Wednesday, January 25, 2006

the confusion sets in.....

Coffee…

I am not a coffee drinker. I don’t dislike it and can even go as far as saying that I do like it or even love it … but … I don’t need it and I can’t drink it on a daily basis. It is the same love I have for any of my beverages of choice… Coke, Ribena, Cranberry, apple cider…

I’m not sure how people drink 2 or 3 or 6 cups a day… I don’t think I can drink any of my favourite beverages that often. Perhaps a Coke a day or maybe a glass of this or that but not several glasses. On occasion, I will crave certain drinks and coffee ranks up there with the others. My craving however is not one that will be satiated only by a cup or many cups of something… most of the time, the craving is curbed after a few sips.

My manager has been buying me coffee fairly regularly lately. Not daily, but a couple weeks ago it had increased to a few times a week. The first time he came in with coffee, I figured it was an anomaly and accepted it graciously. He came into my office with a bag of milk, cream and sugars and the novelty of adding all that stuff into a beverage excited me. Like I said, I’m not a coffee drinker – most of my beverages are pour-drink, pull tab-drink, unscrew top-drink … and on occasion, the little girl in me finds drinking coffee fun … kinda like in science class when you mixed two things to see what you end up with. It’s fun and a welcomed distraction to a monotonous day.

Every coffee experience, in fact, is quite novel for me … it never tastes the same mainly because I don’t drink coffee often enough to know if I like milk or cream or how much sugar to put in. The whole notion of lattes, espressos, cappuccinos and caffe this or that gives me a headache. I don’t know where they sell better coffee or stronger coffee or the watered down stuff. All I know is that I love the mocha
Frappuccino at Starbucks and often wondered if there is a HOT equivalent for the winter months but not daring enough to try other drinks to find one. If you know of one, please let me know. (I guess I could ask the next time I’m there… but that probably won’t be till the spring when it’ll be warm enough again to have a Mocha Frappaccino and then I won’t even remember that I wanted a hot version….)

Anyway, so I drank my coffee and continued with my day. The second time he brought coffee in … circumstances at work, made it so that a coffee was definitely needed by the coffee drinkers amongst us – so again, I thanked him, had some fun adding the milk and sugar and drank the coffee. That continued a couple more times and we were so busy that sometimes I didn’t even see him put it on my desk. Then Christmas came. Everyone had gotten busy with year end business and he took holidays and then we took holidays so the coffee delivery stopped.

Lately we’ve been pretty busy and it seems that at times a treat (in this case, coffee) is well deserved. So in the mornings on his way in, he stops and buys a coffee for each of his direct reports. See, the thing is, he’s been bringing the coffee premixed now. The days of the little bag with cream and sugar is long gone. I’m not even sure what he puts in it. I honestly can say that I can’t even tell if it tastes much different when I put all that love and care into mixing my own. Anyway, the point is, that I'm essentially, still not a coffee drinker. I’ve had enough of it over the past couple months that I no longer crave it. I no longer enjoy it because it has become like a chore to drink it. I continue to drink it and the worst part is that I don’t have the heart to tell him, after all these months, that I don’t drink coffee and to please bring me a tea instead.

Yesterday, he dropped one more on my desk… and as usual, I thanked him and this time added something like “I can really use that!!”. What was I thinking??

I am proud to say though, that I seemed to have found a solution … yesterday, I stared at the coffee for a couple minutes trying to decide what i was going to do with it. It was 3:48pm. I really didn’t want it. I poked my head outside my door to make sure he was neatly tucked back in his office, grabbed the coffee and made a mad dash into our kitchen to get a mug. I went into my friend’s office, poured the coffee out for her, whispered something like “please drink this for me, I can’t drink this much coffee” and took the little paper cup back into my office and pretended I was still enjoying it.

OK… so it’s not really a solution but it really seemed like a good idea at the time.

Today, he invited me for coffee again. I agreed but at the same time told him that i was going to get a juice. I even made sure he saw me buy the juice when everyone else got a coffee. Maybe next time I’ll just tell him. Not saying anything is really too much effort.

pb

Thursday, January 19, 2006