I hate coffee. I hate coffee-flavored things and flavored coffee. I hate the smell of it. You people who drink coffee should just occasionally take a look around you because there are lots of us who hate it who get trapped in small spaces with you (cars, offices) and can’t avoid its wretched odor. Not saying don’t drink it. Just saying once in a while reassess your habit. I’m advocating lids. I could probably make myself vomit on cue if I thought about the smell of coffee too long and too hard.
I know I’m way outside the norm but you can’t generally tell someone “Hey, your coffee is foul and if you don’t finish it or get it out of my face I’m going to vomit on you.” So just try to look around and if you see your coworker never touches the stuff, how about not leaving your mug on their desk? Like there are always threads and chatter online about people who wear too much perfume or microwave fish… too much coffee too close to me reaches that level of smell. But since people get really protective of their coffee, you can’t say anything. And you should have it. Just have it lidded and away from me. (Again, I’m an outlier. I have a strong sense of smell and I get ill from unpleasant ones.)
I wish I liked it. It seems comforting on a cold day.
I’ve never been able to stand it. I was in the Army and I hate coffee and beer, which pretty much left me out of the most prevalent beverages on duty and off.
I think that this is a pretty common response. Not the bit with the chocolate covered coffee beans and the huge glass of skim milk, but the smell vs taste portion.
A group of us used to share a coffee machine in the common dining area at work. A lot of people remarked that, while they loved the smell of us making coffee there, they never drank it.
And while I’m out today I think I will buy some chocolate coated coffee beans. I haven’t had them for years.
I’ve never had coffee. I know the flavor, due to Jamocha Almond Fudge ice cream and coffee nip hard candy and similar items. I don’t go out of my way to choose any coffee-flavored foods, but I don’t consider the flavor vile or anything.
Mainly I don’t drink coffee b/c I don’t much like any hot drinks (preferring iced drinks), and I’ve got just about every other Vice in the book, so why purposely add one more?
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect people to infer your views on coffee this way. Some 65 percent of Americans drink coffee. Offering coffee at a business event is expected. The vast majority of people who don’t like drinking coffee still like coffee-flavored things. They even love the smell of coffee.
If your reaction is so severe, you should expect to have to say something.
The same could have been said for smoking for decades. I’ve been in positions where I couldn’t say something, like trapped in a tiny office on my first day of a job or the asshole teacher who used to just drink it all day every day when I was a kid. I do tell coffee people to shoo but it’s also nice to be nice to others and not assume everyone likes your smelly habit as much as you do. And as I said, please enjoy. Just … once in a while make sure you’re not making someone who can’t tell you to stop really uncomfortable.
It’s like saying be aware that one rare person in the world will not be able to tolerate the smell of cotton or water so be aware. There’s no way to be aware of something that the vast majority people consider innocuous, even pleasant. It’s unreasonable to expect people to intuit that coffee affects you like smoking.
There is a rare bit severe allergy to the scent of lavender. It can be deadly. Lavender scent is used in a ton of stuff. For those few unfortunate people who could actually die from lavender, it’s on them to say something.
You haven’t said that your aversion to coffee is potentially fatal to you, but it’s similarly your burden to inform people that you find it so unpleasant.
No matter where you are in the world there are commonly used scents, either in food or personal products. In one place it might be attar of roses. In another place It might be garlic.
In all those places there will be small small number of people who can’t stand it. It’s unfortunate but it’s unreasonable for them to expect people around them to guess without being told that a few rare people will be negatively affected.
It’s like saying be aware that one rare person in the world will not be able to tolerate the smell of cotton or water so be aware. There’s no way to be aware of something that the vast majority people consider innocuous, even pleasant. It’s unreasonable to expect people to intuit that coffee affects you like smoking.
There is a rare bit severe allergy to the scent of lavender. It can be deadly. Lavender scent is used in a ton of stuff. For those few unfortunate people who could actually die from lavender, it’s on them to say something.
