it out to him. It takes practice to have this ready to go when I’m surprised in the moment, but omg it feels so good!!

    7. IForgetWhatNameIUsedBefore*

      Knowing me, something like, ‘oh no problem, there’s plenty of room in the sink” would have popped out before I had a chance to think. And not even to be intentionally snarky, but as a polite acknowledgement that it was ok to leave them there.
      Because it wouldn’t even occur to he expected me to wash them.

  91. Snickerdoodle*

    These stories make me very glad I’m a tea drinker. I keep a small electric kettle at my desk along with a sugar dispenser and a small card catalog for teabags. Happily, our office is mostly free from petty theft, and my cube is in a fairly quiet area. Sitting ten feet away from HR and the division director probably helps.

  92. Trout 'Waver*

    I had a coworker who would start a pot of coffee, set his cup in place of the pot and grab the first cup of coffee. For those of you not familiar with drip coffee pots, 90% of the flavor comes from the first cup to go through the grounds. So he was ruining an entire pot of coffee for everyone else to save 2 minutes of waiting on his end.

    1. Dove*

      Not just 90% of the flavour – 90% of the caffeine, too! Which makes the pot doubly ruined, and his one precious cup probably a health hazard!

  93. Archie Goodwin*

    I don’t participate in the office coffee wars…I stick to soda. (Not milk, shockingly. Sorry, Fritz.)

    Now, if anyone has any stories of Diet Coke-related mishaps, I’d love to hear ’em. Me, I don’t got any.

    1. TheCupcakeCounter*

      My company had a regional meeting and food and soda was brought in for those attending. Mid-way through the day the refrigerator reserved for that type of stuff stopped working so the admin moved all of the food to one of the refrigerators in the break room. She sent an all-staff email and put up signs apologizing for the inconvenience and asking people not to eat/drink the stuffs purchased for the 2-day meeting. When time came to set up she went to the fridge and found that both cases of Diet Coke were missing (all of the other soda was there).
      It took a while but it eventually came out that a pissed off employee took them because they didn’t think it was fair that the company provided coffee, tea bags, a variety of sugars, powdered creamer, hot cocoa, and cappuccino for employees but not sodas (which was all they drank).

    2. The JMP*

      We had a Diet Coke can explode in the freezer once. The receptionist, whose job it was to clean the fridge/freezer monthly, was understandably not happy.

      1. The New Wanderer*

        I did that once – forgot about the can in the freezer on a Friday, came back Monday, immediately cleaned the mess. One of my coworkers saw me at it and said he’d done the same thing months ago (and also cleaned it up himself). It’s probably the only time the freezer ever gets cleaned out, so at least some good came out of it!

    3. Linyarri*

      Well, not a Diet Coke Mishap but…
      I was once stationed on an island & our supply chain was disrupted due to a volcano. We did not get supplies for 8 weeks. In less than 3 weeks all caffeine and alcohol was gone. No Coffee, No Tea, No Caffeinated Soda. Thankfully the Brits come by a few weeks after that (about 6 weeks in) and dropped of a couple of hundred cases of beer to tide us over (but still no caffeine).
      Amazing how much even a little bit of caffeine affects you after 6 weeks without.

    4. Code Monkey, the SQL*

      I once attended a church group which had a house on campus for things like meetings. It also held the campus minister’s office. You could trace his movements throughout the day based on the trail of empty/partially empty diet Coke cans.

      In his defense, he was 90% he had ADHD, so we didn’t mind the very common – “clank/splat. Dave! Found your coke!”

    5. Greg M.*

      well there were the multiple coworkers who thought it was their place to lecture me on drinking diet pop who were told to STFU and have helped create my policy of absolutely 0 discussion on what I eat and drink. They’d make up crap about how bad it is and then go out for a smoke.

      1. IForgetWhatNameIUsedBefore*

        I can do you one better! One of our last roommates refused to heat food in the microwave “it kills the nutrients-so unhealthy!” or store food in our Tupperware “plastic has chemicals!” all of which would affect his (real) serious illness…but he secretly smoked cigarettes.

    6. MKC8*

      I think this just means that you don’t have Coke vs Pepsi factions in your office (or the sub-group of Diet Coke vs. Coke Zero).

      1. KayEss*

        I definitely got envious looks and demands of “where did you get that?” whenever I brought my own can of Coke to a work lunch in the campus dining hall… a strictly Pepsi establishment.

    7. JustaTech*

      At one point one of the guys in my office thought it would be funny to tell the company that fills our soda machines (subsidized to a quarter a can) that what we really, really, really wanted was Cherry Coke Zero.
      So we got 4 buttons of Cherry Coke Zero, and lost plain Coke Zero, Talking Rain (unsweetened fizzy water) and diet coke.
      I thought my boss was going to explode. And it took *weeks* to get everything sorted back out again.

    8. Close Bracket*

      I was touring a new home community. The realtor was about to go on site with another potential buyer, so she told me to feel free to tour the model and help myself to water from the fridge. I opened the fridge, saw it was stocked with both water and Diet Coke, and took a Diet Coke. When she got back, the look on her face told me that the invitation to have water extended only to water, and that the Diet Coke was obviously her personal supply. I felt bad.

    9. KayEss*

      I have had a pretty strict two-a-day Diet Coke habit for years–one first thing in the morning, and one with lunch. I generally just bring both cans with me daily, rather than fight over communal fridge space.

      One office I worked in had a landlord who did not elect to contract with the city for recycling services, so while we could take the office trash out to the dumpster, any plastic/cans/glass recycling we wanted to do literally had to be personally carted home to someone’s home recycling bin. When I was hired, my Diet Coke habit caused the amount of recyclable waste the office produced to skyrocket, frequently filling the the small bin we used mid-week and not leaving space for other people’s waste. (It was a small office.) I felt pretty bad about this, so I started just keeping my cans at my desk and taking them home with me on Fridays.

      … You would not believe the amount of shit coworkers who think nothing of drinking 5+ cups of coffee per day will give you for having 6-8 empty Diet Coke cans at your desk. I was the butt of snide comments for basically my entire tenure there. I don’t exactly remember that office environment with fond regret.

    10. Frinkfrink*

      At a former job, one coworker was a Diet Coke addict who always threw her cans away in the trash instead of the recycling bin (which was farther away). Anytime someone mentioned the existence of the recycling bin to her or, even worse, silently fished the cans out of her trash to transport to the recycling bin was treated to a somewhat confusing lecture on humanity’s impact on the planet that summed up to: as she and her husband chose not to have kids, she got a Get Out Of Recycling Free card. As my desk was closest to hers, I periodically got treated to the lecture when she spotted me putting items in the recycling bin.

      Eventually something happened in the housekeeping department and the housekeepers started putting the stuff from the recycling and trash bins in the same trash bags, which pleased her no end.

      1. DJ*

        That is so odd. Even ani-recycling people agree that aluminum is the one exception. It is because the energy to recycle is so much less than extracting the one.

  94. Sparkles*

    So I work in a government office building that has 26 floors. They are slowly remodeling each floor every few years and since we are one of the top floors, the remodel hasn’t gotten to us yet. That being said, they warn us to not drink the tap water, so they have provided us with a water cooler. The catch is that we have to pay to be in this water club. Which is $5 a paycheck. $10 a month. Our other option is to run down to one of the first floors to get water from the filtered drinking fountains. But we are not allowed to leave the floor unless we are clocking out on break. I drink a lot of water, and every time I was leaving the floor the receptionist was writing my name down (they keep tabs of all the employees as they come and go off the floor). So I brought a Brita water pitcher and keep it on my desk. I was told that I am “unprofessional” because the public can see it. I said when I am able to drink clean water for free I will get rid of my pitcher.

  95. sugarplum*

    I consider myself fortunate to never have been in any coffee wars, but I often ask myself, Self: We’re a multi-billion-dollar company, why can’t we have decent coffee?! In the cafeteria, which you have to pay for, it’s not great, but what’s freely available in the office kitchens is TERRIBLE.

    On the upside, I can almost always talk myself out of the ill-advised late afternoon cup because I know it will be gross. Still.

  96. Peaches*

    I don’t drink the coffee at work (I’m admittedly a coffee snob and will not drink the Yuban bulk coffee and N’Joy creamer. I happily make my cup on my Ninja Coffee Maker at home).

    Anyway, my coworker Sue is the usual office coffee maker in the morning. She makes it about 80% of the time in the A.M. However, another coworker, Al, will start the coffee when he gets to the pot before Sue has started it. On multiple occasions, Sue has witnessed Al starting a new pot OVER TOP of the remaining, cold leftover coffee from the day before (when Sue makes the coffee, she obviously washes the pot out beforehand like a normal person!) Sue feels bad dumping out Al’s pot, so she just drinks the new/old mixed together coffee. Many others unknowingly drink it! I guess no one feels comfortable asking Al to dump out the old stuff before making a pot.

  97. International Staff*

    These aren’t really a coffee war, per se, but def coffee culture. I work in a field office for an international NGO. Nescafe is king here and while I drink it, I believe it’s mainly chemicals and I hate it. Actually, everyone in the office liked a certain, more ‘classy’ instant coffee and were livid when it stopped showing up in the instant coffee resupply. Eventually, one of the staff got in touch with the production company and sent out an office-wide email that the coffee had been discontinued. People still grumble about it 6 months later.

    The Director of the office loves nice coffee and he has a fancy espresso machine in his office. He’s notorious for his love of coffee… like even when I’m at HQ, people give me bags of beans to bring back to him. If he likes you, he invites you to coffee and chats with you for a long time. But that’s just it — if he likes you! He has a group of men that join in his office for coffee every morning, even if he’s out of office. We call it the Boys Coffee Club. And they wonder why the women on staff are dissatisfied with their professional development and movement within the organization…

    1. gingerbird*

      I always find it odd that Nescafe is popular abroad but not the US. You’d think it’d be big in America, the land of fast food, but no.

      1. International Staff*

        We border with a coffee-producing country, and yet it’s Nescafe all the way! If you order it ‘au lait’, it’s about 1/2 c of sweetened condensed milk.

      2. Lily Rowan*

        I think the Nescafe in other countries is actually better than the Nescafe in the US! But that may be false memories.

        1. zora*

          It is definitely different. My aunt who lives in France exclusively drinks Nescafe, and when I have it at her house it is miles better than the stuff I can get here. I’ve even tried really hard to find the exact kind she gets, but I have not been able to find it anywhere, not even on Amazon. It’s so weird to me.

    2. Nescafe!!*

      My jar of Nescafe Classico Dark Roast in my desk at work has the ingredients listed: 100% coffee

      There’s literally no other ingredient. Are there other Nescafe products that are pre-sweetened or flavored?

      1. zora*

        The Nescafe my aunt drinks in France is little packets, and they are labelled “Capuccino” and it comes out creamy with foam on top when you mix it with the hot water. I think it is mostly chemicals but it’s also delicious. Way better than any instant coffee I can find in the US.

    3. FrontRangeOy*

      My morning cup is Nescafe, the one with cinnamon in it, and half n half. I like it so much I keep a jar at home and one at work.

      One evening (my work involves evening weekend meal service and performing arts), I caught a teenage busser planning to make decaf coffee with my Nescafe/cinnamon . . . . . . it does have an orange lid after all

    4. poodlepants*

      I had a Country Director do the exact same thing several years ago – he had a nespresso machine in his office and every morning “his” guys would gather in his office for coffee and chitchat. What mad the situation particularly infuriating was that he was also trying to implement a “no drinking coffee at your desk” rule for the rest of us in the office based on the tiny chance that someone may spill on an electrical outlet.

  98. gingerbird*

    My office has an instant coffee machine. Think a worse version of Keurig. Count your blessings.

  99. jah*

    Someone in my office once made coffee without using a filter. Fortunately it hasn’t happened again.

  100. Bill F*ckin' Murray*

    We have ongoing mugwars at our office. Some people are fine with using communal mugs, but several people bring in their own mugs so that they don’t have to think about germies (ME). You put your mug in the dishwasher that runs after we close and the receptionist unloads it in the morning before most people arrive. It seemed that no mug that I brought in would dissuade people from stealing it before I came in in the morning. Even the mug with one of my daughter’s baby photos! If I were out of the office for the day, I would get sneaky photos texted to me of my mug in other offices. :P

    1. Little Twelvetoes*

      I was once accused of stealing a coworker’s mug, because I happened to have the same Starbucks mug. Well, not an outright accusation, but more of “are you sure that’s your mug?” She eventually found her mug hiding on her desk. No apology to me, though.

  101. DontUseMyRealName*

    Let me set the scene. We work in a two-story building, in a completely open office layout. Even the owner of the company doesn’t have an office, just a desk on the 2nd floor. The only workspaces with doors are the main floor conference room, and HR. The kitchen area is on the 2nd floor, along with a majority of the workers, including the owner. We had a Bunn drip coffee brewer, hard plumbed into the water system, in the kitchen, along with two microwaves, and an instant hot water dispenser at the sink for tea. Our owner decided to discontinue supplying coffee for the office. Fine we said, we will buy our own supply of Folgers. This was deemed to be unacceptable. 2 Keurigs would be purchased, one for each floor, and we would have to supply our own K-cups, even the owner. The Bunn was not removed, however, because “someone might want to use it for hot water sometime.” It still sits in the corner, still connected to the water supply, and still plugged in/turned on 24/7, even though we are forbidden to brew coffee with it.
    Whenever a meeting is scheduled in the conference room with outside visitors, coffee is supplied. The company supplies K-cups and condiments for these guests. A coffee maker must be moved into the meeting room. The HR clerk, who also acts as our hostess, goes UPSTAIRS, where the majority of the staff work, takes “our” Keurig, and moves it downstairs to the 1st floor conference room so the guests can have their coffee. The coffeemaker used by the half-dozen workers 1st floor workers is left in place downstairs. It can take up to a week for the 2nd floor Keurig to be returned, meanwhile most of us have no access to coffee, even when we do buy our own K-cups. The kicker, the three workers in the HR suite ordered themselves a Mr. Coffee on the company dime. I’ve taken to brewing myself a pot at home, and bringing my trusty Stainless Steel Thermos, Every.Single.Day.

  102. JustaTech*

    At my first lab we had a shared coffee pot and an informal “coffee club”. As in we rotated who bought the coffee from Costco, and each person was in charge of their own creamer.
    We had one coffee drinker (the source of hundreds of WTF stories) who was so bad at making coffee he was permanently off coffee-making duty.
    Then it was his turn to buy coffee and he couldn’t find the regular stuff at Costco (they moved the grinder) so he bought Foldgers and made a pot. That coffee was so bad I thought my cream had gone off. So he was moved off coffee-buying as well.
    To make it up he decided to bring the sugar. Brown sugar, in an old plastic jar labeled “pork floss”.

      2. The OG Anonsie*

        It’s a preserved pork product (I usually see it labeled “pork sung”) that’s seasoned and dried and shaved into sort of flake-strings. The flaking is so fine it’s got kind of a cotton-candy texture, it’s a little salty and a lot sweet. It’s shelf stable so it’s dry stored in large jars that people reuse since they’re handy.

        It’s reaaaally tasty even though it neither sounds nor looks very good.

  103. jess*

    No real coffee war stories, but a funny anecdote: At my last office, we had lots of air pots but I think only one or two orange-lidded decaf ones. One day I came in and there was a regular airpot with a post-it on it that said “decalf”. I sort of chuckled to myself and left. A few hours later I came back in and someone *else* had amended it so that it now read, “decalf ate de grass” and I still think of it any time I see decaf coffee (spelled correctly or otherwise).

  104. Screw U Bilbo*

    At my work, I am the receptionist and in charge of making sure the coffee pots stay full. The employees here also are avid coffee drinkers so I like to make sure there is always at least one pot full. Back story: due to misuse of the coffee pots (glass) and the burners under them to keep them warm someone has spilled coffee on the burner and due to a temperature difference between the pot and the liquid (the pot was cooler than the coffee) the pot shattered. This has happened twice, leaving me to be some sort of coffee police. Fast forward in time. One day as I am making the coffee an employee walks in, lets call him Bilbo, and he sees that the coffee is being made but there is a full pot on the other burner. Same exact coffee type. Identical to the one that is being made. Bilbo knows this. He walked towards the pot that’s making acting like he is going to grab it while there is still a stream of coffee being poured. If he lifts the pot away there is going to be coffee spilled everywhere for the third time and I am NOT having that on my carpet. So I tell him that the coffee is being made and that it will be finished in a minute or two but the pot on top is the same kind of coffee. Bilbo paused. Looked me dead in the eyes. Grabbed the pot that was still being made OFF THE BURNER. Coffee is spilling everywhere while he leisurely pours his coffee like he doesn’t give two winks about it. He made eye contact the ENTIRE TIME. I was too stunned to do anything so I just stared, like are you serious right now dude?! Then he put the pot back on top of the burner without even cleaning anything! Just sets it right on top of the mess and it starts burning because the hot plate is on! He doesn’t even blink. He looked at me as he was walking out and goes, “Better get cleaning.”

    My god, it took all I had to not reach across my counter and grab that man and beat the ever-loving snot out of him.
    I was shaking I was so mad. Still am. Its been months.

    2. OlympiasEpiriot*

      I don’t know if Alison would agree, but that is just SO rude that if I’d been in your shoes, I’d have gone right to that a$$hole’s boss to complain.

      A person who does that — some Stephen Miller-level of class warfare — should not be allowed any use of the facilities.

      1. Screw U Bilbo*

        See, I would rather be slightly passive-aggressive and do something untraceable to get even. Where he works in the building the doors lock behind you when you leave for security reasons. He is notorious for leaving his keys in his office and leaving the door open. Its seen as a minor, but punishable, offense if you are found out leaving your keys places. The only other person that has keys to his door is the head boss, responsible for the rule about keys. When the timing is right and I pass his area when he is gone and I see his keys on his desk I am going to shut his door! MUAHAHAHAH!

        1. OlympiasEpiriot*

          Yeah, ok. But, for me, I’d want him to know that he cannot pi$$ me off or I will go after him. I like people to know who my wrath is coming from. This tends to reduce the mess directed my way on a day-to-day basis.

          It doesn’t help anything behind the scenes, but, most things don’t anyhow.

    3. Coconutty*

      but……why?? why are people so horrible? I probably WOULD have beat the ever-loving snot out of him!

    4. anyone out there but me*

      Oh my word. Just… no.

      At my old office job, we had an upper level staffer who would leave her empty mugs (and other dishes) for someone else to wash. I assumed she thought our receptionist was also the janitor. She continued to do this, even after I counseled her otherwise, until she was eventually fired for performance issues….

