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Coffee! Tea? Not me…

by Tom Coffee

My office is filled with weaklings.

These are people who are afraid of running a short hundred mile marathon. These are people who can’t last a measly fifteen rounds in the ring with a grizzly bear. These are people who can’t catch a bullet in their teeth, karate-chop their way through a brick wall or even kill a man with a plastic spork.

That’s right. My office is filled with tea drinkers.

They come in with their lemon-rosemary (an unholy combination if ever there was one) scented cups of hot water and take a few sips every so often, exclaiming how soothing or soft the flavor is and how it really “takes the edge” off that hectic day when the phone rings twice. I come in with my large mug of steaming black java and down it before they’ve had time to stir in their two Sweet N’ Lows and four drops of non-dairy whole bean fat-free flavor filtered soy milk. I get into the office around 8:00 AM and I’m ready to take on the world by 8:03 AM while they’re still dunking their little soggy bags of leaves, moving their heads up and down in rhythm with their arms so the whole office looks like a Texas oil field.

And before I have the Celestial Seasonings Secret Police kick down my door with their sandals made of hemp, I need to publically admit that I have indeed tried tea many times and each time I wonder why on earth I did so.

You see, when a non-tea drinker and a tea drinker work together it is only a matter of time before the tea drinker tries to “convert” the heathens of the world like me. More than once I’ve had tea drinkers try to save my soul my offering me a cup of the mild warm beverage.

“Here, Tom, try some of this black moon dark tea, you’ll really like it!”

“Gladys, this tastes like dirt…”

“Maybe you’d be more into this vanilla green tea?”

“Very natural tasting…again, like dirt.”

“Oh, well how about this mint marmalade tea?”

“Refreshing dirt…”

“Perhaps you could add some sweetener.”

“Dessert dirt..”

You get the idea.

That alone, though, doesn’t bother me as much as the few weaklings in our office who think they are coffee drinkers, but they’re really tea drinkers. One of my coworkers, Dick Johnson, is one of them.

Dick sometimes comes in before I do and when he does he usually makes the “coffee” such as it is. I’ve watched him careful measure out four small spoonfuls of grounds for the filter and then fill the pot to the brim with water before pouring it into the machine. Then, using all of his years of management experience and training, he leans against the wall and watches the entire pot brew right to the last drop. Dick is a true inspiration for Teamsters everywhere.

The end result is always a pot of brown tinted liquid which, when you hold up to the light, casts a soft golden glow all around you. Yes, it’s very pretty, but that’s the problem. If you can actually see through the pot, then you haven’t made coffee. You’ve made coffee-flavored tea which tastes just like regular tea, except crappier.

I like real coffee. I like coffee so thick you can not only stick a fork into but you can also cut off a slice and make a sandwhich with it later in the week. I like coffee so black that when carry your cup into the room the lights seem to dim. I like coffee so strong that it jumps out of the pot and wrestles me to the ground, making me scream for mercy before it finally agrees to climb into my mug and let me drink it.

This is why when I make the coffee in our office, people know it. Productivity skyrockets, meetings that used to last two hours are over in four minutes, and everyone is running around like Benny Hill skit where the women are running around while a dirty old man chases them.

So there it is. I’m a coffee drinker stuck in a tea-drinking office, and that’s okay.

I’m not bitter… but my coffee is.