You haven’t said that your aversion to coffee is potentially fatal to you, but it’s similarly your burden to inform people that you find it so unpleasant.
No matter where you are in the world there are commonly used scents, either in food or personal products. In one place it might be attar of roses. In another place It might be garlic.
In all those places there will be small small number of people who can’t stand it. It’s unfortunate but it’s unreasonable for them to expect people around them to guess without being told that a few rare people will be negatively affected.
As part of a minuscule minority it’s your burden to speak up.
I’ve drunk it only occasionally. It’s just that somehow I never picked up the habit. I’ll have it at a coffee house sometimes. The only form of coffee I had often was Starbucks’ frozen latte bars.
I tried to develop a taste for coffee by mixing a small amount of instant into my cocoa. It was okay, but not great. Once I ran out of the instant, I didn’t buy more.
This is exactly the sort of coffee-drinker I am. I’ve had high-end coffees and enjoyed them, but I’ll happily drink most any coffee.
In my experience, when someone says “I don’t like X,” telling them that they’ve never had “proper X” usually doesn’t lead to an epiphany. The gourmet version of the product doesn’t taste better to them—it tastes weirder. The fundamental quality that turns them off is still there.
I tried coffee once, way back in college, and pretty much had no use for it. Maybe I would have given it another shot at some point if I wasn’t already satisfied with soda as a delivery system for caffeine, but as things stood, I had no enormous impetus to cultivate a taste for it. A couple of years ago, I got a wild hair to go out on National Coffee Day and see if, by chance, my tastes had changed over the decades. They had not. It took a healthy dose of cream and sugar to turn that stuff into something palatable.
Do you perchance have hyperosmia? My SO does (genetic, nothing wrong with him health-wise) and it’s slightly freakish being around him sometimes. I have an unusually keen sense of smell - most people can’t smell all the things I detect - but I think I’m just a couple standard deviations out on the Bell curve. My SO is in another category altogether - he smells if a person has consumed even a tiny bit of garlic in the past 24 hours, he can smell ginger flowers 50 yards away, there are some completely normal people he can’t stand near because their intrinsic smell is bad to him…and so on.
Luckily he has trained himself to shut up and deal. I pretty much gave up garlic for him, but informed him that coffee was non-negotiable. We have compromised.
.
I think I’m more like you. I don’t have like… magical powers, but just way better about some smells than most people. I remember being a teenager and smelling my mother cut a cucumber. She was upstairs. I was down a flight of stairs behind a closed door. It was way worse when I was pregnant, however, and it’s stronger now post-pregnancy than generally when I was younger. It’s weirdly individual scent-dependent. Perfume? Most (but not all): gag. But eggs? I keep hearing people say how gross eggs smell and they barely register in my nose.
And while I hate the smell of coffee, but it doesn’t usually make me too grossed out as long as it’s not too strong in too small of an area. And I can’t smell it on someone who drank like one cup 8 hours ago.
I love coffee, but I hate what caffeine does to me.
I didn’t think it affected me much, and I usually made an 8-cup size pot in the mornings (but not, like, every morning, y’know). Then I quit it completely for a couple of weeks - well, I started making decaf - and had a noticeable decrease in my anxiety levels, along with other positive mood-based effects.
I thought I couldn’t go back to drinking caffeinated coffee, and was sad, because decaf is like softcore porn. But then a week or so later, I noticed that many of the negative effects had suddenly returned. “Well, shit, I guess the benefits were temporary,” I thought hopefully. But that evening I finally felt my spidey-sense tingling, went and checked the cupboard, and surely enough I had accidentally made full-caf that morning.
That’s when I knew I couldn’t go back. Goddamnit so much.
Me too! My son has a “normal” sense of smell, and I often swoon with delight or disgust over scents he barely notices. But then once in a while he’ll comment about a strong smell in the air that I struggle to even register.
