Thursday 3 January 2008

Takeaway coffee should be outlawed

I have been reading Graveyard Barista again and come to the conclusion that take away coffee in cardboard cups is a greater threat to civilisation than an Iranian bomb.

Face it, if the mad beard-faces develop a working bomb and light up a bit of the middle east, Iran is going to be glowing glass from the mountains to the seas. If a bunch of people that like to head butt a beach towel five times a day get recycled into pyrex, I am not going to be that bothered. Even if I have to take a lead coated umbrella with me everytime I go outside for a few years.

But take away coffee - that is a resident evil that must be stamped out. I hate sitting at my desk with a too-hot coffee in a too-thin cardboard cup next to my keyboard, with the lid sitting nearby leaking brownish milk froth onto the desktop. Probably with a pop stick perched on top after it has swizzled in a bit of sugar. To me, it represents the intrusion of work into a relaxing activity. When I work, I work. I don't tend to sit around and gossip in the office - I have work to do, and so do other people. If I want to relax and shoot the breeze, I go down to the nearest cafe, order a coffee and sit there and read the paper or gossip. Coffee is something to be relaxed over, not something to be worked over. I refuse to drink the filtered shit that we get in meeting rooms because (a) it tastes like crap and (b) it should imbibed in a casual, non-work atmosphere. If I want to drink beer, I go to the pub or a BBQ of the cricket. I don't sit at my desk drinking beer. It's inappropriate, and so is drinking coffee at the desk.

The unfortunate side effect would be that my nice, relaxed cafe would be over run with a million anxious coffee drinkers, all trying to throw a coffee down their throats before rushing back to the office for another important meeting. So maybe I'll have to water down my concept of abolishing take away coffee.

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