    6. StrawMeatloaf*

      Definitely a power play on his part. I might mention it to your boss as just something that happened, and if repeated incidents of him doing this type of crud to you continue, start jotting it down and telling about it.

    9. Non*

      I’m so sorry! I am so mad for you! I only READ this story and I want to wring that guy’s neck.

      I have never commented on this website before. But this is…so next level that I felt like I had to comment.

    11. AnonEMoose*

      All you’d have to do is make sure you got a jury composed of people who had either worked as executive assistants and/or those who’d worked customer service. They’d never convict.

      More seriously, wow, that guy was a Class A Jerk and I would absolutely have been talking to his boss and/or HR so fast he’d have been hearing the sonic boom from my passing.

      1. GH in SOCal*

        “sonic boom.” I like it.

        I don’t know if this would be effective, but I think I would have shut off the machine, poured both pots down the drain, and gone to *my* boss to explain why there would be no coffee until there was a reckoning.

        1. SarahKay*

          That would absolutely be justifiable homicide. Not to mention that I reckon there are a whole load of AAM readers who would give you a rock-solid alibi on this one!

  105. Coffee Justice*

    I worked in the museum industry with several dispersed departments (physically different building, but all in the same area). The coffee in my building, and most other buildings, was HORRIBLE – I am not a coffee snob, I’ll drink Folgers, but seriously this was next-level bad. We eventually found out that the main administrative building that included the more senior employees had unlimited very expensive coffee (fancier than Starbucks). This was justified because that office would sometimes entertain donors, but people really lost it. People were particularly irked with this explanation because we had to do certain things like dress up & limit our desk decorations in all offices just in case a mysterious donor made a surprise visit.

    Generally, I think this compounded on an existing sense of “us vs. them” that had developed because public records indicated there was a substantial pay discrepancy between senior level and jr. level employees. We were paid way below our market value and told not to complain (our max salary was capped around $50,000 and we all needed Masters degrees), while senior employees were being paid more than those at similar institutions in larger and in much bigger/more expensive cities. Our president was one of the highest paid people in the industry.

    The coffee wars devolved into a huge number of complaints, several all-office emails telling people that the coffee would not change and that we are “welcome to bring our own in”. Eventually they held an all staff meeting and announced the coffee at the main office would be downgraded to what everyone else is drinking. So, everybody lost. But it did make me feel a little better?

  106. There's Always Money in the Banana Stand*

    The CEO at my old job, who was not a coffee drinker, got all upset because someone had turned off the coffee pot at the end of the work day, but hadn’t dumped out the excess coffee in the carafe. So, he took away our “coffee privileges” and hid the coffee maker in an undisclosed location. I got sick of not having access to coffee at work real fast, so I brought in this old school one cup coffee maker that my mom had given to me, and kept it under my desk in my office. Well, the other coffee drinkers eventually found out about it, and my office slowly but surely became a secret coffee speakeasy. Eventually, the CEO found out and told me that I couldn’t have the coffee maker in my office anymore. But by that time, our HR person, who was a coffee drinker, had apparently found the hidden coffee pot and set it back up in the kitchen, without his permission. She never got in trouble, and he left it out for several months, until we got our “coffee privileges” stripped from us again.

  107. Ama*

    At my last job, our director insisted on purchasing a fancy Nespresso machine so he could always have fresh coffee for his guests, and of course because I was the admin who sat outside his office and greeted his guests, it became my responsibility. He did thankfully decree early on that aside from his special guests anyone else who wanted to use the coffee maker had to buy their own pods (we had two staff coffee breaks a day so there was plenty of free coffee around, just not quite as good). However, the Nespresso machine he bought had a feature that would allow you to do lattes and other drinks that involved dairy products by pouring milk into a certain compartment — which I knew would never be properly cleaned unless I did it, and I didn’t relish either cleaning up after my coworkers or the smell that would result from souring milk residue.

    So after carefully framing my argument to focus on the potential health risk of someone using an improperly cleaned diary compartment, I received the director’s blessing to declare that no one, under any circumstances, was allowed to use the dairy feature on the machine — if you wanted dairy in your coffee you had to pour it in separately. Although, to be honest, the biggest deterrent was probably not being able to use the machine for free — only two people other than myself ever bought their own Nespresso supply.

    1. GH in SOCal*

      I know that machine! We had someone bring one into an office where I worked — it was her spare. Like you, we agreed to not use the dairy compartment because no way would it ever be cleaned properly. I brought in a separate (and easy to rinse out ) Nespresso milk steamer. Our boss approved putting the capsules through petty cash. (And he loved the frothy cappucinos it would make.)

      I currently have the one with the dairy compartment in my own home, and it IS a hassle to keep clean, so even now I rarely use it. No way would I ever trust an office with it.

  108. GiantPanda*

    Not a war, but:

    My company provides coffee machines on every floor but charges 20 Cent per cup (except for “meeting coffee” which is free). There are lists. People on every floor whose responsibility it is to refill coffee, sugar, and milk. Deputy people for this job. Monthly bills. Cash boxes on every floor where you are supposed to pay your bill. People who manage the cash boxes. Somebody in housekeeping whose responsibility is to manage cash logistics. Some other person in sales who hands out coffee, sugar, and milk (but needs a receipt for everything). Probably substitutes for these people too, I don’t know – you get the idea.

    At some time someone made an official “proposal for improvement” to eliminate the charge for coffee, the lists, the cash boxes and the whole system. Have a single person whose job it is to refill the coffee machines daily and be done with it. There was a short calculation how much time and effort could be saved. (A lot.)
    That proposal has gone through the improvements committee (yes, that’s a thing), the sales people, the union, the CEO and back to the improvements committee. It is still under consideration after 18 months.

  109. HigherEdAnon*

    I work at a small college, the pretentious kind that loves to call itself “elite.”

    About two months after I started, I walked into the kitchenette to get my lunch and found 3 faculty members puzzling over the Flavia coffee maker – none of them could figure out how to get it to work. I don’t drink coffee, but I walked over to offer my assistance.

    There was a sign, with pictures, hanging on the wall over the machine with instructions. I followed the instructions and voila, coffee! None of the faculty said thank you; instead, they all loudly exclaimed to each other how “complicated” it was and how “you need a PhD to operate this thing!”

    Between the three of them, they had at least three PhDs. I had had my B.A. for less than a year. I still wish I had pointed that out to them.

    2. PA in Name Only*

      #Faculty — I guarantee this happens on a regular basis at my large, research institution. I’m confident that once you get a PhD your ability to do basic human tasks is immediately wiped from your mind by hubris.

      1. JustaTech*

        How many PhDs does it take to split the bill?
        The world will never know (because the techs get frustrated and do it for them). (This does not apply to lab managers with PhDs.)

  110. Noah*

    I had a boss who only drank instant coffee. (Drinking instant coffee is itself an act of war, but in all other ways she was an amazing boss.) It was a small office, and a prior employee had purchased a Mr. Coffee machine, which had gotten old and disgusting. Although she didn’t use it (because she drank instant), Boss referred to Mr. Coffee like it was a person. When I proposed replacing the machine, she was sad because Mr. Coffee had been there for so long. Really, she was not crazy. It was just this. She eventually ok’d a new coffee machine. I bought another Mr. Coffee.

  111. Birch*

    The worst thing I’ve witnessed was walking into the coffee room and smelling that something was burning. Like, it smelled like something was on fire. Looked at the coffee pot and there was a centimeter of completely burned, tarry sludge in the bottom of the pot, which was still on. So someone had left half a swallow of coffee in the pot and decided the machine didn’t need to be turned off. The kicker? There were 5-6 people having a lunch break 3 feet away! There was also mold found in the Keurig…. I started bringing my own French press.

  112. accidental manager*

    A long time ago, a coffee pot in a lab was not quite as shocking as it would be today. One particular lab technician ran a good 15-cent coffee club, with his own consumables and big percolator. He would make coffee as frequently as needed, keep the supplies available, and take the dollars and quarters out of the honour-system saucer frequently and leave some nickels and dimes to make change. Many department members up and down the hierarchy used his coffee service. The Powers That Be tolerated him running his own enterprise on their site in time they were paying for and in a space that was technically no-food-or-drink. If he was away for a day, one of the younger technicians would be deputised.

    Then he went on a long vacation and didn’t leave anyone his coffee key/supplies. None of the managers or faculty could get their convenient coffee. By the time he came back from his vacation, renovations had been done to make a legitimate coffee room out of a corner of his lab with its own door to the hallway, and the department had nationalized the coffee service with that kind where you pour a premeasured pack of ground coffee into a filter and add a glass pot of water. It was 25 cents a cup. That struck me as a classic example of an industry getting nationalized because free enterprise wasn’t providing the necessary service, but costing more than the solo entrepreneur.

  113. Peggy*

    Biggest coffee drama in my neck of the woods is that sometimes people don’t clean the milk wand on the espresso machine and it gets really gross. (I work in tech, not at Starbucks or anything. The person who uses it should wipe it down immediately after they use it and almost no one ever does. Our cleaning service doesn’t clean the actual coffee machinery so every person who uses it SHOULD clean it!)

  114. puzzld*

    The boss used to be the first person in the office (she came in about 6 AM, no one else was scheduled in till 7 AM) She’d had a timer on a big pot of coffee (100 cup pot I think)so it started brewing during the night. Her first act on walking in was to get a big cup of STRONG hot coffee. 100 cups was more than the small office ever finished, so it would sit, age and grow stronger all day. She’d dump the strong bitter dregs in a carafe for the late shift to finish and she’d set the new pot up so it was ready to go in the afternoon before she left. Eventually the rest of the staff revolted. The coffee was so strong that it was undrinkable, and this was before microwaves and the plethora of coffee shops etc., So the evening crew started messing with the pot. They removed 1/2 the water and 2/3rds of the grounds fiddled with the timer so the brewing started later.

    Boss: “I don’t know whats wrong with this coffee pot. I keep adding more and more grounds and the coffee gets weaker and weaker.” They eventually (it took a couple of years) persuaded her to retire the giant pot and get one of the setups with several small pots. She could have her tarry brew others would make a weak pot and when it started getting burnt and strong they’d dump the end into her pot and make a new weak pot.

  115. adriana*

    We had a coworker take the office to task for always leaving one specific dirty spoon on the counter. It turns out that one coworker used it multiple times a day to stir creamer into his coffee. BUT it ALSO turns out that another coworker was using it to add protein powder or peanut butter to his smoothies. He would lick the spoon after doing so. When this all came to light via a department wide email witch hunt, neither man using the spoon changed their ways…and said it was up to the other to get a fresh spoon. They both continued using the spoon. But at least someone brought in an old spoon rest so the Gross Spoon had a dedicated spot, and we didn’t have coffee/creamer/pb all over the counter all the time.

    1. Environmental Navy Wife*

      They…….both…..used the same spoon? The same dirty spoon? After it had been in each other’s mouths and/or drinks? And had been sitting on a counter all day?

      And then they found out and they *kept doing it???????* Bleeeeeeech!

    2. Grad Student*

      This is hilarious! Like, yes it’s disgusting, but it’s mostly just disgusting for the two men who kept inexplicably using the spoon even though they knew what was up, so *shrug*.

  116. Kaybee*

    I grew up in a religion that discouraged caffeine (probably not the religion you’re thinking of; this was much smaller), so young me had never had or made coffee when I got my first office job. And of course, the first person in was required to make the coffee, and that person usually was me. At first I didn’t make the coffee because I didn’t know how, and was berated for it. Then someone taught me how to make it, but to his taste, which turned out to be exceptionally strong but I didn’t understand that. So then people berated me for that. Then someone else “taught” me how to make coffee, but she preferred it weaker. Which got me berated. Finally my boss – who worked a later schedule and missed these early morning beratings – figured out what was happening and put out an organization-wide notice that I was exempt from making coffee. Which was embarrassing at first, but saved me a lot of grief in the long run.

    Interestingly enough, I soon got a second job at Starbucks and developed a robust caffeine addiction. Never developed a taste for drip coffee, though. (Funnily enough, there I made coffee in industrial size batches for their machines or by French press, so I’ve still never managed enough proficiency with your regular kitchen coffee maker to make a cup that satisfies everyone.)

    So anyway years went by where I worked at more functional offices and avoided coffee wars. Then started my current job at a small office where, again, the first person in – again, usually me – is supposed to make the coffee. I used the sum of the experience I’ve gained in the interim to firmly put my foot down to that. It caused a surprising amount of consternation and gossip at first, but I held firm and people got used to it. So to offices that require the first person in to make the coffee: please make it the first person in *who drinks the coffee* makes the coffee.

    1. Jules the 3rd*

      Good for original boss! It really should be ‘the first person in *who drinks coffee* was required to make the coffee’.

  117. Steph*

    My husband worked at a big tech firm as a “contractor” – meaning he had set work hours, a desk they expected him to fill, a boss who he had to report to throughout the day, etc. The only difference between contractors and employees was the name on the paychecks. One day they decided that all of the breakroom perks were reserved for employees, and that contractors weren’t allowed to have coffee from the breakroom.

  118. Celestine*

    There’s a bunch of coffee aficionados in my last office who would leave passive-aggressive post-it notes about how gross k-cups/pot coffee was. I’m not kidding you couldn’t open the damn keurig without 10 post-its falling off. It was completely juvenile so management removed the keurig and the coffee pot so whoever wants to make coffee had use the hot water dispenser in the water cooler. Of course they complained that the hot water wasn’t hot enough to brew their coffee and management said too bad too sad.

  119. Ella*

    It is not exactly coffee drama, but I am hoping that since it is funny and cat-related, it’ll be okay to post here. Cat-related food-battle drama.

    The Bitter Odyssey of The Automatic Food Dispenser And The Cat Who Wanted All of the Food: http://quinndunki.com/blondihacks/?p=3023

    (I am not the blogger. I just found it entertaining.)

    3. Close Bracket*

      1) That cat is freaking adorable.

      2) My cat also jostled her autofeeder to get more food. I just let her and dialed back the amount it was supposed to dispense to compensate.

  120. Programmers Turn Coffee Into Enterprise Code*

    Oh man. I’ve worked a lot of places, and the ones that don’t provide coffee inevitably have more drama than the ones that do. Companies, it’s not THAT big of an expense to keep your employees happy and drama-free! Just eat it!

    One company I co-oped at had a cafeteria we had to go to to buy coffee. Not cheap – something like $2-3 – and all the way in the other building (10+ minute walk). Plus the cafeteria closed at 3PM, not great when I wanted to pull a late night or work a weekend. So I brought my cheap espresso machine from home and kept it at my desk. Even then there was minimal drama – I told my whole team I’d teach them to use it or make them a cup if they wanted, once my boss told me to move it so it wasn’t right over my workstation tower (in case it spilled), and eventually my neighbor complained about the smell so I switched to making pour-over and took my coffee machine back home.

    Another company I worked at had free coffee in big commercial makers (nicknamed the “burn urn”) but when employee turnover spiked, management put in a fancy touchscreen single-cup machine. Since the dang thing took so long, there was usually a line of 4-5 people in the kitchen, and there was sometimes a little confusion over who was next in line. Usually people would line up their mugs. A colleague and I thought this was cute, and since we were a software company, we put down some painter tape on the counter and labeled it something like “Queue coffeeLine”, as well as labeling the “pop()” and “push()” ends. Next week the tape was gone, so we put up a “MISSING” flyer with the picture of the queue. I guess nobody thought it was as funny as we did….

    By the way, now I work at a different Tech Giant and every floor has a touchscreen per-cup machine, as well as a commercial espresso machine and an array of fixings. We also have baristas who will make coffee for us in the next few buildings. There’s a lot less coffee drama these days ;)

  121. Llama Grooming Coordinator*

    Not a coffee war story, but…we once discovered that one of our employees was cleaning out the coffee pot with bleach.

    We got a new pot. She was banned from touching it.

    1. Nea*

      Everything old is new again – there was an AAM letter a while ago that boiled down to “what do I do about the coworker leaving industrial strength cleaner on the office kitchen sponge?”

      1. Llama Grooming Coordinator*

        This actually happened about five years ago, I think! I haven’t seen that letter, but it really does sound like something she would do.

      2. zora*

        omg, are you referring to the woman whose coworker was cleaning the sink with Draino!?! Blerg, it still makes me retch a little bit when I think about that one. {{{shudder}}}

        1. Llama Grooming Coordinator*

          Dude. Dude. I just searched it and read it, and…if that letter wasn’t from 2016 I would have sworn it was about the lady I was talking about. (Except…I think she might have actually had OCD. Which doesn’t excuse it at all, but explains what was going on.)

          Actually, I think my Felicia got let go a few months after THAT incident for unrelated reasons. (She was…interesting.) I know for the rest of the time I was in that office I didn’t drink the office coffee at all, even after she left.

  122. Unit Of Raine*

    We had a new hire who brought his own coffee (ours is pretty bad) and Mr. Coffee to brew at his cube. All fine, until he cleaned it by running vinegar through the machine … in a cube farm … while he was in a meeting. He returned to the farm inhabitants angrily yelling at him about their watering eyes. He couldn’t see the issue … he was fine … since he hadn’t been at his desk. Of course, this was only one example of a lack of understanding of his actions on others.

    When he finally left the company, he left his Mr. Coffee. Which was then kicked around a parking lot by vengeful and annoyed coworkers.

    1. Not really a Waitress*

      We had someone who did this on our hall in my old office. I guess many don’t realize that you don’t need to use pure vinegar when cleaning out the coffee pot.

  124. Admin2*

    The trash cans!

    Our building had a few large conference rooms and would often have catered events. The 3rd floor had nice modern trash/recycle bins, while the 2nd floor only had one old trash bin which would often be overflowing and need to have extras ordered for events. I went ahead and ordered the nicer ones and it worked out just fine.

    Until a month later when the more senior admin finally saw them and said immediately they had to move, I said they had been doing fine so far and a very heated back and forth began including her dragging the poor janitorial staff asking them if they could handle the extra work of the bins. I just kept saying we can try for a few more weeks and if it becomes a problem, we can get rid of them. They stayed, for at least six months.

    Nothing more was said but that, and some other disagreements, sealed my fate to NOT stay in that department as the senior admin was beloved and never questioned. I moved to another building where things were amazing for me. I returned to the building a few times for lunch with friends and noticed- the trash bins had been taken out and the old bin put back.

