Coffee Crone: Taming Coffee Blog

March 4 2007

(Not) Bringing Coffee to the Masses (Yet)

Tomorrow I start a job I'm pretty sure is just about perfect for me, and I am facing the usual return to work anxiety. Well, sorta. I'm not really concerned about learning to do the work, nor am I concerned about the "works and plays well with others" part, though maybe I should be. I'm not even worried about my wardrobe.

Nope, this stop-over in worry land is all about the coffee.

Now, if I actually worked in the office, my strategy would be straightforward. I would bring in some lovely home roasted beans, a small grinder, and a pour over. Then I would let nature take its course, until there was a general uprising focused on the need to replace the standard swill setup they currently have with something capable of producing coffee in the quantity needed to supply everyone with the good stuff.

However, I don't really work in the office, though I will be there every day for a little while. What to do, what to do?

I know that I can bring a thermos full of coffee for myself, have a cup or two as I start my day, and then make the switch to water until quitting time. Heck, Tamingville is small enough so that I could come home for a refill on my lunch hour, if I felt the need.

This would work fine in terms of keeping myself satisfactorily caffeinated, but the issue is a bit more complex.

I know how work environments, urmmm, work. When the job is in the mental health arena, it is perfectly fine for workers to be a bit eccentric, just as it is perfectly fine to be a flaming lefty. There is, however, a line one must not cross. At no point can a worker's peculiarities stray over into what appears to be a diagnosable mental illness.

The DSM IV is the diagnostic bible of mental health. And I know there are no coffee-related categories, well, if you don't count the addiction shtuff. Still, if I talk too much about my coffee focused life, there is some amount of danger that people will start whispering behind my back and leaving pamphlets about drugs to treat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder next to the coffee maker (the machine that is, not me).

And whilst I could probably convince folks that this is more in the nature of a hard core hobby than it is an obsession, chances are, the damage would be done already, and people would be on the lookout to make sure I wasn't pushing coffee to supplement my wages.

RT, in the meantime, knowing me as he does, is more concerned that in my zeal to make sure that everyone gets good coffee, every day, I will be spending my hard earned money on seeding the community with acceptable coffee pots, good grinders, and pound upon pound of freshly roasted beans.

Silly boy. We've been married long enough to know that as math-impaired as I am, I've already figured out that spending 10% of my take home pay on a self-imposed coffee ministry is not in the cards.

Well, not yet.