Fresh coffee or DEATH! (Long-ish)

[Writer Cath]

Yes, I can understand the desire not to ingest coffee that's been sitting out longer than I've been alive, but in typical SC fashion, and having worked in a coffee place - it can be taken to extremes.

Case 1:
This didn't happen to me, but to my friend, who worked in the Tim's before I did. Gentleman walks up to her and demands a fresh cup of coffee, refusing to deal with the lowly pots that have been sitting for anywhere from five to fifteen minutes (my store was strict about the "refresh every twenty minutes rule).

Fortunately for this intrepid soul, a new pot was just finishing. Huzzah! Cue the freaking marching band! He leans forward intently, his eyes focused on the coffee machine as if she will swipe the pot with week old swill if he has a lapse in attentiveness. Together, they watch the last few drops amble into the pot, seemingly in slow motion. She pours him the coffee and he marches off triumphantly into the sunset - by that meaning his table...

... until he came back two minutes later and said the coffee wasn't fresh.

Case 2:

This happened to yours truly.

Now I'll admit that decaf is probably the redheaded bastard stepchild (tm) of the coffee game; it's a fact that a lot of people don't drink it. So sometimes, it can be neglected.

Of course this woman knows the score. OF course, it's in the middle of the rush, so she simply must demand that we put on a new pot of decaf for her. That's fine, she'll wait. No problems till this point, because, I'd actually been planning to make one the second I was through with my line. Heck, she even has the decency to let me serve other customers while it brews. Give the lady a Nobel Prize for Patience. They have those, don't they?

It doesn't take long to brew a pot of coffee at Tim's.

In fact, it takes five minutes. Literally, it's on the tape; every single pot of coffee takes five minutes from the time you put the grinds in, put the pot under the drip and push the button. Five minutes. Every time. I used to put on a pot when I had five minutes left on my shift just to avoid looking at the clock.

Her first comment when she gets to the front of the line: "Well that took a long time."

Five minutes. Who knew?

*

Anyone else have any good coffee or caffeine (or decaf!) related stories?

[friendofjimmyk]

I don't...but man, my brother used to work for Starbucks right when he got out of the Army and he's got some stories....I'll have to tell him to come in to this site and check it out...if he can be torn away from his Transformers message boards.

[lordlundar]

DECAF! Bleah!

I find coffee tastes gross as is, so if I have a cup, it's for some caffeine and I'm out of options. (usually camping)

But decaf? what a waste of time!

[Becks]

Fortunately for this intrepid soul, a new pot was just finishing. Huzzah! Cue the freaking marching band! He leans forward intently, his eyes focused on the coffee machine as if she will swipe the pot with week old swill if he has a lapse in attentiveness. Together, they watch the last few drops amble into the pot, seemingly in slow motion. She pours him the coffee and he marches off triumphantly into the sunset - by that meaning his table...

... until he came back two minutes later and said the coffee wasn't fresh.

Either he has an evil twin, or he likes complaining for the sake of it.

[Crazyredhead]

My oldest daughter states that the Starbucks are drug houses in disguise. I tell her that is why the people that go there act the way that they do.

[Myra]

One of my regular customers works at a Starbuck's. We were joshing her saying she ought to bring us some coffee sometime. She laughed and said most of the time, she's stopping by our store on her way TO work, but sometime she'll have to stop by when she's getting off and she'll let us know. (She's really nice.) She's also from another country, I cannot remember which right now, (I think she's Samoan, but I'm probably wrong) and she gets SO much crap from customers for her accent. She has NO problem understanding the english language. She understood her cell phone contract just fine. However, most dingbat snobs around here seem to think accent = stupid. She's a sweet girl though.

I'll never understand coffee snobbery. It's caffiene, and yes I LOVE it, but geez. It's not worth getting up in arms over.

By the way, I have discovered decaf isn't bad. I've kinda had to now that I'm pregnant and trying to limit my caffiene intake.

[Gawdzillers]

DECAF! Bleah!

I find coffee tastes gross as is, so if I have a cup, it's for some caffeine and I'm out of options. (usually camping)

But decaf? what a waste of time!

Some people like a warm drink. I'm having a cup right now to help my sinuses.

[Gravekeeper]

I can't drink it, its like liquid goat arse to me. -.-

One thing I did find amusing though: Vancouver currently has a water advisory going on from the last rain storm. Basically you have to boil tap water for a minute before you use it for anything. The first day the advisory went out it rather amusingly pointed out which coffee shops use tap water to make their product and which use fresh or filtered water.

Starbucks? Tapwater.

7/11? Fresh.

Tim's? Fresh.

I thought that was rather amusing. Every Starbucks was in a panic but you could get a fresh untainted cup at 7/11

[RogueOne]

I thought that was rather amusing. Every Starbucks was in a panic but you could get a fresh untainted cup at 7/11

And you don't need to take out a second mortgage, either.

Oh, they have real sizes, too.

[erik316wttn]

Decafinated coffee: It's useless warm brown water.

[Sofar]

Oh, they have real sizes, too.

Ah yes, being Seattle has got a Starbucks on every corner, and we have the original Starbucks on Occidental Avenue, it's a little hard to avoid going there. The barístas get huffy if you ask for a medium, but they can't get too offended if you ask for "the second to largest size you have." Unfortunately half the time you do that they take the oppurtunity to explain the sizes to you. If you don't want to say "venti™" then just say "in a twenty-ounce cup." The "venti™" is in a twenty ounce cup, and oh look, venti is the Italian word for twenty. I wouldn't be so upset about that if they hadn't trademarked it. The Italian word for twenty.

[chainedbarista]

i work for the 'mighty green apron' but i think the size names are ridiculous; small, medium and large have worked for a long time, why 'fix' what's not broken?

i also don't get the 'up in arms' attitude, either; it's coffee, not water, food or shelter-you won't DIE if we're out of x or are swamped, so you won't get your fix within a minute, i promise.

coffee is ok, but i prefer teh tea goodness...

[powerboy]

MMMMM Hot Tea is good, way better then coffee. I do not coffee, but every once in a while, I will have a cup or 2. I hate going to Starbucks, because of the names of the sizes. They made feel like a dummy once, infront of ex. Hell I said medium on some type of coffee, and they treated me like crap. So "F" them.

[MystyGlyttyr]

Heh heh. We handled coffee at the Awful Waffle and it was always "fun". It, of course, came in those atrocious little plastic bags that had a nasty tendency to EXPLODE if you didn't open them perfectly in alignment with gravity and other assorted cosmic forces.

So, I took to stabbing with a knife before opening them. I don't know why it helped, maybe it equalized the pressure or something.

So plenty of people who came into my Waffle House demanding "fresh" coffee, got to see me toss the bag of coffee on the counter and proceed to go Norman Bates on it with the steak knife (cuz a strong downward thrusting movement helps, ya know).

There were never any problems with the coffee after that, for some reason...

[TNT]

If you ask me, coffee is like wine... the longer it sits, the better it gets.

One of these days, I'm going to open up a real coffee shop... Coffee-flavored coffee that's been sitting around for so long it has to be served in a glass container because it would eat right through paper and Styrofoam. And woe to the person who dares ask for cream and sugar.