  125. Picky*

    At ToxicOldJob I was a middle-manager with responsibility for day-to-day operations. We ran a coffee club that people could contribute to if they wanted, and one low-level Clerk had responsibility for making the coffee every morning, Monday to Friday. Saturdays we ran a half-crew and the Saturday Supervisor made the coffee. One day Saturday Supervisor comes to me and says, nobody on Saturdays is actually drinking coffee: they belong to the coffee club to have access to the milk for their tea. So I’m making coffee, nobody drinks it, and sometimes the Saturday cleaner forgets to turn it off and it’s baked on by Monday morning. Can we stop making Saturday coffee? And I say, sure, it’s not serving anybody. The Monday to Friday Coffee Making Clerk gets wind of this, gets furious even though she literally never came in on Saturdays. She announced she would not let Saturday staff use the milk for their tea any more, since they weren’t making coffee (what???). She made such a fuss that my Boss and my Grand-Boss actually reprimanded me for stopping the unused Saturday coffee service and the Saturday Supervisor once more had to make coffee that never got drunk, and make sure she turned off the coffee pot herself. Great use of supervisory time, but whatever. So glad to be out of ToxicOldJob. (P.S. Monday to Friday Coffee Making Clerk later really got her sh*t together and realized she could not take her frustrations out on other people. Turned into one of my favourite co-workers. Boss and Grand-Boss never got their sh*t together, still a$$holes).

    1. Anonymous Ampersand*

      Wow that ended better than I thought it would! Well done Monday to Friday clerk.

  126. Quining*

    I don’t drink coffee, but my office is across from the break room, so I witnessed this ordeal.

    We have a coffeemaker, a Keurig, and an espresso machine in our break room (IT people love their coffee). My coworker gets in earlier than most people, and started putting a bag of instant hot chocolate in the drip coffee pot then brew a full batch of coffee into it. It seems no one else on my floor liked that, and complained about the waste of coffee, and when I told them what was happening, my manager told him to stop. Coworker was really confused as to why people were mad at him. He thought it tasted better, so everyone else would like it that way.

    1. Xarcady*

      My company hires a lot of temps for 1-4 week assignments during our busy season. The first week of the first assignment, a lot of the temps use the packets of hot chocolate instead of sweetener in their coffee. And they drink a lot of coffee.

      I’m told that many of the temps can’t afford a lot of food until they get their first paycheck, and the sugar and dried milk in the hot chocolate lets them take in more calories. Which is kind of sad.

      I’ve also noticed that the extra food from all lunch meetings ends up in the temps’ breakroom that first week, as well.

  127. Assistant Director at-large*

    Commenting on AAM for the first time, because I have witnessed some pretty insane coffee wars. I work in higher ed.

    The first was at a temp job I worked for five months. The department had a Nespresso machine (but only for faculty; staff and graduate students had to bring their own or drink tea, and the tea became its own whole thing by the time I left). Staff ordered the Nespresso pods as requested by the faculty. I, a temp, didn’t have access to the system that allowed me to order things, so I would take the orders and pass them along to a colleague who would actually place the order (she, by the way, was really territorial, and hated when I would ask questions to other department staff that were in her area. This will be relevant later. This department also, for the entire five months I temped there, didn’t have a supervisor, just me, a temp, and two other employees.)

    There was a stash of pods when I first started that I could give to the faculty if they wanted them. Eventually, however, we ran out of the popular flavors, and the faculty started to complain. I kept passing these complaints along to the colleague who was in charge of ordering (and when I say “passing along,” I would email her and tell her in person), and she would say she was ordering more. Eventually, however, it turned out she wasn’t actually ordering the coffee, after I had been asking for weeks, and I only found this out when we had run out of everything but decaf pods, which did NOT work for all the academics who wanted their coffee. This same colleague also just kept not paying invoices for our water cooler deliveries, and didn’t actually solve this problem until the water deliveries stopped completely because the invoices were multiple months overdue.

    The second coffee conflict was at a later job, still in higher ed. The office I worked in had a pool of program assistants who basically did all the office’s day-to-day admin work: financial transactions, emailing students, covering the front desk, event help, etc. This setup inevitably led to these colleagues being constantly busy, because everyone else would dump their admin work on them. One of their duties was to make sure there was always coffee available in the break room. And when I say always, I mean ALWAYS. If there wasn’t coffee in the pot at any point between 8:30 AM and 5:00 PM, people would start complaining. Most of the rest of us, if we saw the pot was empty, would brew a new pot, because it is really not that hard. However, a couple of the higher-ups just refused to brew coffee, and would instead come complain to the admins, who were always busy with the work everyone else had given them, that there wasn’t coffee available. I should add that this group had a rotation where they would check the coffee every hour and make a new pot if it looked even sort of low, but that system couldn’t keep up with the demand. The eventual solution was to buy a Keurig, which made all of their lives much better (although one of the higher-ups got tired of waiting behind other employees for coffee and bought his own pod machine for his office).

    Now I work in a two-person office, whoever arrives first in the morning brews a pot of coffee, and there is no drama about it :)

    1. PA in Name Only*

      Update: A full rotation of program assistants later were like “Oh man, k-cups are so bad for the environment. We should just get brewers and everyone will help with brewing them and it’ll be better for the environment!!” Thankfully, they did a staff survey, so everyone who remembers this drama could be like “YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT HELL YOU MAY UNLEASH”. We kept the k-cup machine :)

        1. Assistant Director at-large*

          She was just… not great at her job. She didn’t do a lot of things. Shortly after I left, and the department finally hired a competent supervisor, she was fired.

  128. Evil HR Person*

    I’m a coffee snob because of reasons, but the main one is that I used to work for a coffee company (the same company that roasts and packages the coffee for a famous donut company). I actually had a training class about coffee, the different roasts and what they taste like (anything named after places in Europe tastes burned), and the number one rule of making a good cup of coffee: cleaning the machine and the pot.

    Fast forward to last year when I started a new job (which I love). We have this amazing-looking coffeemaker that will dispense coffee every which way till Sunday, along with French Vanilla cappuccino and hot chocolate (those are mixes). I hate the coffee, so I bring mine from home. The problem with the machine is two-fold: whoever set it up asked for the nastiest, bitterest coffee in kingdom come: dark roast Robusta beans. Yuk! AND, because it’s a fancy-schmancy machine, nobody can get inside to give it a good, proper scrubbing. No matter that we run the rinse cycle every day or that they “deep clean” it (with a tablet) once a week. I’d drink Maxwell House before that swill. Good gravy!

  129. Lumen*

    My pet peeve is when the tall carafe is almost finished brewing, and someone gets impatient, so they try to really quickly move the carafe and put their mug under the drip. Naturally, this creates a huge mess which most people don’t even consider cleaning up. It’s so ridiculous.

  130. jk*

    One thing I learned at my last office is that people get really stupid and petty when it comes to coffee. They refuse to make new coffee. They bitch when it’s not the one they want when someone else does. They move the pot from the burner and put it on the cold one (which has a warm switch but they are just too lazy to turn it on = waste of coffee). Then there are the people that think they are “too good” to make a communal pot of coffee…

    Found myself having to get my coworkers to stop crying about it many a time. They simply could not function without coffee and it had to be to their exact specifications. Some would make a real effort to show that they weren’t competent enough to brew a coffee, simply so they wouldn’t have to do it ever again. This was a failure with me because I’d shame their stupidity publicly so much that they’d have to make it (mwahahha).

    Coffee wars reveal what people are really like deep down. Are you a problem-solver or are you a whiner? I’ve never seen such utter helplessness and worry about them should they ever be confronted with a real crisis. Survival of the fittest.

    1. Serin*

      People who can do complex jobs without letting their human masks slip will prove, when faced with a shared coffee situation, to be the monkiest of monkeys.

      This is making me think that maybe instead of reading breathless fanboying paperback books about the marvelous culture at places like Toyota, we should send some sociology students to study their coffee culture.

  131. Knitting Cat Lady*

    I’m a physicist. When I was still at university I did stuff with accelerators. And doing an experiment with accelerators means 24 h babysitting of the experiment. To be there if something goes wrong or to adjust measurements.

    Obviously people drink tons of coffee during night shifts. I drink water since I want to sleep after a night shift.

    And let me tell you, there are some labs where I wonder how the coffee hasn’t killed anyone yet. The worst one was the place where there was a table full of used coffee cups next to the coffee maker and every single cup and the carafe and whatever else of the coffee maker was absolutely caked with mould.

    And my dad did something great with an office espresso machine once.

    The etiquette for using said machine was to empty the ground basket after making your espresso and rinse it. To do that you had to depressurize the machine first.

    My dad forgot that once. The pressure on an espresso machine is a few bars. So the espresso grounds flash dried and exploded and covered the entire break room in a fine coat of coffee powder.

    2. Manders*

      I swear there’s this catch-22 with coffee machines where if the process of making coffee has one step you can forget or do out of order that will cause a catastrophe, someone’s going to forget it, because when you’re low on caffeine you’re way less likely to remember that step.

      1. IForgetWhatNameIUsedBefore*

        My husband gets up at 4am and has on occasion, forgotten to put a filter in, and one time forgot the pot. Came back to COFFEE EVERYWHERE, and had to clean it all up while he was still only half awake.

  132. Catabodua*

    I don’t partake in coffee so I’m never involved in the coffee wars.

    A mildly amusing thing for me was one of the first places I worked. They had this huge urn thing that they made coffee in and at the end of the day when the person was going to clean it out there was one guy she’d announce that it was getting cleaned and he’d come sprinting out of his office with a carafe and get every last drop in the bottom. The folks who were coffee drinkers all gagged and said how it’d been brewed hours and hours ago and how could he still drink it? But he did. I later found out he drank the equivalent of several pots of coffee a day.

    A sad one for me was at the same place. There was a woman who we later found out was suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s. She was always making a ruckus about people moving her coffee mug from where she left it. We all knew it was her who was leaving it all over the place vs where she said she left it, but she just argued that she left it on her desk and accused others of messing with it.

    It came to a head one day when she was walking around yelling at people about her missing mug WHILE IT WAS IN HER HAND. As in, she was carrying it around with her, but yelling that it was missing. The big boss finally had to deal with it. She ended up getting laid off in the next few weeks, which sounds awful, but was so so kind because she was able to collect unemployment while her children helped her get medical treatment and then into a residential setting. I have a lot of sad stories about her actually.

  133. saffytaffy*

    Our (international) school threw money at all kinds of frills. A pool table, really fancy decorating, parties with insane food and cocktails, and expensive prizes and cash rewards during any kind of event. But the water machine was tightly controlled. Apparently there had been a problem with international teachers who couldn’t figure out how to get bottled water delivered to their homes, so they would fill up 2-liter bottles from the school water machines at the end of the day. It couldn’t possibly have been expensive, but it was ridiculous and made it seem like the teachers were destitute. So the solution was to employ a little old grannie to sit by the water machines and make sure nobody was filling up anything bigger than a Nalgene bottle.
    One day I got to see an athletic, handsome Western teacher getting swatted at by a tiny shriveled grannie for trying to fill up a liter bottle. Swat swat swat with her bony arms, “too big! Here’s a paper cup! That’s enough!”

  134. rosie*

    Had a former coworker who, to piss people off while she was in notice (she was in a quit-or-we’ll-fire-you situation), would leave her Nespresso machine constantly running during the day. In case you didn’t know, those things sound like you’re opening the gates of hell every time they turn on. AND THIS WAS IN A CALL CENTER!

  135. Nea*

    Two coffee pots – one for caf, one for decaf. Both types of coffee supplied free by the company.

    Someone would make a regular-strength pot of coffee.
    Someone else would come dump it out, and make a double-strong pot of coffee (not touching the decaf carafe)
    And so the war of the singles and the doubles played out each day, with an average of something like 10 portions of coffee being used every day.

    For reasons I never understood, having a double-strength pot and a single-strength pot going at the same time (nobody seemed to drink the decaf) was even an option. Nope, this was WAR, and the enemy pot must be destroyed!

  136. anyone out there but me*

    As office manager at my old office job, I was in charge of ordering the K-cups for the fancy Keurig set up we had. The office staff all had different tastes, and it was a “coffee bar” type set up in the lobby that clients and visitors were directed to anytime someone came in. I always ordered a really large variety pack of K-cups because it would have something for everyone. There were constant moans and groans, though. “Someone drank all of the chocolate donut flavor!” or “Why is there so much dark roast left in here, I only like light roast….” Sigh. You can’t please everyone all the time.

    I had only worked there for a few weeks and for some reason I thought to check the Keurig to see if it needed cleaning and OH. MY. GOODNESS. Apparently, the office had been using it for … months? Years? I have no idea, it was there when I was hired. But obviously nobody was in charge of cleaning it!! It had mold growing in it and was all gunked up in the nooks and crannies. I spent a good half day going through the office tool kit, taking the entire Keurig apart and cleaning it thoroughly, then putting it all back together. Yuck.

  137. Mockingjay*

    I worked in a pizza/sandwich shop in college. It had a Bunn multiburner coffeemaker.

    I didn’t realize the switch was for the warming plates, not to turn it on. So one day I was going to prep the coffeemaker before we opened. I put a filter in the basket, added the grounds, filled up the water reservoir, set the carafe aside, and walked away to do other stuff. I was going to turn it on just prior to opening so the pot would be fresh for customers.

    Some sixth sense warned me to turn around, just in time to see the first of the coffee waterfall. I slammed the carafe in place and yelled for my coworker to bring towels!

  138. ehs100*

    This isn’t my story to tell and I’m sure I’ll tell it poorly, but I just spent 20 minutes unsuccessfully trying to find the podcast link, so here we go…

    This came up on a story telling podcast and it remains my favorite story of office revenge of all time. This guy worked at a place that had just reorg so a lot people left their office, shifted around, etc. The office manager where he worked said that the extra furniture was up for grabs if people wanted to use it in their offices. So he nabbed an ‘executive’ chair, rolled it to his desk, and stuck a piece of tape on the bottom of it with his name. He loved this chair. This guy had two obnoxious coworkers who sort of functioned as a duo and were really into their drip coffee and needling him. He’s a passive guy and sort of just rolled with their ribbing, until…..one day his chair was missing. After some investigating, he found it at his male obnoxious coworker’s desk (as you recall, he’d put his name on the bottom). Being a passive person, he did not confront the obnoxious coworker, but rather swapped out the chair after this person had left for the day. But his coworker took the chair again. I believe this went for a bit the obnoxious coworker and his sidekick became increasingly obnoxious but also never admitted to taking the chair. Then, the guy broke down and got revenge on these guys by stealthily replacing every coffee pot they brewed with decaf. I think he went as far as emptying the bags and replacing the coffee so they’d never know. But either way, what happened next was his obnoxious coworkers started complaining that they felt off, etc., though they still teased him and stole the chair. After a week or so they became kind of irritated with each other, then became emotionally defeated, and then eventually lost interest in the teasing and chair stealing. So basically he broke their will by siphoning off their energy source and they never knew. It was a pretty crazy story.

    1. JanetM*

      I vaguely recall a list of “Ways to mess with your coworkers” where one of the suggestions was, “Slowly wean the entire office onto decaf. Let them drink decaf for a few weeks. Then make a double strength pot of espresso with caffeinated water.” (NOTE: I realize this is a terrible idea and would never do it.)

  139. einahpets*

    One of the C-level employees at one of my old jobs killed our Keurig one morning by spilling water everywhere while trying to fill it, including underneath the machine. Instead of wiping up the mess, he just went ahead and made his cup (which worked)… and then walked away. The machine died an angry death in a puddle of water shortly thereafter.

    This executive wasn’t one of my favorites, but after a week without coffee I think he earned the wrath of the entire staff for it. A new Keurig arrived the next week.

  140. Canadian Natasha*

    This is not as impressive as some stories, I’m sure, but we had person at a previous office who was discovered to have been putting the fresh grounds on top of the old grounds from the morning to make a new pot instead of dumping the old and just using fresh coffee. It was already horrible coffee (folgers level) but this was one step too far.

    1. Canadian Natasha*

      Forgot to say- there was no actual violence done, but my generally passive agressive coworkers had some VERY blunt and forceful words to say about that mistake.

  141. MasterOfBears*

    We don’t have a Coffee War so much as a Coffee Running Joke based around the fact that our boss is a SERIOUS coffee snob. She has a personal aeropress (we have an aeropress and a drip brewer for general use) and a hand held coffee grinder so she can freshly grind her beans for each cup. The rest of us are field tech plebians who would happily drink battery acid if you told us it had caffeine in it. We call her an elitist hippie, she threatens to fire us for contaminating the break room with Folgers, it’s a great time.

    1. Mostly A Lurker*

      We have someone who uses a hand grinder at my place too, except we have an open office plan… no office to mitigate the noise… I have to wonder if anyone else is as frustrated by it as I am.

      1. Sarah*

        I have a hand grinder, but for Pete’s sake – sacrifice a tiny amount of freshness and grind the dang beans at home before you come into work! It’s not that hard.

        1. MasterOfBears*

          Fortunately, our boss, being the boss, has a door she can close. The joke runs that if her door is closed it’s generally fine to knock…unless you hear the grinder. If you interrupt a phone call, eh whatever. If you interrupt Bean Time, god help you

    2. Nessun*

      Not a coffee drinker, but my OldBoss was – he loved his organic custom blend from the independent coffee shop around the corner. He’d go out to meetings and offer to bring me back a cuppa: the first time he asked, I told him I don’t drink coffee and he said OK, what kind of tea do you want? Since I’m a big chai fan, I said to bring me a chai tea latte. He mocked me for drinking “yuppie poison” – and brought me one. EVERY time he went out to get coffee after that, he’d bring me a chai (yay!), and EVERY time, he’d have the barista write “yuppie poison” on the cup! I thought it was hilarious, and so did he. Miss that guy…

  142. NonnyNon*

    At my retail job there are maybe three people in the store who drink coffee, and they usually don’t work the same shifts. One of them in particular would make a full pot of coffee, drink maybe a single cup, and leave the rest of the pot on the counter (even on closing shifts when no one would even be in the store for the next 10 hours!). Store manager left notes up in the break room reminding people to empty the coffee pot at the end of their shift. Not two days later the guy did it again, so now the coffee pot lives on top of the cabinets and only management is allowed to get it down. Considering the only other people who make coffee while at work are members of management, no one is actually being hurt by this new policy except the guy who brought it on himself.

  143. AnotherHRPro*

    Several years ago the office sink suddenly backed up. It turned out a woman in the office was dumping coffee grounds into the sink every single day and ruined the pipes. Interestingly, this is the SECOND time this happened. The SAME WOMAN had done this before and told not to do it. You can’t fix stupid.

