I used to work in an office, at a publishing company. In the kitchen was the coffee machine, which I visited often. The coffee that was provided was standard issue corporate coffee. Like a drug it was bitter on the tongue, highly potent, addictive, and delivered daily in little bags from Colombia… everything I needed to slap myself awake from the nightmare of having to listen to the same girl every morning try to chew her yogurt like it was legitimate solid. As far as I knew, the office consensus for making coffee was to use one and a half of the little bags to make a pot, because one was too weak and two were too strong. And you could always do a bump later if you were coming down.
Decency stated that if you took the last of the coffee in the pot and it was before lunch time, you made more. I followed this rule 99% of the time. Of course, the one time I apparently did not, a co-worker called me out for it (on the internet) (by first and last name) (and I had never spoken to her in real life). Truthfully, I often had to make a full pot of coffee two or three times before I was even able to return to the kitchen and get any for myself, because that office had a high number of seatfillers who didn’t understand that there were people on the planet who were not them.
Two older women in particular from the other side of the office, one an overly-scented editorial stereotype and the other a straight up dirt-covered crazy person, abused the kitchen similar to the way I assume they abused alcohol at home. The Dirty One would throw the microwave door open and leave it that way, grab and spill her drinks and wet foods all over the place and let other people step in it, poke her fingers into trays and jars of this and that which didn’t belong to her and decide she was entitled to most of everything, and never once in four years did I see her pull a paper towel from the roll to clean up after herself. The Smelly One once watched me shed a tiny, nickel-sized spill of dry coffee grounds onto the very dirty counter and fought at length with me about it. Her anger, however, was due to my wanting to throw the dirty bit of coffee into the garbage. She insisted that I add it into the already-going machine, or else it would “brew too weak.” Even when it was swept into my hand and speckled with bits of white and tan and crumbs of who knows what, she pleaded with me in front of an incredulous witness to include it and not throw it away. I threw it away. Because it was garbage. And then she was seriously mad at me for a long time.
Now I wake up and decide between the Nespresso and the Keurig, cappuccino or milk and sugar, hazelnut or hot chocolate, green tea or orange tea, and every drop I make for myself goes directly into my stomach. It does not pass Go, it does not collect $200, it does not get swallowed and coughed up by a demented cat lady who sadly has no cats. But I still get the craving every now and then to hop on the subway and make my way back to the work kitchen, make a full pot and hide out in the nook between the refrigerator and the soda machine, just so I can catch the bitch who took the last of the coffee without refilling and tell her: I saw you!
