The Department of Caffeinated Beverages
I always look forward to Monday morning coffee. It’s brewed fresh, almost worth the $5 fee. But this Monday was different. This Monday offered a first look at a new improved Department—this after I had just figured out their last set of improvements. You see, the DCB brews adventure along with the coffee. I never know what kind of experience I’m going to get. Unfortunately, like every other Monday, I did find out.
I entered the establishment. It looked the same. Maybe this won’t be so bad after all, I thought. I walked up to an empty teller and placed my standard order.
“I’d like a large coffee with cream, no sugar.”
Without a word, the man behind the counter made an expressionless gesture toward an overhead sign, one of several identical placards, hand-crafted in uppercase letters:
THIS WINDOW ONLY
Ignoring the misstatement, I replied, “Okay. So where do I get my coffee?”
He silently reached behind the counter and handed me a full-color brochure: Guide to the new Department of Caffeinated Beverages: Dedicated to serving you better.
“Okay. But where do I go to get my coffee?”
With an indication of actual human emotion, he thrust a finger to the right and sternly intoned, “Over there.”
I turned and saw something I hadn’t noticed before. There was a crowded seating area arranged in two sections with a single aisle between. The seats faced a counter. A sign read:
NOW SERVING # 21
I took ticket 47 and stood in the aisle. There was no room to sit down. A heavily armed security guard told me I couldn’t stand there. At that moment, I heard a synthesized bell ring, and with a stroke of luck the customer next to me got up and walked to a window at which a young adult male in a t-shirt and jeans was juggling three large boxes of hot liquid. Probably an office runner, I thought. I smiled nervously at the guard and sat down.
I quickly relaxed into the hard plastic seat. I had been late for work before, waiting for a cup of Joe. My employer understood. Reading over the brochure, I learned that a bottleneck of coffee drinkers had been forcing everyone else to wait in line for hours. Therefore, the DCB now has a whole new office dedicated to coffee requests. The Department has also instituted several Healthy Initiatives, so-called, but the brochure was very vague. I feared to learn what they’d done this time. Removed the caffeine? Brewed it cold? Added arsenic?
My thoughts were interrupted by a woman shouting. “Number forty-seven! Anyone have number forty-seven?”
Yikes. With as little fanfare as possible I scurried up to the window. The other customers retreated again into the privacy of their own imaginations.
“I’d like a large coffee with cream, no sugar.”
“I don’t have cream here.”
“Huh?”
“I can give you the sugar, but you’ll have to go over there to get the cream.”
She pointed to the “tea and cola” signs, now a distant memory.
“But I don’t want sugar. I just want cream in my coffee.”
“Is milk okay? I have milk.”
I wonder if you can get that with your tea.
“I’d really prefer cream,” I apologetically stated.
She sighed. “Okay. Fill this out.” She slid a sheet of paper across the counter. “Take it to the ’tea and cola’ window. Then come back here.”
I glanced at the dense page. Form 3921-B: Request for Application of Saturated Fatty-acid Animal Products to Caffeinated Beverages.
“Maybe I’ll just take it black today.”
After-market coffee cream is illegal, but everybody uses it occasionally.