  144. Leela*

    A friend gifted me a beautiful reusable coffee cop for my birthday, which I brought to work, let everyone (all four of us) know was mine and not left behind and please don’t get rid of it! It goes missing one day and I ask if anyone’s seen it, Sansa tells me that Cersei took it home. I confront Cersei and she admitted to it but said that she WASN’T GOING TO GIVE IT BACK because she liked it, and I could just get a new one. Manager refused to get involved. Still don’t have it back.

    2. Blue Cupcake*

      Every single day, I would loudly tell her to give back the cup she stole. Loudly. Every. Single. Day. In front of everyone.

    3. ggg*

      Ugh!

      I am still mad about the demise of a coffee cup that my kid designed as a school project. I left it in a conference room. Called the woman who had the meeting, yes, I saw your cup in there. But I wasn’t able to get back to that building for a couple days.

      Two days later the building was cleaned out. Everything. They had moved a whole department and all their stuff out of there. No more coffee cup. I tried to track it down but it was a lost cause. I take most of the blame, but really, who would steal, or even throw out, a coffee cup with pictures of/drawings by someone’s kid on it?

    4. Owler*

      I had a fancy mug from a chocolate shop that the CEO commandeered for herself. I feel your pain.

  145. LBK*

    My only story is unfortunately a mystery: once after being on vacation for a week, I came back to discover signs on all the drip trays for the water dispensers to the effect of “This is not a drain – it must be emptied.” Sadly I’ll never know what kind of flooding incident occurred that necessitated their posting.

  146. Pup Seal*

    At my last job, I worked at a building that shared space with multiple companies, so this building had a Flavia machine for everyone to use. One day the power went out one hallway/area at a time. People freaked out when the Wifi died, but people really got scared when the power to the Flavia died. You would’ve thought the apocalypse had happened.

  147. voluptuousfire*

    No coffee wars, but I work with a lot of really bright, smart people. Someone broke our espresso machine because they put coffee beans in the compartment marked “do not put beans in here.”

  148. Librarian By Day*

    Not really a coffee war, but at my first full-time office job there was a coffee machine and no coffee in the break room. I had a 2 hour commute so I reallllyyyyy liked coffee and one of my coworkers was also big into coffee. He and I were pretty chill and so we had an agreement that we’d rotate between which of the two of us would buy a big can of Folgers for the break room. We also didn’t care if anyone shared our coffee – and so whenever we made a big pot we’d go around and ask anyone if they wanted some. People got so……WEIRD about it. Apparently there was a thing before we started that everyone had to buy their own coffee, so they were almost offended that two of the newbies were just freely sharing. (We really had no ulterior motives. 10$ every 2 or 3 months wasn’t an issue.)

    And despite basically having an in to a free pot of coffee every day, someone went and bought a giant pink Keurig for the break room and everyone started bringing in their own K cups. Me and the guy kept using the old coffee maker until we both quit for other reasons.

  149. Addison*

    Not me, but my grandma is a secretary in a law office. They had some visiting lawyers for a deposition or something on a Saturday and my grandma just happened to be there getting some overtime typing reports and whatnot. Most of the other staff, including the receptionist and other assistants who usually do office management type stuff, were absent, so she was pretty much the only person there. One of the lawyers walks up to her desk and simply says, “Coffee?” Meaning, he wanted her to make them a pot. She looks up and says, “Oh, no thank you, I don’t drink coffee.” Dude was flabbergasted. I wonder if they ever got coffee, because my grandma sure as hell ain’t about that.

  150. Comms Girl*

    I stopped drinking coffee three years ago due to medical reasons, and I terribly miss my cappuccinos but it is what it is. Now I drink (herbal) tea, and while I haven’t seen any coffee/tea wars at work, I do have my own personal tea horror story.

    It was February and it was terribly cold outside. I was desperate for some hot tea, and very much looking forward to have a cup of Moroccan mint & cinnamon tea – I bought my own box and keep it in the office ever since. I was the first one in and, for whatever reason, I almost threw up after the first sip. How could my beloved MM&C tea turned into such a disgusting thing?!
    My boss later found out, through the floor administrator, that the cleaning lady had de-scaled the kettle the evening before and forgot to rinse it afterwards. Yup… I basically drank a sip of vinager-y tea. Although in the end the problem was never the tea itself, this certainly put me off that particular blend for a very long time.

  151. Ruth*

    A couple of decades ago, I was a hard-core Starbucks drinker. I would bring my bag of special grounds in, make one pot every day and take the first cup. I would label the pot, as I like it strong, and anyone who wanted, could drink the rest. (This was back when Starbucks wasn’t at the end of every driveway in America, so it was rare in our neck of the woods.)

    Then people started bringing in THEIR favorite coffees. Hazelnut, cinnamon…what have you.

    So the Big Boss came in one day, and every available pot has some kind of special brew in it….and he lost his religion. He stomped and cursed, “Why can’t I just get a cup of regular coffee in this joint!?!”

    Yeah, that was special. For what it’s worth, the coffee provided by the company was TERRIBLE!

  152. Wakeen Teaptots, LTD*

    Here I go……

    We have kitchens with coffee makers on each floor. My floor, we have about 100 people but probably circa 30 regular office coffee drinkers (plenty of people choose to buy Wawa or Dunkin outside). The company pays for the coffee, the sweeteners, the creamers. The receptionist keeps everything stocked. There are cabinets full of coffee mugs and a dishwasher that the receptionist runs when full, so you never even have to wash your own mug, The coffee service comes in and switches the pots regularly so they don’t have to be scrubbed.

    The one thing we don’t have? Someone designated to make the coffee. But that’s no big deal, right, because making the coffee is so easy. The water is piped in. Filters and coffee pouches right by the machine, 6 or so empty clean carafes at the ready. Pull out the filter basket, dump, put in clean filter and pouch contents, put a clean carafe under and push “brew” <<< maybe 12 seconds. It does take about 5 minutes to brew which means………….

    If you take the last cup, what do you? MAKE A NEW POT . Literally the ONE thing you have to do, and not every day (unless you are drinking 10 cups a day) is if you are the person who takes the last cup – MAKE A NEW POT. 12 seconds of your time. 12 seconds of your time as you are scooting out versus 5 minutes of your co-worker’s time if they come into an empty pot.

    It is a daisy chain of kindness, cooperation and thoughtfulness that one co-worker passes onto the next!

    Instead, we have coffee wars. People rage (no louder than I do), when they come in to an empty pot. Accusations fly (conspiratorially, “I think it was Steve! Steve was here last!”). People mutter about setting up cameras to see who it is who is breaking the chain every day.

    I try not to get involved because this makes me *so* angry, so disproportionately angry that as a boss I am afraid of going on all Captain Queeg with strawberries (I could! I could do that!), but a year or so ago I did send an departmental email where I emphasized the daisy chain of kindness and how if you are drinking coffee, it is your responsibility to make coffee also, there is no coffee fairy. A guy who drinks I swear 5 cups a day and has worked here 10 years, he said to a co-worker, hmmmm, can you show me how to make coffee, I have never done it before.

    WHAT?

    Anyway, I thought that this dude having a light bulb over his head might solve our problem but nothing ever does. It will get better and then somebody will tell me she went in 3 times in one day to an empty pot (she, shaking with rage when she tells it) and I think that’s just the way it is. The rude and inconsiderate are among us and it will always be so.

    (I know. Keruig. And maybe. But it seems so wasteful to solve that way when the cost to an individual is a single thought and an occasional 12 seconds)

    1. Tardigrade*

      Maybe you can answer my questions. I’m a tea drinker in a coffee culture so I don’t “get” a lot of this, but why is it on the person who takes the last cup to brew a new pot? How would that person know someone else is going to want coffee? Is there a cutoff time when it’s OK not to brew a new pot to avoid waste?

      1. Wakeen Teaptots, LTD*

        Hello tea person! I have become a tea person at home and am thinking about bringing my stash of Stash into the office so I can switch to tea wars with people stealing my tea. :D

        Basically, in an office this size, you’ll go through a pot an hour from 7am until 1pm. The coffee use is constant. Anybody who doesn’t make a pot after 12 noon falls into grace, because that is reasonable doubt.

      2. Jules the 3rd*

        It’s on the last person to start the brew because their 12 seconds will save the next employees 5 minutes of wasted time waiting for the coffee to brew.

        1. Tardigrade*

          I am so dense. Wakeen Teaptots, LTD basically said this in the post but I forget how long it takes coffee to brew/drip.

      3. The OG Anonsie*

        Answering your questions:

        1) The idea is that there should always be coffee available, so if you drink the last of it you should put on a new one so the next person doesn’t have to wait for a new pot to brew in order to get a cup. Since you can quickly set it to brew and leave, it’s the fastest/easiest for everyone. And basically, someone aaaaalways wants coffee after you, which leads to…

        2) The cutoff time for this is very office culture dependent. I’ve worked in places where people stop remaking pots in the early afternoon as demand peters off, but I’ve also been places where you keep remaking pots until there’s more or less no one left in the office because people keep drinking it all day.

  153. Julianne*

    My husband inadvertently contributed to coffee tension at his old job when, in a cost cutting measure, he ordered off-brand K-cups for his office. This was his first office job, and we don’t have a Keurig at home, so he didn’t realize that there were pods that worked in the machines, and ones that did not, and the supplier did not make that clear when he ordered. (I’m not sure if this is still true, but it was then – this was about 6 years ago.) So the office had to purchase K-cups and somehow rig the machine up with the foil cover from a real K-cup over the off-brand K-cup (there was something about a sensor?), and then the coffee in the off-brand cups tasted terrible but he’d ordered a gazillion of them and his boss refused to sign off on more coffee spending when they already had so much on hand. It was apparently a rough time, and I regret that I don’t really remember the outcome.

  154. okie dokie*

    Just an aside since I see all of the Keurig users out there. The new Nespresso machines with the large pods (made for coffee instead of the small ones which are mainly for espresso) is MUCH better than Keurig. And they have bags you can mail in or drop off to recycle the pods. Just sayin’ :)

  155. Tea*

    PLEASE don’t judge me:
    We had a woman who was legally blind at our work for a little while. And she was diagnosed with IBS a few months after starting with us. We’re a spa-based business so cleanliness is a huge priority and I would have to covertly check the bathrooms after she used them because they would be a mess. I felt so bad for her but I was also thinking constantly about how, if she couldn’t see how she left the restroom, then how do I know she could see how well she washed her hands, etc. She was also notorious for stealing or “sampling: other people’s food and nobody wanted to tell her to knock it off because she was a) really a nice person b) could be a bit sensitive, and c) you know, blind. I would hide any food or snacks I brought so she wouldn’t touch it. It was bigoted thinking but being that I was the one who cleaned up the bathroom after her all the time, I could never stop thinking about it. I also once watched her eat chicken legs with curry sauce with her hands in the break room and I was so grossed out I nearly gagged. I know it was awful that I was so squicked out but I couldn’t help it. She performed spa services and was very talented-luckily she was so busy, I never did have to make up excuses for not trying her out.

    ANYWAY–I used to keep an Etsy-purchased coffee mug in to work. Even though we have a Keurig, I would bring a giant coffee from a hipster cafe with mustachioed baristas and split it in two and drink from my cute coffee mug in my office or in the lobby. As you can tell, I’m really easily grossed out by dumb stuff and I hate the Keurig coffee with a passion-I think it’s just not cleaned properly ever and my boss buys the refillable pods to save money and I hate having to toss the old grounds away, etc. I was, and am, the only one who uses a mug at work-everyone else uses toss-away cups. This habit has not gone unnoticed by my coworkers either, it’s sort of a running joke.

    So one day, I come in with my coffee one day and my mug isn’t in the cupboard. Then I see my legally blind coworker drinking from the mug. My heart stops but I keep my chill and I say something like, “Oh, hey So-and-So, when you’re finished with my mug, could you just leave it in the sink?” And she says, “Oh, this is yours?” and she jokingly licks all over the rim of the cup and she’s starts laughing. I also laugh, very weakly. I leave my big take out coffee on the counter and put my stuff in my office. When I come back, she is DRINKING FROM MY TAKE OUT COFFEE. She says, “Tea, where did you get this coffee–it’s so good, I could smell it from the other side of the room.” Before I can stop and think, I blurt out, “Why didn’t you just pour it in the mug?” And she says, “I only wanted a sip! It’s so good, here you go,” and she hands it back to me and it’s spilling everywhere. I leave quietly and toss it when nobody is looking and just use my green tea bags for caffeine. The end day, I go to get my mug to bring it home to put it in the dishwasher, and it is so gross, like still filled with coffee and creamer, like skin forming on top, just lip marks all over it. I rinse it in the sink and just leave it there. She used it every day until she left. Now I have a new mug and my own french press in my office.

    (There was another incident-not coffee related-where I brought an ice cream cake for another manager’s birthday from this great place that made home made ice cream-it had Oreo on top and cookie dough on the bottom, and as I was cutting pieces, she like ‘horizontally’ stuck her fingers in the center of the cake to try it and I was the only person who saw it-I just covered up the dents in the side of the cake and kept cutting. I didn’t eat any.)

    1. anony non non non*

      It’s like some people say: people can be jackasses regardless of their disability, and guess what… your coworker is a jackass.

    2. A.*

      You are a saint. I would have demanded she paid me for my take out coffee. I hate food thieves in the office.

      1. Tea*

        Trust me, I was NOT a saint-I secretly skeeved her like, every day. I really hope I wasn’t obvious. Part of me wonders if I didn’t hide it well and THAT’S why she used to do it, because it bothered me. Then I also feel bad for thinking she couldn’t handle a little criticism just because of her disability.

    3. TheCupcakeCounter*

      Our neighbor is like that – I’m not sure how she isn’t aware how rude it is but for some reason it just never clicked. Last summer I made the wedding cake and cupcakes for my cousins wedding where she was a guest. My MIL comes over fuming because neighbor had decided she didn’t want to wait for the bride and groom to cut the cake to try it (3 varieties of cupcakes were out and available) so used a fork to gouge out a hunk. Being the only person in the family who is ok with confrontation I walked over to her and told her that was the rudest, most inconsiderate thing I had ever seen. Full-out SHAMED her and didn’t let up until there were actual tears. Her drunk son got mad at me until his wife reminded him what she had done at their wedding and several other events.

      Hasn’t done anything like that since but she is still notorious for double dipping and other similar infractions.

      1. NewBoss2016*

        She cut into the wedding cake before the bride and groom??? How seriously self-centered of her.

  156. bumbletea*

    In my last office, our CEO was very particular about coffee and had decided to personally test and select a coffee service for the office (I think because people were using too much coffee when making a pot? It was unclear, but now they were in pre-measured bags). No one else was involved in the tasting, as far as I know. When we made the switch, one person made a comment about not being a fan because it was truly… just very underwhelming, bordering on bad. A huge switch from our preference of Dunkin Donuts (say what you want- everyone liked their coffee! Except our CEO who thought it looked cheap). Our CEO’s reaction (which wasn’t extreme; just clearly unhappy and with an emphasis on how he went through a whole selection process to make sure we could have a high quality supply) meant no one else said anything after that. Even people who came on board after kept mum.

    I personally am on decaf, so I had a french press in the office anyone can use. Many people got very into pour over coffee. It didn’t come out until the employee survey months later that the reason french press use and pour overs were on the rise was because a small resistance had formed, supplying their own coffee that wasn’t gross.

    Our CEO didn’t much care for that either (among other things from the survey). People were very quiet about coffee after that, even in anon form.

    As far as I know, the small resistance lives on, and the CEO is holding steady to that coffee service.

  157. Teena*

    Years ago, we had a secretary decide that caffeine was evil. She threw out the coffeemaker, all the coffee and tea (paid for by staff), ALL THE COFFEE CUPS (that people had brought from home), and taped a big OUT OF ORDER sign on the pop machine. In the coffeemaker’s place, there was a stack of articles she had printed out from online, all about the evils of caffeine. And she did this in secret over the weekend and put everything in the dumpster, not just a garbage can.
    You can imagine the uproar on Monday morning! Amazingly, she was NOT fired (until months later, anyway).

    1. Irene Adler*

      You mean, folks didn’t chase her out of there with pitchforks or brandishing other sharp implements?
      She was lucky.

    2. Manders*

      Oh my god, I’m actually kind of surprised she wasn’t fired immediately. That’s just such a weird thing to do!

    3. Turtlewings*

      I actually agree that caffeine is pretty bad for you and I still would have fired her on the spot. You don’t get to throw out other people’s property.

    4. Nea*

      I’m extremely amazed she wasn’t fired immediately, considering that she stole and destroyed a swatch of private property while damaging employee morale and effectiveness.

    1. WashingDishesCanBeCarthartic*

      Make sure to refill the pot this time, getting tired of finding that empty with the burner on ! :P

  159. Ann O'Nemity*

    Copying my comment on last week’s coffee wars post…

    When I was in academia we had a coffee fund and it was a nightmare!! It was outrageously expensive for the small quantity of coffee I consumed (maybe 1 cup a day, if that), because some people drank a pot a day (no joke) and many people who did not pay at all took a cup every once in awhile (because hey, one cup doesn’t make a difference).

    People starting bringing in their own coffee then would inevitably get angry when other people stole it. Then, there would be issues when someone wanted to use the machine with their own grinds, but there was still a half pot in the carafe. At one point, the office coordinator, who used a label maker to label every drawer and cabinet in the supply room, put a small label on the coffee maker that read, “TRAGEDY OF THE COMMONS.” I shit you not.

    1. zora*

      This was my favorite from the other day. I am totally going to steal this idea the next time some crazy war happens about something. Unfortunately, my current workplace is exceedingly sane. … I can’t believe part of me actually WANTS some crazy drama to happen so I can make a funny label! haha!

  160. Razilynn*

    Office got several Keurigs and placed them throughout the designated “kitchen” areas. They put up signs saying we weren’t allowed to bring in our own K-cups because that would affect the business of the company maintaining the machines and stocking supplies (basically it would cut into their profits). Surprise, surprise – people didn’t want to spend $2-3 to buy a single K-cup from the office when they already had them at home. About a few weeks later they removed all the Keurigs and put in new machines that did not use K-cups…

  161. The OG Anonsie*

    I worked briefly in an office where there was a break room with a large drip style coffee maker. One of the first days I was there I went to pour myself a cup and luckily looked into the pot first, because it was basically just a pot of thick mold. And I mean THICK. It was not a simple cleaning job or like a pot that got left over the weekend by mistake or something. It was a science fair project.

