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The Story of a Coffee Making n00b
By Jonathan | June 16, 2008 at 6:00 am
I was at work the other morning making a pot of coffee, and for whatever reason it reminded me of a story from a few years back…
I was a coop at Seapine Software in 2004. Gas was cheap(er) and I only drove 50 miles a day (as opposed to the 70 I do now). I don’t remember if it was winter or summer, but I do know that at the time Seapine had only taken over the 2nd floor of the Triangle Office Building and no one had made a fresh pot of coffee for the day. I generally arrived to work around 7:30am, much sooner than the average employee, but much later than the first person of the day and of course after the first brew of the morning. Today, for whatever reason, I decided that I would make the first pot of coffee. I had never done this before, but I figured it couldn’t be that bad…put some grinds in the filter, push the button, and WALLA!
As it turns out, I had the process mostly correct. I say mostly because things didn’t quite turn out as you may expect. To the best of my recollection, I present to you the Story of a Coffee Making n00b:
[insert cool time traveling special effect here]
“Hmmm, no one has made coffee yet. I’d really like a cup with some Swiss Miss powder mixed in…it’s a cheap version of a $5 Starbucks drink. Well, let’s do this.”
Remove filter holder from coffee machine (check)
Add new filter to holder (check)
Open new packet of coffee (check)
Pour packet contents into filter (check)
Replace filter holder (check)
Push ‘Brew’ button (check)
“Hmmm, that’s weird, I must have done something wrong…the ‘Brew’ button didn’t stay pushed down.”
Push ‘Brew’ button again (check)
“Still nothing. What the heck? Why won’t this button stay down?”
Push ‘Brew’ button again (check)
“Still nothing. Is this thing on? Where’s the coffee?”
Push ‘Brew’ button (check)
Push ‘Brew’ button (check)
Push ‘Brew’ button (check)
“Ahhhhh, here we go.” Coffee was flowing. It would only be a couple minutes until I could pour myself a cup. As the pot filled I noticed that it seemed to fill a little higher than usual.
“Is this thing going to stop flowing?”
Nope.
“Oh crap…where’s an empty pot?!”
[amazing-coffee-pot-swap-while-coffee-still-pouring-trick]
Okay, we’re back under control…I just brewed two pots instead of one. No biggie, I’ll just wait for this one to finish. As the second pot filled, I noticed that it seemed to fill a little higher than usual.
“Oh super crap…how many pots did I brew?!”
As it turns out, I really only needed to push the ‘Brew’ button one time. It never stayed down because it wasn’t supposed to…it wasn’t that type of switch. Each additional press resulted in an additional pot of coffee. I don’t remember the exact number, but I swapped out 5-6 pots using the amazing-coffee-pot-swap-while-coffee-still-pouring-trick by the time things had settled down. The best part was that my boss walked in during the middle of it…he sure got a kick out of it. I guess I could have pulled the plug out of the wall to cut power to the machine, but how was I supposed to think of that at a time like this?
So, that’s my story, I hope you enjoyed it. Let’s take a moment to reflect back and think about what we have we learned today… If you ever get to work and there’s no coffee made…you should ALWAYS wait for someone else to make it!
Topics: story | 3 Comments »
June 16th, 2008 at 7:44 am
It’s too bad that Florence Henderson wasn’t at Kings Island that day. That woman could put away some coffee.
June 18th, 2008 at 9:12 am
…and then I told your story to all of my future co-ops as a lesson…
June 25th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Jonathan, love the blog keeps my mind from fuzzing out at work. I had a similar experience when I started work a week ago… only we had like 3 pots so the spill over was imminent… take care.