Where's my coffee?

We moved to our new office today (finally merged with the crew from the Main Office after 5 years, that I've been here) , and I find out I'm still in charge of the coffee. I thought I'd be able to fob it off on some poor, unsuspecting schmoe from the Main Office but no such luck. It's a little annoying, and disruptive, to be in charge of the coffee. I get bugged a few times a day for change (because I keep all the money, I think I'll just start telling people I have no change) or because the pot needs refilling, and yet we have a Keurig machine which makes an 8oz cup of freshly brewed coffee whenever you need it.

In preparation for the move I did some OT this past weekend. There were a few peeps in the office but I was the only one there that drank coffee, so I was damned if I was going to make a 12-cup pot of coffee for me; I just used the Keurig machine. Mid-way through the morning one of the guys I love to hate showed up.

Just to bitch about this guy for a minute, we used to host training sessions for engineers from other bureaus, and we'd cater for those sessions, brewing up a pot of coffee and bring in donuts and pastries. Although there was also coffee in the break room, this guy would come into the conference room and help himself to a cup of coffee and a donut or two, but he'd wait until nobody was in there to pull this shit. It got so you couldn't leave the room for a second or he'd be in there eating everything. In the break room we have both the Keurig machine, and a drip filter pot. The drip filter coffee is crap, compared to the Keurig stuff, but this guy drinks the drip filter coffee and claims it's gourmet stuff (I make it, it's nothing flash, it's the cheapest coffee I can buy at those office supply stores. It's crap), but I think he drinks the pot stuff so he doesn't have to pay for it. The pot coffee is donation, whatever you want to pay for it. 25c, 50c, 60c, doesn't matter. The Keurig is 60c a cup, not negotiable, unless you want to pay more. This guy got the idea in his head that the drip filter coffee is free, and despite being told otherwise, in his mind it's free so he never pays for it. Every time you tell him it's not free, he acts amazed as if that's the first time he's heard that.

So he gets in to work on Saturday, goes into the breakroom, comes out and asks me what they're doing about the coffee. I play dumb with him because as I said earlier, I love to hate this jerk.

The machine is in there, I say.

But there's no coffee, he says.

Sure there is, I say. There's a whole rack of the K-cups for the coffee machine.

In the pot? he asks, probably really confused.

I relent and tell him I wasn't making a pot for just a couple of people so he can just use the machine.

Now this is why I love to hate this guy.

Instead of paying 60c for a cup of freshly brewed coffee from the Keurig machine in our breakroom, this guy hits the streets of downtown L.A. on a Saturday morning, in search of a coffee shop, where he will probably spend $2 or more for a cup of ordinary coffee. Of course while he's out for an hour he's still billing OT, even though he's not actually working in the office. Finally, when he gets back in, he complains that nothing is open, at 8:30am, in downtown L.A., on a Saturday morning.

So today we move into the new office, we're finding our cubicles and getting used to a new office layout, we're unpacking all our boxes (almost everyone has 10 boxes, some people have a lot more), the office is pretty much a madhouse.

And this guy comes up to me and asks what we're doing about coffee.

I play dumb again, but I'm busy unpacking and setting up computers for me and my girls so I'm not really into the game today. The best I can manage to do is to tell him the Keurig machine will be installed tomorrow (the vendor took it away Monday and is hopefully servicing it prior to it's reinstallation in our new office).

What about today? asks this guy.

We've got a cafeteria downstairs, I tell him (and we do, it's a friggin' awesome cafeteria). I tell him, if you want coffee, go downstairs and get a cup.

I just know once the Keurig machine is set up tomorrow, he's going to ask where the drip filter pot is. But because the biggest wig in the office doesn't want a drip filter pot in the breakroom, we're not setting it up. This guy won't be pleased, but I don't give a shit.

Actually I must give at least a shit, or I wouldn't have posted this :P

I wish we lived in the south, coz this guy is the perfect candidate for that unbeatable southern defense plea: "He just needed killin'."