    I put it back and went back to my desk to ask the people who sat around me what the hell, and they said I should just bring instant coffee and use the electric kettle for hot water. Apparently there was some kind of massive, office-wide standoff where no one would clean the pot out. Periodically the cleaning crew would come through and deal with it, someone would make a pot of coffee, and the cycle would start over. This had been going on for months. Months.

    1. Serin*

      When the aliens discover us, and their little tentacular children say, “What are humans like?” they’re going to tell them this story. It just encapsulates something about both our sense of justice and our breathtaking pettiness.

  162. Blue Cupcake*

    I once worked in a building that housed two businesses, Company A and Company B. Of course each company buy bottled water, but everybody just use whatever cooler they pass by no matter who it belonged to. All is peaceful in the land.

    Until the day signs were put up on certain machines declaring “This water cooler to be used by Company A employees only.” Well! Ok, Company A paid for those. Fair enough.

    It took less than an hour for a sign to show up in the awesome coffee/tea station declaring these items are purchased and provided by Company B and only to be used by Company B.

    The reaction is how you expected. Company A fired the opening shot and won the battle, but Company B won the (coffee) war.

  163. Mischa*

    I used to work at a fancy private school as the administrative assistant for the middle school. We had a Keurig in each division (elementary, middle, high school – we were all in the same building). The teachers went through that stuff like crazy. We were easily spending $200-$300 dollars per month per division on k-cups. Plus, the stupid Keurig was in my office, so I had to take care of it. Naturally, it would run out of water all the time, and always at the worst time (sorry Kathy, I can’t get more water for the Keurig, dealing with student crisis of the day and many angry parents). Over the summer, with the blessing of my boss because of the budget, I switched us to a normal drip coffee pot. No one drank it, because “it wasn’t strong enough.” Which absolutely boggled my mind, because k-cups make incredibly weak coffee. I drank a lot of drip coffee that year…

  164. Js*

    not an office per say, but related. i work in events and often have to run spaces at conferences or convention centers that are designated for meetings or a certain set of attendees, and we usually order a coffee/tea set up. convention centers and hotels usually have public coffee kiosks but the lines can get long and people are both lazy and cheap, so my #1 job on these days is policing the entrances to keep out coffee theives who will casually walk into the rooms (with clear signage that indicates it is for people who are not them), go straight to the table to pour themselves a cup and walk back out. why can’t i just let them have a cup? because coffee (and hot water, apparently) is crazy expensive in a convention center. you can pay upwards of $50/gallon, so I can only afford to order exactly what I need. I have had a lot of confrontations over this.

  165. overcaffeinatedandqueer*

    People have decaf? Maybe legal is hardcore but I have only ever seen single and double strength coffee.

    A college friend would drink decaf, and I always teased her, “are you enjoying your hot cup of moot point?”

    Finally, I went to Kauai, Hawaii in February and there was ONE coffee plantation for the whole island. Great coffee, but the supply chain was nuts- every place that served any coffee would either expensively ship in from the mainland, or go local and mark it up as local organic Awesome coffee. $6 a cup for Kauai pour over. I wish I was joking! But it really is to die for.

    Wife and I did do the coffee plantation tour though. Free self guided tour through the fields just as the coffee began to bloom, free samples of every roast, with a little shop that sold fancy drinks made from coffee grown there, beans by the pound, and coffee related souvenirs. Coffee from there was $20/pound, but I still bought 5, plus a coffee mug with a map of the Hawaiian islands embossed into the side. When I came back and went to work, you could pry that coffee from my cold, dead hands, and I only ever made it from home.

    When I have the money, we are subscribing to the coffee company’s roast of the month club! $135 for six months, but they don’t export or sell elsewhere otherwise, and it is actually the best coffee I have ever had. I gave my mother a pound, and she liked it so much that she packed it when she and my dad went hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, where everything is in backpacks.

    1. Corky's wife Bonnie*

      A friend of mine moved to Guatemala, and she sent me some coffee from there. Oh boy, that was truly the best coffee I have ever had. Now I want to go to Hawaii…

  166. aes_sidhe*

    I remember being asked to clean out the coffee pot once, and I had the firm administrator go get a giant bottle of vinegar from the store and anything else I might need. So, armed with my supplies, I started to work. OMG. I don’t think that thing had ever been cleaned, and they’d had it for years. I used about a gallon of vinegar by the end of it; the office smelled like a pickle factory; and the paper towels were BLACK with crud. Finally, I took the paper towels to the firm administrator and said, “This is a health hazard. We need a new coffee pot.” She was going to argue, but one of the partners saw the gunky paper towels and told me to toss it in the garbage and to get a new one.

    Our firm administrator has this idea that coffee pots are supposed to last indefinitely and hates “wasting money” on new coffee pots.

  167. Where's the Le-Toose?*

    Among coffee wars, office refrigerator wars, and water club wars, I just don’t get involved anymore. I’ve been in the public sector since 2000, so I haven’t had employer funded coffee, tea, or water in a very long time.

    At my prior public sector job, I was paying into the employee coffee fund and water fund, and the monthly contribution kept going up. When people started to gripe about the cost, a couple of coworkers did some office surveillance, and it turns out the person running the coffee and water club was skimming money to help pay his child support.

    Then I got a small coffee pot and coffee beans for the area that had me, my boss, another attorney, and our secretary. When beans would get low, the other attorney and I were always really good about buying more beans (and it was free for our secretary because she was so underpaid that it was the least we could do for her). The boss would gladly drink the coffee, but when it came time to buy more beans, she would explain that the coffee wasn’t communal, it was “our” coffee, and we were really sweet people for letting her drink it. She made about $20k more than me and she couldn’t buy a bag of beans once in a while?!?

    At current public sector job, I got out of the water club, which uses large plastic jugs. The most frequent water users would never replace the water jug. Some said they couldn’t lift it, others were just lazy. I think I was replacing a jug at least twice a week by myself. And then people not in the club would steal water. Plus, there was one employee who wasn’t in the club but was constantly asked to change the jug since his desk was the closest to the break room. His compensation was free water, which annoyed the people in the club who did change out the jug.

    There is a coffee maker, but it looks like a two-burner model with a warming plate on top that was made in the 70’s. No one cleans it, and no one really uses it.

    Then we had to buy our own office refrigerator when the office supplied one broke. Our office told us that it wasn’t in the budget to get a new one. So a bunch of people chipped in and had a new one installed. Then came the war with people who didn’t pay for it but used it. Then the war with new hires who started after the new refrigerator was installed and thought that it was paid for by the office. And when someone who did pay went to a different division that still had a working office paid for refrigerator, they wanted their money back. Then 23 months later, the office said they had money for a new refrigerator, and the employees had to remove the one they paid for at their own cost. I think someone sold it on craigslist.

    It’s sooo much easier to just not get involved.

    2. AsItIs*

      Don’t blame you for not wanted to get involved.

      In many places in the world, a refrigerator is a necessity, a basic appliance, so it seems crazy that it wasn’t officially replaced for 2 years!

    3. nym*

      I am in the public sector. Someone attempted to start a water club in our building a few years ago, and I declined to get involved, because I’m perfectly happy to drink tap water / chilled water from the fountain.

      Best. Decision. Ever. Oh, the wars that resulted about who had/hadn’t paid their $10 for the month, who was going to be onsite the day delivery came to get them through security, who could hoist the jugs to refill, what to do in the summer months when people drank more vs in the winter when they didn’t…

  168. GigglyPuff*

    All these stories just made me do a clean on my Cuisinart K-Cup machine in my office. While it never gets gross, the hot chocolate has leaked into the housing a few times since I puncture the cup twice.

    And these all just made me really glad no one ever took me up on my offer to use the machine.

  169. Sylvan*

    I worked with some guys who shared a thing of milk, then forgot about it until I found it some weeks later, tipped over and open on the bottom shelf of the fridge smelling like death.

    I figured that if anyone were going to clean it, they would have by now, so I did it. They saw me and apparently felt bad enough that they didn’t do it again.

    Just kidding, they did it again with little cups of salad dressing.

  170. GC Girl*

    At Healthcare Old Job, we had the awful combination of a) geographic area that had No Good Coffee Places nearby and b) a cafeteria who coffee was Gawd Awful. But for the coffee drinkers, it was Gawd Awful or bring your own from home. Since I worked in an ancient administration building, Old Boss was told the wiring was not going to handle a coffee maker, so No Coffee Makers Or Any Appliances In the Office.

    I work in HR and dealt with recruitment and transfers. One advantage of this is that you get to know EVERYBODY. Including the nice Electrician in Maintenance. So we had a chat, had him come up to the office and discovered that there was a way to fix the wiring to have a coffee maker and another appliance in our office without killing the wiring.

    With that knowledge, I led the department on the mission for Operation Coffee Maker. I got buy-in from the non-coffee drinkers with the promise of a microwave. Poor Old Boss was shocked with the entire department campaigning for a coffee maker, for her meetings you know, it would be good to have this available because she’s so important. And a microwave would not go amiss, to warm up cookies. For her meetings, of course.

    Fortunately, she knew that she was beat. Plus, I found out she secretly wanted a coffee maker, but didn’t want to run afoul with Maintenance. So she put in on us to source the space, the equipment and sundry and so long as it doesn’t go over X budget, we can do it. My HR department was the If We Have A Task, It Will Get Done type of people, so within 30 days, we had a coffee maker, microwave and a nice custom shelving unit built by Maintenance in our back room where we kept our files.

    And thus peace and harmony was maintained in the land for years….

  171. Irene Adler*

    Ya know what?
    There’s a very telling interview question candidates should be asking.
    Something along the lines of “May I inspect the coffee maker for this place?” or “Let me see the insides of the employee refrigerator please.”
    This would tell one a whole lot about the inner workings of that particular work place.

  172. Kimberly*

    I don’t drink hot drinks (I’m in Houston it is hot enough), so I missed any coffee drama at work. My Aunt owns her own business and likes her coffee very strong. Her solution was very simple – two pots. One was marked Coffee the other Jet Fuel.

    1. Wintermute*

      as an aside, hot drinks cool you down more than cool ones do! There’s a reason for the long tradition of coffees and teas throughout the middle east and in India, after all.

      1. MsSolo*

        Hot drinks raise your core temperature which makes you sweat more, which cools you down. So it’s sort of true, on a hot dry day in your swimwear, but not very useful if you’re sat in a sweltering office trying not to get sweatier. The popularity of hot drinks in the middle east and in India tends to be as more evening/night drinks, when the weather is cooler (also, India = massive, so drinking chai under the stars in the foothills of the himalayas is a different proposition to chai in Mumbai at midday).

  173. The work fairy*

    Water story – When I started my previous job, there was a big laminated sign above the sink in the kitchen saying “do not drink the water – not safe” etc. I was surprised but whatever, and used the water dispenser. Because we were a food company we had to get the water analyzed once a year for safety so a few months in I receive the results and the water is fine to drink. I call the lab to make sure and yeah, the water is perfect.
    Turns out the “Don’t drink the water” sign was put up by a (crazy) employee who had done her own water analysis and found it to be contaminated with Potato (???) and since she was allergic to potato she wanted to warn everyone not to drink it.

  174. Schnoodle*

    Once at ToxicJob, my nemesis kept bugging me to go in with her to get a Keurig. Well, I had one at home collecting dust as I stopped using it when I figured out the KCups weren’t recyclable (I’ve been told there are some that are now, woohoo!). I used the reusable thing for a while but honestly found a 4 cup coffee maker way easier and my mom drinks tons of coffee when she comes over so the 4cup again saved the day.

    So I brought it in and told her she could use it. I was hoping it’d get me off her list for a while. It did, but only for a while.

    So anyway, I finally quit and put in my notice. It was the first thing I packed, and it’s literally still in my garage. I need to give it away to someone. Just not her lol.

    Not sure this qualifies as a war, our office didn’t buy coffee or anything but I had some great satisfaction taking it away from her.

  175. Anon for this one*

    At my former job, we would periodically pool money together to purchase lottery tickets. One time we actually won about $100. It was too many people in the pool to split it, so we decided to use that money to host a pizza party for the people who purchased tickets. Word came back that a few people who hadn’t purchased tickets wanted to attend, so an email was sent around that you could donate $5 and you would be welcomed to attend. Any additional money would go towards drinks plates etc. One person decided, even tho she wasn’t in the initial pool, she did not care. She was not going to donate five dollars and she still planned on attending. And noone was going to stop her. She also was one of the higher paid employees in the office.
    So the organizers created a list and placed on the door that listed all the people that had contributed to the pizza party. It was becoming quite the spectacle at this point but the organizers were holding firm. The lady was a total nightmare to work with and I think everyone at this point was fed up with her sense of entitlement.
    So the day arrives and of course she is the first one in the door. First in line. Piles her plate with 5 slices of pizza when everyone is taking a slice or two. At this point, you could sense something was going to seriously go down. It was a stand off of sorts. Our supervisor rushed in and donated $5 to cover her plate. And she took her food back to her office to eat it. Save it for later. Throw it out. Who know. But that was the last pizza party our office organized.

    1. CristinaMariaCalabrese (do the mambo like-a crazy)*

      I hate that people like this exist in the world.

  176. Goya de la Mancha*

    No wars have been fought in the name of caffeine in my office, but we’ve had our skirmishes.

    Old co-worker used to brag about how she went through a pot of coffee by herself each day. At the time no one in the office really drank coffee all that regularly (or so I thought…). Turns out that co-worker put 1/16th the amount of grinds for a 12 cup pot! She was literally drinking darkened water. So one day, I was craving coffee and made a new pot with the “regular” amount of grounds (per canister instructions!). She threw a fit about how disgusting it was and I wasn’t allowed to make coffee for the office anymore. Now, professional barista I am not, but it was not disgusting in anyway shape or form.

    Now we have a Keurig which is just easier. Also old co-worker no longer works here, so we’ve got that going for us, which is good.

  177. CatHair*

    As I write this, my company is in the middle of The Great Coffee Uprising of 2018. Let me explain. Most of the staff has been working for this company for decades (except me, I’m the token millennial). For the first year Ive been here, the office has had a corporate contract with Keurig, the coffee came from k cups and was generally fine. Last month, presumably to save money, the company switched to a different brand. I’m not a coffee expert, but I know enough about it to classify this new stuff as undrinkable, slightly caffeinated, acidic swill. I don’t drink much coffee in the office, but everyone else does and man, are they pissed. I have never seen a group of adults lose it like this. Literally hours a day have been lost to complaining about the coffee and formulating plots to stage a protest during an upcoming all hands meeting. People come in late or leave during the day to pick up coffee at the local cafe.
    Damn. If you want to keep a workforce happy, do not mess with the coffee.

  178. Lia*

    Former job — Jerk Director was charged with the office budget and initially wanted to cut out coffee (he drank maybe a cup a day but the rest of us drank far more) to save $20 a month. Overruled, he instead decided to no longer budget for creamer or sugar, which saved…$6 a month.

  179. poodlepants*

    A few years back, I was the director of an office that had an espresso machine that was only used by a small number of people, as it was a primarily tea-drinking office. Once, while I was away on holiday, the espresso machine broke; my deputy was frustrated that the admin/facilities team could not get the machine fixed immediately and so went on a coffee-machine-buying binge to prove some type of point. I came back the next week to find an espresso machine, a filter coffee machine, a french press, a turkish coffee pot, a moka pot, and a pour-over coffee maker in the office kitchen. He then handed me a reimbursement request…

    1. Beaded Librarian*

      I rather hope you denied it and told him that he’d better hope he could return them. But that is pretty funny.

  180. ArtK*

    No wars, but I did work in a 3-person office with two people who loved very strong coffee. One would run the coffee through twice, sometimes with new grounds. One day, he brought in some Puerto Rican coffee and WOW! that stuff was strong.

  181. Beaded Librarian*

    Well this isn’t a war story but its still kind of funny. Where I currently work we have two coworkers who like to drink their coffee so strong we joke that a spoon could stand up in it. Thankfully for the rest of us we have two coffee makers and a Kureig and most of us don’t drink coffee at all or don’t drink it often. But otherwise I could totally see there being snarky comments about their coffee.

    1. Tris Prior*

      I was totally on the receiving end of coffee snark! Well, sort of. I was young and fairly new at a job when a co-worker hesitantly approached me and said, “Um, this is really awkward, but we all need to talk to you about something about you that’s really becoming a problem for us…..”

      And, I thought, oh, crap, am I going to get the BO talk? I’m totally about to get the BO talk. Do I have BO? Cue surreptitious sniffing of own armpits.

      Turned out that they thought I was making the coffee too strong, on the days that I was the first one in and therefore made the first pot. I like it dark and they like pale lightly coffee-flavored water. Which, y’know, is fine, but the way they approached me made me think I had committed a faux pas way worse. Why not say, “hey, we’re pretty sure you’re the only one who can handle it that strong, so can you use less going forward?”

      1. Beaded Librarian*

        Oh thankfully we’re all straight forward with our snakiness to each other. I work with a good group of people who like to tease but thankfully will TELL you if there is actually a problem.

  182. Q*

    I was part of two departments that hated each other. The director of the other department would literally put her feet up on her desk everyday and tell everyone tasks and responsibilities that were clearly under her umbrella were our department’s responsibility. She gained a horrible reputation as being utterly useless and beyond clueless, and we all wondered how she hadn’t been fired. She would receive scathing emails and phone calls because she wasn’t doing her job and had no clue how the system worked, and blamed us. We pushed back and gave clear boundaries but nothing worked, she showed up everyday and did nothing. She admitted OUTLOUD she was merely hanging around for a paycheck until she was let go. She turned her entire department against us, but I felt sorry for them as the smarter ones realized they essentially did not have a boss or a leader. I eventually left but I heard the two departments were pitting threats of HR complaints against each other. How they kept this woman employed at a director level for so long was mind boggling.

  183. lizelle*

    It is common knowledge at my office that cockroaches have infiltrated the Keurig. People have found cockroach droppings, and one employee even saw one in there. The only person who drinks from it is the CEO.

    1. AsItIs*

      Gasp! That’s disgusting. And no one’s told the CEO? Guess he/she/they/it aren’t popular.

  184. Melodious Thunk*

    As an antidote to all of the warring, I have a happy office coffee story:

    When I was a graduate student teaching assistant, I frequently popped into the department office to pour myself a 24 cent cuppa to fuel my marathon grading sessions or keep myself awake during office hours attended by zero students. Over time, I became friendly with the two admins working in that office, “Melissa” and “Cassandra.” I never bothered them when they were busy, but we would talk when they were at liberty, sometimes chatting lightly but also sometimes talking about hard times in our lives. I often offered to rinse the coffee pot and always paid my 25 cents.

    One day, Melissa was out sick and Cassandra was on the phone as I came in to see that the coffee was almost but not quite finished brewing. I plopped down in the vacant desk chair to wait and happened to espy the telephone list of instructors for a special set of courses, one of which was in a specialized topic area of great interest to me.

    “Hmm,” I said when Cassandra hung up, “I had no idea we had a course in bebop cartography.”
    “The instructor for that course just quit, and we don’t know what to do” she replied.
    “I would love to teach that course,” I said, and Cassandra made it happen.

    And that’s how I ended up an instructor rather than just a TA in only my second year of graduate school, teaching a course that brought me into contact with virtually every person in my town working in that realm while setting the stage for my next job and the next and the next. Some of the people I met because I taught that course are still my friends 25+ years later.

    Moral of the story: Always offer to rinse the coffee pot.

  185. Wherehouse Politics*

    There is coffee (for me, that’s a decent sustainable/organic brand, freshly brewed from freshly ground beans& a light roast when possible, with a generous amount of half&half or whole milk. Used to do sugar but dropped that habit and just add dairy now.)and there is what I called Barry Coffee. Barry coffee was made by a supervisor named Barry, who started his shift about three hours ahead of staff, using Costco drum sized Folgers dark roast, pre ground, that lasted for months, at at least double the concentration of the usual recommended amount to water. This would boil down to a sludgy bitter syrup by the time staff arrived, with only non dairy whitener ( that was what it was called, also bought in bulk from Costco) and the pink sweet n low packets to modify the taste. Blargh.

  186. DMouse*

    We didn’t have a high-level boss in our local office, but of course there was a manager who considered themselves in charge, even though they only managed specific people. I remember they would always get upset if they got to the coffee pot and it was empty, and they had to make the next pot. This was coffee provided by the company and we have no admin staff, so anyone who wanted coffee just made a pot as needed, but apparently he felt someone should do it for him. Also, we had a drama over who should shut the coffee pot off at the end of the day – again, since there was no admin staff assigned to close down office at end of the day, no one would ever remember to turn the machine off. And of course, the same office has ongoing passive-aggressive emails about who left their dirty coffee cups in the sink and who hasn’t cleaned out their old food from the fridge,,,

  187. Leah*

    At my current job, our kitchen space is open to the rest of our office, which is also an open space (it’s just seven of us, so it’s quite small), meaning if you’re talking at a normal volume by the coffee maker everyone in the office can hear you loud and clear. We have a Nestlé Dolce Gusto capsule machine in our kitchen area, and it’s no secret to anyone that I hate coffee and refuse to drink it – our secretary even tried buying the hot chocolate capsules during my first few months working there, but I made it one time, noted that it tasted awful and watery, and I never used the machine again.

    Anyway, one day my coworkers come back from lunch and group in the kitchen area to have their after lunch cup of coffee, when our office director starts ranting about how he doesn’t trust people who don’t drink coffee or alcohol. My coworkers all agree with him and they start talking about how it’s weird, how it’s not just unusual but extremely odd, how people like that shouldn’t be trusted at all, and I’m just sitting at my desk, thinking, they can’t be serious. But after a couple of minutes I realized they were actually serious. I slowly turned in my chair, looked at them with an awkward smile. “Guys… you know I don’t drink coffee or alcohol, right?” A coworker was like, come on! Have you never gone out with friends for drinks? Nope, I usually prefer ordering juice. And no coffee, ever? Unless the coffee’s mixed with milk, chocolate, and other sugary things, until the taste of coffee is just a faint, vague memory (think of a Starbucks chocolate chip frappuccino, or their pumpkin latte) I absolutely hate it. And even so, they just kept the conversation going, repeating over and over again that they do not trust people who don’t drink coffee or alcohol. Not once did they drop the subject, or backtrack, or apologize. I just kept looking at them in stunned silence until they finished their conversation and each went on their own merry way. My boss I think tried to smooth things over by saying that it was a good thing I wasn’t a coffee drinker, it just means more coffee to everyone else! But no one picked up on his attempt to save face.

    Still one of the weirdest things that I ever heard people say. Apparently you’re untrustworthy if you don’t like drinking coffee or alcohol! Makes total sense????

    1. Enough*

      Translation – I don’t trust anyone that isn’t exactly like me because I can’t understand them because my way is of course the only way.

  188. Ramba*

    Not an office story about coffee in the office, but still a good story about people and their coffee. A dad of a good of mine loved his gas station coffee. He’d drive down to the local gas station and buy 32oz Styrofoam cups of it, usually several cups at a time. For some reason he loved this coffee and wouldn’t drink anything else. He would then come home drink one of the cups and place the rest in the fridge to heat up later. Her fridge always had at least four of these 32oz Styrofoam cups in it, always. He made sure he was never running low. One night, a series of bad tornadoes and severe thunderstorms come through, which knocked out power. The dad decided that he needed a coffee RIGHT NOW, but the only coffee he had was cold coffee and since the power was out he couldn’t microwave or use the electric stove to heat it up.

    His solution: to pour the coffee into a cooking pot, go outside, and heat it up on his grill. While everyone else is taking cover from the storm, he’s outside grilling up his coffee.

    1. MKC8*

      My dad ruined a cooking pot on a grill trying to make coffee during a power outage. Now I make sure my parents emergency supplies include packets of instant coffee.

    2. Hope*

      We had to finagle a tea-like set up to make coffee using the grill to heat water in a pot and a coffee filter closed with rubber bands for my mom after a hurricane knocked the power out for a couple of days. My mom in her decaffeinated state is terrifying–you do not want to deal with her sans-coffee.

      This was in the days before people in our neck of the woods had even heard of a French press, but literally the day I learned about this marvelous invention, I bought one to have on hand for the next storm or to give to her for a birthday present, whichever came first.

      1. IForgetWhatNameIUsedBefore*

        In a pinch you can make “cowboy coffee” with a bandanna in a pot of water.

  189. SaraV*

    Late to the party, but…

    At $OldJob, we had three coffee carafes, two regular and one the typical orange decaf. $OldJob provided the coffee, but the vendor delivered it in prepackaged pouches. (Say that 5x fast) Many in our department considered one pouch a bit too weak, so they’d double up the pouches on a batch. But, you wouldn’t know until you took a drink. It wasn’t horrendous…a bit more creamer and sugar/sweetener made it palatable. Finally, they took some masking tape, placed it on the one of the carafe handles, and wrote “DOUBLE” in Sharpie.

    I was regaling the above story to my coffee-loving brother-in-law. He countered with that some people in his workplace would make half-batches of coffee…as in, use half the necessary grounds for a “normal” batch. Yuck! You can’t recover from that.

  190. overcaffeinatedandqueer*

    Not strictly office coffee wars, but some salient facts and a funny story:

    -I went to German immersion camp when I was 14 and 15.
    -I, along with about six others in my advanced language group, who roomed near each other, were regular coffee drinkers. I had been drinking coffee since I was 12, personally. We were intense, smart, but overall good kids.
    -Coffee was not on the German breakfast menu at any point. Adult counselors would get it from the kitchen. Asking would mean being told, in German, that coffee was not for children and we should get more sleep.
    -We needed caffeine. Two of my group, who were Brits, had even brought electric kettles in.

    After a few days of struggling until late afternoon break time when one could buy soda from the camp shop, my group was assigned to set the dining hall for lunch. This meant going to the kitchen where the sacred coffee was, but only for a second to grab things. The ringleader of our little group got a wonderful idea. The Great Coffee Heist began to be planned. We found out where the coffee was stored, and that there were ground floor windows in the kitchen.

    Plates and cutlery were in the kitchen. The leading dude and his closest friend would do the actual snatching, since they worked well together and their parents were most permissive in case they were caught and their families were told. Friend C was set up to grab the coffee from friends A and B, claim she forgot something in our cabin, and smuggle it back. C was the fastest runner.

    I was on distraction duty, since I spoke German very well and had a huge vocabulary. My job was to ask the counselor questions, drawing his attention away from my friends being in the kitchen way too long instead of just grabbing plates. It seemed to work, but I wouldn’t know until after-lunch rest time, when the counselors liked to sleep.

    So here’s how they pulled it off.

    A and B found the coffee, but it was only in those industrial sized cylinders of cheap grounds. Can’t smuggle it out under a sweater like they had thought one could do with a pound bag. Running out of time and unable to hide their spoils, A tossed it out the window and into the bushes while B stuffed coffee filters into her pockets. C left the dining hall but doubled back behind the building to grab coffee. Crap, it’s too big to hide! Grabs it and starts running to the woods like a bat out of hell. Drops it at the base of a huge spruce tree with branches covering the area around it, makes a cairn to go find the tree again.

    After that, we all somehow had coffee in our water bottles every morning. Make a lot of pour over into a huge opaque thermos during the afternoon rest time when some or all of us could get out of our cabins (this involved making hot water in the bathroom with said electric kettles and carrying them outside, usually wrapped in a sweater to conceal it and prevent burns), share “water” with friends in the afternoon, steep overnight, then ask dining hall ladies for a cup of ice at breakfast.

    It ended up being like a really crappy cold press, but hey, caffeine.

  191. Dean J*

    Worked for a bank that paid reasonably well for software engineers. Fulltime was $30-40/hour, and some of our external contractors ran $250/hour, which was obscene.

    Anyways, we had to bring in our own coffee, and the only thing that people would agree on was the cheapest available ground beans. I… still haven’t ever seen those brands. Like, Maxwell House or Folger’s would have been at least two grades better. I’ve drank sour milk because it was convenient, but this coffee wasn’t easily something you could drink regularly.

    The result was that we all left the office two or three times a day for a “meeting” across town… where we went to a deli and got a cheap cup that was remarkably better than the stuff we had. They lost probably five hours a week per person over maybe two bucks a day.

    And still do. And still will.

  192. Georgie Girl*

    Also late to the party…but at one job there were several people who hated coffee and felt the need to tell me this whenever they saw me drinking it. Like “Ew, I can’t stand it, it’s so bitter.” Um, I’m sorry? I didn’t mean to drink it near you?
    There were other coffee drinkers there though, I wasn’t the only one, so I wasn’t sure why it was such a big deal.

  193. MKC8*

    Very minor compared to other stories here: I offered to resign from the committee that handles buying coffee, tea, and supplies for staff after I came back from a vacation and got multiple complaints that no-one had bought half-and-half for over a week. There are at least four shops within 2 blocks of our office that have half-and-half.

    My partner, on the other hand, once worked for a company where management decided that too much time was being spent by staff going out to get coffee (there was a cafe in the building and a major chain coffeeshop across the street), so they got two Keurigs, one for coffee and one for tea. The ensuing battles and passive-aggressive notes pasted on and next to the machines (both sides were enraged by tea K-cups in the coffee machine and vice versa), cleanup issues, running out of favorite flavors, blends, etc., the small faction of coffee purists who could not abide traces of flavored coffees in the machine…people still went out for coffee. It was easier than engaging in the battles and half the reason people went out was just to get out of the office for a few minutes anyway.

  194. Cherryblossom*

    At my last office, people would always forget to refill the water in the Keurig machine. It got to the point where my boss put a post-it on the machine reminding people to refill it. People still forgot so there was an even larger post-it placed there. People still forgot. Then he resorted to yelling and demanding to know who the last person was to use the machine. And if it happened that he was the one to refill it, he made a big show of doing so (but even he forgot sometimes).

  195. Anna*

    I don’t drink coffee, but I worked at a hotel front desk and part of my job was keeping fresh coffee in the lobby. I was not trained how to do this, so my first time I was reading all the instructions.
    I was told regularly that I made the best coffee of anyone else. My theory is it tasted better because I was the only one that cleaned everything before brewing a new batch.

      1. PSB*

        I love that series. Did you see Free Meerkats story above about someone trying that on the (real) USS Enterprise back in the 70s? Spoiler alert: Their career did NOT turn out as well as Ishmael’s.

  196. Meredith*

    We have one of those reservoir coffee makers, that starts brewing almost immediately. The pot itself has a twist-on lid. I guess the person before me didn’t twist it on either tight enough, or just straight up laid it in there without twisting it at all. Needless to say, piping hot coffee spilled all over my hand, and I have a sweet burn scar to always remember it by. ULGGGGGG

    1. cactus lady*

      Ooh coffee burn scars are no joke! I still have one on my stomach from spilled coffee in a restaurant in 2012.

  197. OfCourseIt'sCashmere*

    As a snob that does Counter Culture in a Chemex every morning, I would never touch the stuff people drink here, but man has this been a fun read!

    1. H.C.*

      *high five*& ditto, I use a V60 drip, and rotate between the various snobby brands available here (Stumptown, Copa Vida, Heart, Demitasse)

  198. HRperson*

    I don’t drink coffee, which worked in my favor back in the years when I worked as an Executive Assistant. Clients would come in and demand elaborate, made-on-demand coffees. I would very brightly and happily say that we had coffee available, but if they wanted special made-for-them coffee they should probably know that I do not drink coffee and have never made coffee for anyone in my life. If they would like to be the recipients of my first attempt ever, I’d give it a shot! No one ever gave it a shot and they drank the regular joe I brung ’em.

    Second story: at my current company, we have a fancy Nescafe espresso machine that people love like a pet. About two months before we moved offices to a new building, the water connection in the wall behind the machine broke. They decided not to repair it since we were moving anyway, so the masses were without it for about two months. During which time, someone brought in lilies to lay across the top, while someone else created a picture of a “RIP” tombstone and attached it to the front. They had a little sad Nescafe funeral.

  199. Fur Princess*

    OK, now I’ve wasted an hour of work time reading through the thread. So many of these stories bring me back to Toxic90s job:
    e
    Owner of newly deregulated telecom was a cheap bastard, to put it as nicely as possible. In keeping with his bastardly ways, no coffee, tea or water were supplied by the company. Like many of the other stories here, small groups of employees would band together to supply their own drinks. I worked next to a group of sales people that had their own little coffee group. I brought in my Melitta cone and some coffee one fine day and made some coffee for myself. Cue one of the sales people coming into the kitchen area and reaming me out forbeing “selfish” since I was making my own coffee, ya know, for me. He couldn’t tell me why making coffee I’d brought in for me was any different than bringing in my own lunch or snacks, or, or, or. He just kept repeating that I was so selfish for making my own coffee. Twenty four years later, I’m still SMH.

    2. AsItIs*

      I have found that people who persistently call others “selfish” are incredibly selfish people themselves.

  200. Life is Good*

    I once worked at a bank that was cheap and didn’t buy coffee, or anything, for the employees. A few of the employees got together and purchased a coffee maker and coffee, creamer, etc. for ourselves. One morning, we came in and smelled freshly brewed coffee, but not coming from the upstairs break room. We followed the scent and discovered the manager in the conference room giving a presentation to a group of high balance clients. She had prepared a nice spread of breakfast foods and right in the middle was OUR coffee maker full of fresh coffee, assorted creamers and our bag of coffee at the ready to make more. We were floored, but the worst was that she didn’t even acknowledge that she had used our stuff (and she knew it was ours).

    1. AsItIs*

      Follow-up? Did she replace the items? Did she consider the maker/items as “office property? Did she do it again for other meetings? Was the maker hidden from her?

    2. MostCake*

      Same here – our cheap boss one day announced we would no longer have free coffee and fixins – cause he didn’t know “who else has a job where they get free coffee??!!” . So us lowly scrubs (all three of us) cobbled together to buy our own Keurig and we share/supply our own k-cups, creamer and sugar informally. It was poetry when he offered his VIP guest a “coffee or something?” and the guy said “Yes, please!” and then he went totally red-faced and pleading-eyed at us, but we just gave him the face and said we were out. He’s never mentioned coffee again.

  201. Quickbeam*

    I am always the first one in the office and in fact I open the office, turn the lights on, etc. I am salaried but prefer to work my “extra hours” early rather than late. I have 2 co-workers who hatched a plan for me to make the coffee when I come in so that it is ready to go for them.

    I not only do not drink coffee, I don’t use any caffeine for religious reasons. I’m certainly not making coffee (and it is in no way related to my job function). They hounded me for years until they retired. I foiled their perfect plan. Sigh.

  202. #GovtEfficiency*

    My first job out of college, working for a consulting company, for a huge onsite project at a federal agency. One of my teammates (also fresh out of school) is set up in a cubicle in the middle the client. She sees the water cooler next to her cube, fills up her water bottle, and goes about her day.

    The next day, our project manager calls her in to inform her that she needs to donate $5 to the water cooler club. As it turns out… the agency water cooler manager who sits *in the cube next to her* got upset, escalated it up the government reporting chain to one of the top execs, who then brought it up with the senior exec at the consulting firm (overseeing an on site team of probably 200-400 consultants), who then sent the message back down the consulting chain. My teammate paid her $5 and never had another issue.

      1. Grad Student*

        I don’t understand why people don’t do this! I once had my supervisor tell me that someone else who worked in the building (with some authority, but not directly over me, and not even necessarily aware of who I was) told her to tell me to stop walking around the halls barefoot. Which, fair point, but–why was this a multi-step message chain when it could only have started by someone seeing me in person?

        1. Balderdash*

          Possibly because walking around barefoot in hallways is a really strange thing to do and they didn’t want to approach you in case you did something equally odd in response. That’s not normal behavior in an office setting.

  203. synchrojo*

    This thread is making me extremely grateful for my current office, which is coffee nirvana. Coffee, tea, and hot chocolate are provided by the office (as a government agency that’s not allowed to provide so much as snacks for meetings, I’m not quite sure how we manage this, but as it is free for the taking by staff and our many, many visitors alike, nobody is complaining). Our precious gem of a receptionist keeps two large pots of different types of coffee filled at all times during the day, and even calls the few staff members she knows are habitual late-afternoon coffee drinkers to check if they need a last refill before she dumps the pots at 4:30. Some people still make their own coffee at their desks or in the kitchens (which are equipped with coffee-making apparatus), but I have no idea why.

  204. Zwink*

    A coffee story from this week. I work at a small company. My team is in one building on campus, and the rest of the organization is in another. The floors in my building are getting refinished, so my team is currently wedged into some empty offices on the lower level of the other building for a couple weeks. One of my team members and I have temporary offices close together down a long hallway.

    The other day, I heard a coworker (not from our team) yelling my team member’s name down the hallway in a very agitated voice. “Tom! Toooom! Toooom!” Then, when he didn’t respond, “Is he deaf or something?!?” Then I heard her barge into his office and exclaim, “Are you deaf?!” Tom spluttered in confusion, and I heard the coworker demand that he come with her.

    Tom later told me that the coworker made him follow her to the kitchen, where she showed him how he didn’t turn on the warming light when he used the coffee maker, and proceeded to explain “how we do things in this building.”

    I will also mention that in this building, you have to pay 2 cents per pretzel rod for the container of pretzels in the kitchen.

    I’m just trying not to touch anything until we can move back to our own building. :)

  205. The Other Katie*

    At some point in my previous company, they went from commercial drip-filter machines to a fancy premium coffee setup (think an early version of a K-cup dispenser). First, everyone drank an absolute ton of it to the point that they started charging a quarter just so people would stop going to the coffee machine very half hour. Then the coffee mug shortage started. People started hoarding coffee mugs in their desk drawers. They also stopped washing them and the sinks soon became unmanageable. Our company Christmas gift that year was, rather pointedly, personalised coffee mugs – one per person, and now everyone knows who left theirs in the sink.

  206. Princess Cimorene*

    Ah I remember a couple from back in my 9-5 days. We had these large carafes that I fear had never been cleaned (the kind you see out for public use at hotel breakfasts and car dealerships; tall and black) that someone made coffee in using company supplied coffee packets every day. The coffee was always bitter. People always complained. Finally someone decided we should have a keurig brought in, and tons of different coffees and drinks supplied and so this was done. But then everyone started drinking and enjoying the coffee, and about a month later management yanked it and said we were using it too much. It was a dangled carrot that we got in trouble for catching a nibble of)

    And I know there are coffee purists who despise Keurig, but trust me, it was a luxury gourmet treat compared to whatever was living in those tall carafes

    1. out of ideas for clever nickname*

      Shambles, sounds like management just didn’t like happy folks.

  207. Vodka Quiet*

    We used to host community events at our office, with catering by local businesses. They could use our kitchen to set up. Once, we had a local specialty coffee company providing samples – which was great, until midway through the evening, one of my coworkers witnessed one of the coffee caterers removing a bag of Starbucks coffee from a kitchen drawer and *throwing it away* before replacing it with a bag of *their* coffee.

    Some fit of revenge against franchise coffee, I assume. Our department hasn’t let go of the grudge three years later.

    1. zora*

      Ha! It’s so weird because they were just GIVING you free coffee! That seems like a weird act of revenge!

      1. Life is Good*

        Yeah, but throwing away coffee that wasn’t theirs to toss. Wasteful! (PS-I think Starbux sux)

  208. NewJobWendy*

    This is a little bit the opposite – I worked at a company that had few perks and was very frugal. The only thing they supplied in the kitchen was coffee, tea, and related condiments. We had a Keurig knock-off machine that made terrible coffee and dripped constantly. Eventually management caved and allowed us to purchase a Shark Ninja Coffee Bar system – morale was instantly boosted. It was a small thing but it made our office so much happier, and frankly made the best iced coffee. $300 well spent.

  209. out of ideas for clever nickname*

    I worked at truly toxic place a long time ago, family owned with an evil owner / CEO and his yappy son as his deputy, manufacturing teapots. The owner would order coffee from an outside supplier that would bring in the dispensing thermos and rather small paper cups. This wouldn’t normally be relevant, but..the coffee was only for the main boardroom only for meetings with outside clients. We, the lowly muggle manufacturing teapot planners would sometimes get invited to these meetings as part of the job, but we were told ahead of time, by other employees that we weren’t allowed to have the coffee..yup, we were personas non-gratas near his probably cheap coffee.

  210. Reva*

    My people invented coffee. I take my coffee very seriously. No coffee wars are allowed under my watch!

  211. Mona25*

    Note to self after reading below comments: Keep bringing coffee from home and drinking water from tap.

  212. Daria Grace*

    I drink iced coffee, usually the bottled type from the grocery store as it’s a bit tricky to make in the office kitchen. Although none of them are super healthy, I buy the best option. I still have coworkers nag me about how they are super unhealthy and will worsen my diabetes

    1. Owler*

      Ignore the coworkers. We all have bad habits.

      I love iced coffee, and I got tired of paying for the bottles. If you can get in the habit of making them Sunday night, you can have lovely, fresh iced coffee each morning. I do it like the Kitchn version (thekitchn/ how to make the best iced coffee), but I just do it in a 2 cup jar and pour it over a simple Melitta pour-over, and I make several for the week.

  213. Frinkfrink*

    My husband used to work for a small company that got its coffee from a distributor that the sister of one of my husband’s coworkers worked at. One day, my husband was talking with a different coworker and playing with a labelmaker. He got the idea for a prank and made three or so labels that said DECAF and stuck them on a few random coffee bags, assuming that someone would find it and go “Ha ha, very funny,” and rip them off.

    A few weeks later my husband was out of the office and the coworker who’d watched him label the coffee bags IMed him and told him that the office had found the DECAF bags and gone wild, because this was Very Srs Bsnss. The brother of their distributor contact was on vacation, and they ended up tracking him down to get his sister’s phone number–because none of them had it, of course–so they could call and complain. She was very confused, because their decaf bags were green, and once the office worked out that it was a prank, they were highly upset.

    They never figured out who did it, though.

  214. Inspired Worker Bee*

    Not “coffee wars” but “coffee hour wars.” We used to have a 15-minute coffee “hour” in my small office of about 70 people once every two months – completely optional to attend, no obligation whatsoever. Just coffee and pastries provided by the company with a few announcements about birthdays, work anniversaries, etc., and the only regularly-occurring employee morale event the company put on. People generally looked forward to their free pastries and an excuse to say hi to people in other departments they don’t usually work with.

    Not anymore. Someone in middle management decided that 15 minutes once every two months was “too much time” for people to spend away from their computer screens for employee morale and complained to their boss, who also oversees the department responsible for said coffee hours. Bye-bye, free pastries. What inspiring leadership we have around here…

    That’s not really a great story, upon reflection. I could go on and on about the Microwaved Fish Incident of 2015, though.

  215. AMYLOO*

    My office has been having some people battling over kettle etiquette…there are some who whenever they want a cup of tea will put in the minimum amount of water just enough for one cup. They say it boils much faster and they’re done.
    Invariably someone else will come along and grumble how selfish it is to boil just enough for one, and that they now have to refill and start all over and wait for it to boil again, espcially in the morning when lots of tea drinkers come in. There have been actual yelling matches in the kitchen.

    1. Chocolate Teapot*

      That once happened to me. The kettle had almost boiled and somebody barged past to fill the kettle instead of waiting a minute.

  216. betty (the other betty)*

    I knew someone who was a coffee and vending delivery guy. One day, there was a call from a company that made satellites. You know, literal rocket scientists. The caller demanded that someone come right away because, “The coffee machine is broken! The coffee machine is broken.”

    Vending guy drove over and assessed the situation. Then he plugged the machine back in, hit the switch, and made coffee.

    Even rocket scientists need caffeine to function, apparently.

  217. I may have been the trendsetter ;-)*

    At my second law firm, we had multiple Keurig coffeemakers, which was good, and management that would stock the lower floors with crummy coffee, which was bad. It’d be acceptable if everyone had to deal with the bad coffee, but the beautiful people on the top floor got much better coffee. So some evil person, frustrated with the coffee situation around midnight, swapped the good coffee on the top floor with the bad stuff that everyone else had to suffer with. That was easy, since the people doing actual work were the only ones left in the office that late.

    The next day, we got a memo sternly instructing us that swapping coffee between floors was forbidden. But once people realized that the top floor had much better stuff, the swapping intensified.

    1. AsItIs*

      Nothing like having management that says “you are too lowly for the good coffee” is there?

  218. Lobbyist*

    I am the parent of a child on a swim team. The parent in charge of the snack bar buys snacks and sells them to the children and parents during the meet. Any profits go to the team for equipment. I was doing my volunteer job one meet, helping out at the snack bar. It was early morning. We sold coffee, donuts, bagels, and other breakfast items. On top of the coffee maker, one of those big ones, was a bag of Peets coffee. So it looked like that was the coffee we were making and selling. But the parent in charge of the snack bar was in fact making the coffee with a different, cheaper, brand. He thought people would prefer the coffee if they thought it came from Peets. One parent (with acute tastebuds apparently) asked and said it didn’t taste like that coffee, because she apparently regularly bought that particular brand and style. He lied to her face about it!!

  219. MammaRia*

    Coming late to the comments. One of our Directors was gifted a massive expensive coffee maker from a thankful student. The Director didn’t want it, so he put it in our team office opposite his room. We weren’t really fussed by it, and hardly ever used it, as it was a pain to clean.

    This upset the other Teams, as they wanted a machine like ours. We explained it had been gifted, and that they were welcome to use it in the spirit of inter team building. They did make a token show of coming an using it for a week, then they realised that it was more effort than they thought, with griding the beans, and cleaning it out afterwards.

    It sat in our office for about 6 months, rarely being used. One day another director came in, with an unknown woman, and they were looking at the Coffee Machine, looking serial number etc. I ask what was going on, the unknown woman piped up that she was from the local police station, the student had stolen the credit card used to purchase the coffee machine, and the machine was now confiscated as evidence…….

    Former student had been going into unlocked offices, finding the credit cards in unattended wallets/bags, taking photos of the front and back, then putting back into place. She’d bought THREE of the coffee machines, and they had been gifted to various academics. Former student was arrested.

      1. MammaRia*

        she had bought other gifts in the past which we now assume were from the stolen credit cards (she used more than one), for example, gourmet cakes, expensive fruit boxes (and yes, our Director gave them to our team to eat…..) I think the coffee machines were her ‘parting gift’ after graduation. No idea why she chose those.

        It was all very bizarre.

  220. Calico*

    My office provides a variety of k-cups and nice Keurig machines. Plus milk, both whole and skim. Someone got a bee in her bonnent about the milk vendor and switched. Thus began the cycle of milk boom and bust. It got ugly. Milk was being rationed in preparation for the next drought. First with a sign, then numbered jugs, and then milk was hidden in an industrial fridge in a locked part of the kitchen.

    Sanity returned only when a new reliable vendor was contracted.

  221. Llellayena*

    I’m in an office with someone who carries he’s mug around with him and has a habit of leaving it in various locations around the office. After a few weeks of this, he left it on my coworker’s desk, she hung it from the ceiling in the doorway. He walked under it about 5 times looking for his mug before someone took pity on him and told him to look up!

    1. Environmental Navy Wife*

      My old BossLady was like that, except with thermoses, Coke cans, her phone…. none of her stuff was ever in *her* office, but scattered around the entire rest of the 7 person office. We ended up putting a basket in the conference room and if you found BossLady’s random crap, you just put it there. Still had to deal with her wandering around the office aimlessly moping about she just *had* that (item), why do things *never* stay where she puts them….

  222. Weekend at...*

    Cheapskate former colleague brought in a small (2-cup) coffee maker and made a big deal about others being able to use it too. Turns out his plan was colleagues would brew themselves a cup and he would swoop in and take the remainder (2nd cup) – free coffee. People quickly caught on and that coffee maker would collect dust because even cheapskate former colleague wouldn’t buy coffee for it.

  223. Wintermute*

    If your coffee wars are bitter you’re probably brewing them too hot. Try a cooler atmosphere, and potentially less time to brew.

  224. KayEss*

    I worked in a small office where several of the employees were convinced that coffee brewed with water from the (unfiltered) kitchenette tap tasted better than coffee brewed with water from the (literally less than five feet away, definitely on the same water line) bathroom tap. Why someone would brew coffee with water from the bathroom tap is a legitimate question, but this was a debate that had been going on long before I was hired and I never asked. Anyway, several other employees made a hobby of threatening to make or insinuating that they had made a particular pot with “bathroom water.” One of them came in early for a week straight to make the first pot every day, openly challenging the coffee-water supertasters to guess which sink he had used for it.

    I don’t drink coffee, so I was able to just detatchedly observe this bizarre drama like Jane Goodall among the apes.

  225. Emm*

    Two stories:

    In one job, we had a “coffee club.” You paid $5 a month, and the club bought coffee, sugar, milk, and creamer and made coffee in those large urns. Not the world’s best coffee, but good enough for $5 a month. One of the office admins, “Jane,” ran the club and did a great job- until she was promoted and left the division. Another admin, “Cathy,” who we came to refer to as “crazy coffee lady,” took over. Around the same time, new folks were hired and joined the coffee club. This meant that coffee would always run out, and that realistically we needed to buy another urn do everyone could have a cup of coffee when we came in in the morning. But Cathy would have none of it. She decided the problem was people consuming too much coffee, and would send out nasty emails like “I don’t know how much coffee you think you’re entitled to for $5 a month- but you spoiled people need to learn to respect others!” She was also convinced that people were stealing sugar. If anyone in the club didn’t pay on time she would send nasty emails to the whole group, instead of polite reminders to the dawdlers. There was talk of booting her or starting a separate coffee club, but no one was really sure how to boot her because it’s not like the coffee club had bylaws. I left the job for other reasons, and was not sorry to leave the Cathy version of the coffee club behind.

    I had another job in a very small office (~10 people). About half had this inexplicable taste for very very weak coffee. They would put 1/4 the recommended amount of coffee in the machine, and it tasted like vaguely coffee flavored water. The other half of us insisted on using the full amount of coffee. In response, one week coffee fan would send out emails saying things like “DO NOT drink the coffee today! It’s way too strong!” We tried to persuade the weak coffee folks that they should just dilute the regular brewed coffee with hot water, but they insisted that wouldn’t work, and would gripe endlessly about the strong coffee. It became a battle of who got there first in the morning. Unfortunately, the boss was both very cheap about these things and didn’t drink coffee, so he tended to side with the weak coffee folks. It was a weird place.

  226. Liz*

    I’m Australian, and I’m an assistant in the legal field, so my office is all. about. espresso. We have an automatic espresso machine, which also does lattes, flat whites, etc.

    The only war is about the all-important BEAN ISSUE. When I started, the woman who had been doing general coffee machine stuff had been buying sort of mid-range beans from the supermarket. After a few months of what I can only describe as gentlemanly passive-aggression, someone finally explained in actual words that they would prefer to spend more for nicer beans.

    That was fine, I was just going with the situation in place when I started. But oh my goodness, the competition to find the nicest and most fanciest beans available was something else. And for some reason, I was meant to be the judge? I tried to explain that my coffee palate was formed with instant and Starbucks, and I was really a better judge of tea, but as the purchaser of groceries for the office, apparently I had the final say.

    (Then the machine died unexpectedly, and it took several weeks for a replacement to be delivered. Within a day, pod machines had appeared on desks, Aeropresses and French presses were turning up in the dishwasher, and my most senior boss had a complicated handheld espresso … thing.)

    (I drank instant.)

  227. starsaphire*

    Take.
    The Pump.
    OUT.
    Of The Air Pot.
    Before Brewing Another Pot Into It.

    (A friend posts on Facebook constantly regarding her ongoing saga of trying to teach this lesson to the people in her office. She’s tried signs, diagrams, illustrations, everything but interpretive dance and semaphore. No dice — at least twice a week, she’s stuck mopping up giant coffee puddles and no one is EVER around to take the blame.)

  229. J*

    Joint commission came to my hospital and they write you up for everything little thing. Our manager purposely broke the coffee machine the day before they came so there would be no coffee on the unit. She did replace it the next day!

  230. UK Ri*

    This isn’t an office story, but a student house tale. Several years ago, I lived in a big student house, and this being the UK, everyone was very particular about tea, to a degree that tickled my American sensibilities. This meant that despite most crockery being shared, people tended to have Their Mugs that they’d brought from home, and it wasn’t questioned.

    Until my best friend, A, brought his absolute favourite mug to the house. It was gigantic and could fit about 700ml of tea, while still being lightweight enough to carry around. One day A left his mug to dry in the kitchen, and when he returned, it was gone. That same day, we all saw our housemate B (who was absolutely nuts) drinking out of The Mug! Naturally, A went, ‘Oh sorry, that’s my mug,’ to which she replied that no, it was hers, she didn’t know where his had gone, but she had purchased this one herself recently and they must just be similar.

    Lest you think that was ballsy, it gets better. A, not being a fan of confrontation, stole The Mug back the same exact way a few months later, and just kept it hidden in his room. So B posted a photo of The Mug on our house Facebook group, asking if anyone had seen it, and saying she wanted it back! It was unbelievable. There was a lot of less amusing, equally crazy behaviour from B over that year, but A and I still guffaw over The Mug regularly.

    1. Robin B*

      I wonder if B really did have a similar mug and really thought A had stolen hers all along.

      1. UK Ri*

        It really would seem the less crazy explanation, but The Mug was super distinctive (I think it had Simpsons characters all over it?) and A had bought it online, so together with the timing, it was very obviously stolen.

  231. JanetM*

    No coffee wars, but various degrees of coffee humor.

    1. At my previous office, one of my first tasks was to write a justification to the Treasurer’s office for the purchase of a coffee maker, because coffee is considered an entertainment expense and requires special authorization. My first draft read, “This is an office of programmers, graphic designers, and other computer geeks. Coffee is not entertainment, it’s life support.”

    My director agreed, was amused, and told me so, and also told me to rewrite the memo. My second draft said something boring about faculty and administrators coming to our offices for workshops and consultations, and how we would like to be good hosts, and that we were only asking for the purchase of the machine; we’d supply all the coffee and condiments ourselves. That was the right tone, and sailed through the Treasurer’s office.

    2. As our department grew, I tried to keep one can of coffee in the cabinet by the coffeemaker, and at least one in the storage room, plus a hidden can in my desk (because people get very cranky when their caffeine goes away). One day a coworker came to me and very hesitantly asked, “J says you have Emergency Backup Coffee in your desk?” Yes, yes I did.

    3. About two weeks after I moved from that office to my current one, someone called me and said, “We’re out of coffee — what’s the process for getting more?” I explained that although other people did bring in coffee sometimes, mostly I just bought it on my regular Costco run.

    “Wait,” she said, “You were buying coffee for the whole floor with your money?”

    Well, yes, because that was the simplest way to make sure there’s always coffee. The next time she came to my building, she brought me a huge Starbucks fancy coffee drink.

    4. Last year, my union board held a meeting in the CWA building in Nashville, where we rent an office. They had the kind of coffee maker where the water starts dripping immediately after you pour it in, you don’t push a start button. Someone had never dealt with one of those before, assumed the hot plate button was the start button, and began pouring in water from the pot, rather than the fill pitcher. Next thing any of us knew, there was a panicked call from the kitchen that water was going EVERYWHERE!

  232. JanetM*

    Oh, and one more:

    5. When I moved to my current location, the CIO’s admin invited me to use their suite’s kitchenette, and noted “Four scoops of coffee per pot” (used an 1/8 cup measure, so 1/2 cup of coffee per pot). When I started drinking decaf, I couldn’t find an 1/8 cup measure, just a 1/4 cup, so I make my coffee with two scoops.

    The CISO saw me make a pot and asked if I preferred my coffee that weak. No, it’s just a different-size measuring cup.

  234. L*

    This coffee war probably doesn’t sound as dramatic as it is to us, but…
    Our office is small but growing as we come out of some major departmental changes and transitions, currently we have about 11 people, with one notorious sticky wheel. She was actually the interim director while we were in the worst of the transition, and while she had been a perfectly nice coworker, she became over-dramatic and vicious and paranoid while director, and burned a lot of bridges with staff. Now, we have a different director who not only doesn’t take her shit, but has no fear of making big changes and shedding out-of-date traditions as we go.
    We have a Keurig with complimentary pods in our office (ostensibly for visitors and guests, but in reality most of the office uses it frequently too). We also had a huge commercial size BUNN coffeemaker that was never used anymore, which our new director said he wanted to get rid of during the office move we had recently. The old director sees herself as the guardian of the “old” way things are done (seriously, the new director ripped up old tiles and carpet to put in new, fresh stuff, old director kept the old tiles and pieces of the 40 year old carpet), wouldn’t stand for it, and moved the whole thing down to her little office. She uses the BUNN in the morning to brew coffee, puts it in a like, thermos/carafe hybrid thing, right next to the Keurig. Her brewed coffee wasn’t getting enough attention recently, so she’s put post-it notes on it with what blend she made that day, what time and date it was brewed, and one that says “Container keeps coffee hot all day!”. Everyone else in the office just rolls their eyes at it, but little do guests and visitors know she’s carefully watching which coffee they use and making note to treat them accordingly.
    The joke’s on her though, because the BUNN has made her office stink to high heaven like burnt coffee beans.

  235. Blueberryhill*

    Coffee Brag: My company moved some of the staff to an ugly temporary space while remodeling was going on. The managers all banded together and bought a Keurig and a variety of Kcups for the new space. Then they bought a Nespresso and cups. Because we didn’t have dedicated water line for the coffee machines, various staff took turns filling up a pitcher first thing in the morning from the building cafeteria, so the machines would have available refill water after the morning coffee wave hit. Whoever emptied the pitcher filled it up. The best part was that the managers never ducked out of that responsibility — that fact raised morale way higher than the actual coffee machines did.

  236. Xanthippe Lannister Voorhees*

    Not so much a war, but here’s my gross coffee experience:

    An “anonymous donor” gave our library a keurig for the break room. I’m pretty anti-keurig but everyone else switched over to that and pots of coffee stopped being made and coffee filters for the machine stopped being supplied, so I went keurig. Every day after my coffee I’d have violent, cramping abdominal pain. I thought it was the brand they were using, so I started bringing my own K-cups. I notice the provided creamer was often chunky, so I started bringing my own. Still the post-coffee problems persisted.

    Finally, one day, I took a good look at the machine itself. The machine sits near a window and manages to get some direct sunlight for part of the day. Slimy, green algae had grown all over the bottom of the reservoir, the filter, and was starting to grow up the sides. I dumped it out and scrubbed it out as much as I could and let it sit to dry. My stomach problems ceased almost immediately, but to this day I’m the only one who believes in letting the reservoir dry out and as far as I can tell the only one willing to scrub at the algae if it starts growing. A very passive aggressive “clean out your used pod!” note was left on the machine, and I taped a little “and also check the reservoir for green stuff!” note, but while the “clean yer pod” note is still there, mine is gone.

    The things I’m willing to tolerate for free coffee…

    1. Kathleen_A*

      I’m trying to figure out a way to convey via mere writing the sound I made when reading your story, and the closest I can come up with is: Bleaharghblech ::choke::

      Now I want to go brush my teeth.

    2. Pine cones huddle*

      That’s gross!!! I wonder why it wasn’t bothering anyone else?

      We have One at home and I have wondered about the water sitting there in the reservoir unused. I empty and clean it out though because I can tell when water isn’t “fresh”. My kids can too. Other people say they can’t taste it. But it’s like the water is stale. I know, it’s strange.

      1. Xanthippe Lannister Voorhees*

        I’ve got two theories on why it wasn’t bothering anyone else:

        It was, but they just didn’t care to investigate/link it to their coffee habits

        or maybe

        I haven’t had a gallbladder for about 10 years at this point, and while the side effects have mostly calmed down, my insides are still on the more sensitive side

  237. Kathleen_A*

    Our biggest coffee war – and we’ve had several – occurred when Office Manager K retired, and Office Manager C decided we didn’t need to provide coffee. There is a cafeteria a short elevator ride away that provides ordinary coffee, he said, and there’s even a Starbucks here for the fancy coffee fanciers, he said, so why brew a pot of coffee when half of it will be thrown away, he said.

    I am a tea drinker myself, so I was merely an interested bystander, but the griping and sniping was *ferocious* – covert, but unrelenting. The anti-Starbucks people were particularly militant, possibly inflamed by the fact that C is a Starbucksaholic. I don’t know what changed C’s mind, but it took only about two weeks for a coffee pot and fixins’ to reappear in the kitchen with no fanfare, and it’s been there ever since.

  238. Pine cones huddle*

    I once worked in an office down the hall from the ED. There was a list of traffic in the Hall and someone was getting coffee in the EDs small kitchen and walking down the hall spilling it on the carpet. Because there was a lot of splatter near our office door, she was for some reason convinced it was me. Ignore the fact that I had never been in her kitchen to get coffee and our department had our own kitchen AND the tumbler I brought from home each morning had a spill proof lid… should would not be convinced it wasn’t me.

    Then one day I come in to the office and she has brought a coffee station in to my office. This sounds *nice* but is actually a HUGE pain in the ass. She had one of the staff make coffee every morning when she came in at 7 so when the rest of us got there at 9-10 it wasn’t good; I don’t actually drink that much coffee so the pot was wasted every day, and I had to freaking clean the damn thing every evening before I left. And to get the coffee station in the office she had to have printers and other necessities removed. It was awful. In fact, the first day the ED came in so proud of herself and made me a cup of coffee and then tried to make me drink a cup of coffee I didn’t want. I was so upset that I just said no thank you and sat it on the table and again told her I wasn’t spilling any coffee. (This accusation had been going on for weeks and I was at my wits end.)

    My theory, which was later proven correct, was that someone down the hall was getting coffee, walking down the hall, having to stop abruptly when someone was walking out of our office into the hall and that was causing her to spill coffee. I actually had to ask someone in security to watch footage and I then asked the real coffee spiller to let the ED know and to please stop.

  239. HighlyCaffed*

    I used to regularly walk into our office kitchen to find a coffee FOUNTAIN spewing hot water everywhere – our machine was finicky, and if you pressed the start button twice, it would push two carafes worth of hot water through the system, causing it to spectacularly overflow. After an intern doubled-down on the problem by also failing to use a coffee filter, adding coffee grounds to the fountain situation, I led a 5-min workshop with the interns on how to make coffee. No one ever told me how valuable the hard skills I learned working in a chain coffee shop would be in an office environment.

  240. Anon for this one*

    I work in an industry that involves animals (not veterinary). Our company would not provide coffee despite staff needing to be in early in the morning and be on their feet the majority of the day. When break time comes, coffee was a godsend! We had a coffee maker that a staff member brought in and for a while we just brought our own coffee and shared the coffee buying duties.
    We would place weekly food orders for the animals we took care of. Then we somehow discovered that our food distributor also had coffee as an item that we could order….
    I’m rather surprised no one questioned the fact that all of a sudden the animals needed coffee in addition to their order of fruit/biscuits/hay, etc.

  241. AnonMurphy*

    Late to the game, but I got this email about 5 months after starting my current job and still treasure it:

    Subject: Regarding Coffee (loosely defined)

    To Those of You who Make/Drink Coffee in the Annex (a list which, in an ideal and righteous world, would comprise the same membership…);

    I am not one of those sorts who leaves yellow Post-It’s in public spaces with lots of exclamation points and frowny-faces; but for the love of everything holy, can we please adhere to some agreed-upon, United Nations-sanctioned, ISO-9000 standard method of brewing coffee up in here!?

    I think we run the gamut from 3-bags on half-brew cycle to ½ bag of decaf on full volume.

    Getting a cup of coffee in the morning here is like playing Russian roulette with my adrenal gland – sometimes it’s like three-day old, thrice-brewed Lipton “Slumber-brew” tea, and sometimes it’s like mainlining Chilean Arabica methamphetamine.

    I don’t care, I’ll drink it either way – I just want to know, as it affects how much of the various accouterments I will lacquer on top of the fetid draught to either enhance the tepid brew or cut the acidity of the NOS.

    My recommendation: unless you are adhering to the pedestrian, Protestant, milquetoast standard of “One Bag, One [full] Pot” as established by the Counsel of Nicaea in 325 AD, then I propose you put some sort of notification on the coffee vessel advertising your particular demitasseac predilection.

    C’est La Java!

    2. Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins*

      “mainlining Chilean Arabica methamphetamine”

      I feel this on a spiritual level.

  242. Birdbrain*

    At OldJob, the employer didn’t provide coffee or any appliances to make it with, but we did have a communal kettle and microwave. There was a guy (“Fergus”) who brought one of those single-serve pod coffeemakers and kept it in the shared break room. Sounds nice, right? Except that nobody else was allowed to use it.

    One day Fergus came in and found Wakeen (gasp!) making coffee in his Personal Machine. To be clear: Wakeen had brought his own coffee pods, so it wasn’t like he had taken Fergus’s. Fergus FLIPPED OUT at him. “Why would you think you could do that?! This is not for everyone to use!” And poor Wakeen just had to stammer that he didn’t realize he wasn’t supposed to use the coffeemaker since it was in the breakroom right beside the shared kettle.

    So Fergus put a sign on the coffeemaker saying: “DO NOT USE ME, I BELONG TO FERGUS!”

  243. keurigwars*

    A colleague insists that we not throw out the K-cups, so she can empty them and recycle the coffee grounds – an effort I support in principle, except she never actually gets around to it, so the used K-cups just pile up endlessly on the bench around the coffee machine. It’s like a K-cup graveyard, and very embarrassing when we have guests in the office.

    At another workplace, a colleague brought in her own Keurig machine to use when the office machine was being repaired. She bought in some K-cups as well, and asked people to ‘donate’ $1 per cup to cover her costs. Other people also bought in boxes of K-cups to contribute to the cause, and it was discovered eventually that she had kept collecting the $1 ‘donations’ long after her original contribution of K-cups was gone, so she was just selling other people’s coffee and keeping the money.

    2. All Anon*

      We had a version of this when we rotated who buys the birthday cake through the team. One gal said she liked doing it and would function as outsourced birthday cake procurer collecting the money from whoever was assigned, which eventually became everybody. Somewhere along the line she transitioned to making cakes instead of buying and one day we realized that she was collecting routinely from everybody for store cakes, making her own from mix and pocketing the difference. Same person brought a hot air popper into the ladies room and then sold the popcorn to workers. Seriously she was determined to develop a secondary revenue stream out of her day job.

  244. Lise*

    There was coffee drama at the Old Bad Workplace, but it was petty and stupid and involved our comptroller not wanting to pay for K-cups. Nothing interesting.

    HOWEVER. There was a delightful coffee mystery…. ooooooOOOOOOOOOOoooo *spooky hand motions*

    One of the data analysts, who had just given his notice, received a LARGE (like, human-sized) package from FedEx. It was an industrial coffee maker, of the sort you’d have in a large hospital kitchen. (A quick search online revealed that it would have sold for several grand).

    Had he ordered an industrial coffee maker? He had not.

    Did he know who the sender was? He did not.

    Would FedEx allow him to refuse delivery of the package? THEY WOULD NOT.

    Before leaving the company, he tried to track down who had sent the thing, but he had no phone number to go on, or it was out of service, or something. All the leads dead-ended, and the coffee maker ended up in the basement of our office building. It was still there when I left the company a couple of years later.

  245. Somebody in Florida*

    I once worked at the front desk of a poorly managed hotel where we constantly ran out of things like extra pillows. Once, we ran out of the little coffee packs for the in-room machines. We were told to let people who asked about it know that they could get a free cup from our on-site restaurant but MY GOD I got yelled at so many times for those couple of days.

  246. Millie M*

    This story is semi-coffee-related. My long-ago boss was a bit odd. She would heat up water for tea in the coffee maker, because she thought it tasted better than microwaved water. Then she would forget to turn the coffee maker off. We knew when she was having tea because the coffee maker would be sitting there, turned on, with nothing in it. It was lucky that the coffee pot never cracked. She also made me return coffee-soaked books to the library. I hope they made her pay a fine.

  247. Saad Amus the Sky-Bear*

    Ok so there is this guy at my work who is a contractor, he develops this particular bespoke computer system that my organisation uses. He is kind of an asshole, doesn’t come to team meetings, doesn’t really consider himself one of us.

    Anyway he has for the past couple of years planted his perosnla espresso machine in the shared kitchen. With its own coffee grinder and shit. He also brings his own milk in (the organisation provides milk). But he gets very angry if someone uses his gear. Once someone used his milk and he hung the bottle in a noose from a shelf with a big sign DO NOT USE THIS MILK.

    Anywho one day he really lets rip at a new guy who used his coffee machine, really balls him out in front of everyone. He puts up a sign saying THIS EXPRESSO (sic) MACHINE IS A PRIVATE APPLIANGE, DO NOT USE. This really pisses me off.

    So I bring in my own espresso machine from home and plonk it on the counter next to his with a big sign YOU ARE MOST WELCOME TO USE THIS ESPRESSO MACHINE. I even provided some coffee. People use it and leave a donation and I buy more coffee, it’s a great system.

    So he puts up a little hand written note on his sign THE OWNER JUST WANTS HIS WISHES TO BE RESPECTED AND FOR PERMISSION TO BE ASKED BEFORE USING THIS MACHINE. Haha, what a baby.

  248. Didi*

    My office had not a coffee war, but a milk and cream war.

    At my office, a dairy used to deliver milk and cream in quart cartons once a week to all the break rooms. The milk was provided for coffee and tea, but of course some people used it for cereal, oatmeal, whatever. One pantry, near where a lot of junior people sit, happened to be where the most milk was consumed. Many junior people ate cereal at their desks each day, using the company-provided milk. A few other people around the office did, too.

    This had never been viewed as a problem. Yeah, it was a bit of an expense, but it was no big deal. We never ran out. The dairy knew to put more milk in that pantry.

    Some guy from corporate HQ in the big city (far from us) decided that the office consumed too much milk. He noticed the cereal-eating when he visited, and I guess he is worthy of his pay grade, because he put 2 + 2 together. A sign on the fridge went up that said “MILK AND CREAM FOR COFFEE AND TEA ONLY.” People ignored this sign. Then we started having shortages of milk (I assume that HQ guy directed the dairy not to provide extra milk for the guilty pantry, but I don’t know). So people started taking milk from the other pantries when the pantry closest to them ran out. So there was not enough milk and cream for coffee and tea. Then this whole milk situation became A BIG PROBLEM.

    One Monday we arrived to find that instead of the quart cartons of milk, the fridge now had two cardboard boxes full of those tiny single-serve creamers like you get in a diner – one box for cream and one for milk. Some people started bringing in their own milk after that, or they ate at home, but a few people will stand there for 10 minutes and open one tiny creamer after another into their cereal.

    Just for fun, a friend of mine at work called the dairy to find out how much it cost for a box of creamers vs. an equivalent amount of milk in a carton. The individual container packaging was almost twice was expensive. So she estimated that the change from cartons to creamers actually cost the company more, even after factoring in the extra milk that the cereal-eaters consumed.

  249. Persephoneunderground*

    Yes, I’m still reading this thread days later- so much fun. Had to add my mother’s story, though it’s less funny than just ugh. When she was a young lawyer in the late 70s she was one of maybe five women lawyers in her entire firm. So she spoke to her secretary ahead of time and apologized that she couldn’t ever pour coffee. If she was in a meeting in her office for example with coffee provided and someone asked for a cup, she would have to call her secretary in to do it because she couldn’t risk being seen in a subordinate role by pouring the coffee. If she had been a man it would have been normal to get a cup for herself and a guest, but as a woman she couldn’t do that without risking her perception as an equal colleague and a lawyer not a secretary. So she would apologize in advance for having to appear overly needy and explain this to her secretary, and it seems the system worked out. Related- She also read the sports pages before work so she could talk with the men about them and fit in better (semi pretending she’d actually watched the game). So glad I’m not dealing with that level of coffee and gender politics in my job, thanks to women like her.

    1. Beancounter in Texas*

      That’s a smart move, not pouring coffee. I would not have thought to do that and explain it well in advance to my secretary.

  250. CocoB*

    And the people that want to DRINK the coffee, but don’t want to MAKE the coffee…
    I’ve seen people leave the smallest amount in the pot so they aren’t leaving it empty and won’t have to make the next pot. For a time, we had a more or less self appointed coffee maker… female… a little older. The day I watched a young man walk away from the pot with his empty cup because the lady had not made it yet, I had a hissy fit. The young man got a lecture in who did and did not work for him and coffee etiquette.
    You drink it, you can make it. You have a dirty cup, you wash it. No one here is paid to be your waitress, mom or personal janitor!

  251. George*

    It’s mild, but I worked in a place where someone insisted on making the tea for the team (she didn’t really do anything so I’m guessing this was a way for her to look useful). However she made the worst teas imaginable! Milk first, then sugar, hot water and then finally the tea bag which she would leave in for about 30 seconds. It was milky dishwater and any other Brits will know how important their tea is!

    Problem is whenever we brought it up (joked about it etc.) she’d get really defensive and took it as a personal insult. I never had the issue as after the first cup of dishwater I clarified that I drink my tea black (which isn’t a lie). Not sure if it was resolved as well as I left about 2 years afterwards and she was still there. It’s something I’ll always remember though because of how awful that tea was.

  252. Igg*

    We have an employee who uses milk we buy them then not only fails to contribute has on multiple occasions asked what when we are goingto get more if it runs out. He willing repeatedly find ne throughout the day the day and ask ‘are going going to have time soon to get more?’ ‘When do you think you will get more?’ Etc it’s ridiculous how he feels entitled to other people’s food and will also complain about the % fat. It’s been explained to him that he is expected to provide his own food, he is aware that company doesn’t pay for it but he still feels entitled to other individuals milk. He will go around and ask where it is, when did ‘we’ run out despite the fact there is no ‘we’ and he’s been told there is no group supply.

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