Are you accepting applications?
Well, from a lover of flavored coffee, I apologize on behalf of all of the assholes who don’t keep the pots straight. I mean, just because I love it doesn’t mean everyone else needs to be inflicted with the taste. I can’t help the smell but I was always careful to keep the pots straight.
…what? Wow, cool. Even if it’s just a story, it’s a cool story.
We have Flavia machines. I think they are slightly better than the Keurig, in that the coffee is ground to a fine powder and then vacuum sealed. So it does actually brew in the small amount of time allotted, and it doesn’t get stale sitting in the cupboard as quickly.
I still can’t get a strong enough cup though. Even using the espresso function and putting two into one cup just doesn’t do it for me. I’m a lunatic Army brat though, and like my coffee s.t.r.o.n.g. My friends have dubbed it “al dente” (because they have to chew it) and automatically add half coffee/half water to their cups at my house.
Sooooo at work I keep a french press and a bag of Peet’s (Supermarket version, best I can do at the moment).
Pretty basic here. Three-pot setup. One double strength, one regular, one decaf. All from the packets provided by the company. I don’t drink coffee so I don’t know if any of it is any good and I don’t remember the brand. Probably Folgers or something inoffensive like that. The good thing, from my point of view, about our breakrooms are the non-coffee selections. They keep it stocked with various teas, including green teas, and hot coco(with marshmallows, two varieties without, and a sugar-free). There’s an iced tea brewer in most of the beverage bars(that’s what they call them) and often there’s two pots of iced tea(sweet and unsweet) going.
So the coffee, not so much, but the overall beverage situation, pretty good.
Enjoy,
Steven
We sort of have little hidden coffee havens around the school where I teach. The one I currently partake in is about five people; only one guy makes the coffee because he’s very particular. It’s kind of an average-strength brew, I think with Folgers. Normal drip coffee maker. Then after he makes it he pours it into a carafe type thing so it doesn’t keep cooking. He usually buys enough coffee to get through the school year, so I occasionally only have to contribute cream or sugar. Sometimes I bring in snacks or something to share.
We have pretty good beverage service at my workplace. A couple of smaller breakrooms have Flavia machines, along with a nice selection of coffees, teas and cocoas.
The main breakroom has the standard four pot Bun setup with regular and decaf Cadillac coffees in premeasured packets for the folks who like “truck driver” coffee. We also have a Keurig with a nice selection of coffees and teas. Further along the bar is a hot water dispenser (and it is hot enough for tea), a selection of teas from Bigelow and Celestial, several cocoa selections (including sugar free), usually a couple of buillion flavors and during the autumn and winter, regular and sugar free hot cider mix.
The company also provides sugar, sugar in the raw, sweet-n-low, splenda and truvia, but only has the powdered creamer available. My department keeps a contribution jar for half and half to keep in our mini fridge, so we have something cow-y for our cup of Joe.
During the warmer months, I like to make iced tea by the glass with the Plantation Mint tea, some ice from the ice maker and topped up with cold water from the dispenser.
The company has recently done the “green” thing and gotten rid of the foam cups, supplying each of us with covered travel cups and insulated travel mugs (with the company logo, of course).
This is better service than anyplace else that I’ve worked outside of the restaurant and restaurant supply businesses.
The last office I worked in was with a bunch of PhDs (literally everyone in the company who wasn’t support, legal or human resources had a doctorate) who did extraordinary computer research. (The man in charge of the division, part of a global company, has a law named after him.) Coffee was crucial. We had a service that brought in very good quality individual pot packs, but they weren’t the little sealed bags, they were the vacuum sealed “bricks” and when you opened them, the smell was heavenly. The machines were Bunns, plumbed right into the water supply with permanent filters (but not those gold ones) in each basket so all you had to do was dump the old coffee, rinse, add new coffee and press a button. The brew was rich and delicious Colombian and the amount of coffee in each brick was sufficient to make a nice, strong pot. We also had an assortment of teas, various creamers and sweeteners (including stevia) and hot chocolate.
The big problem? Somehow these extraordinarily brilliant men and women, a veritable who’s who of the IEEE and other prestigious engineering organizations, had a very hard time understanding that when one finishes the pot, it is courteous to make another. And of those who got it, they wouldn’t bother if it were after 3 in the afternoon or so. But since many regularly worked until 9 or 10 at night, drinking coffee all the while, even that made no sense. As a support person, and worse, the one whose cube was nearest the coffee, I can’t count how many times I’d end up going through the motions because I’d notice an empty pot and knew that if someone came wanting and found no coffee, I’d be the one that they’d yell at.
We have those “brew one cup at a time” Starbucks machines that grind the beans and make the coffee there to order. Free of charge too.
I believe our work coffee is made from sweatsocks.
I drink tea or use instant espresso powder in milk.
The only trouble with the k-cup system is that if you drink anything other than coffee like tea (or if you just want hot water), everything tastes like coffee anyway.
I find our office’s Keurig coffee to be weak. I’ve gotten a small four-cup pot for myself.
One of the many kick ass things about my job is that there are only three of us in the office. Only two of us drink coffee. Only one of us is there every day (me).
I get to bring in whatever coffee I like. No one to steal it. No one to use it all up. No need to wastefully have to make a whole pot in one of those industrial coffee makers when I only need two cups for m’self.
Nope, just me and my creme brulee flavored girly coffee (that’s what my boss calls it) and a 8-cup maker like you have at home.
The only downside I can maybe see is that I pay for it myself. But if it were up to my boss we’d be drinking Folgers, and I don’t see any reason to make the company pay for my indulgence. Anyway, Folgers tastes like feet. I have Folgers as an emergency back-up only. We’d have to be out of coffee and in a simultaneous blizzard/tornado warning/earthquake that prevented me from going to the store before I’d drink that shite.
Bossman likes Folgers fine. He’s nuts. I say, “You travel most of the time. I’m here everyday. We’re having chocolate raspberry.”
I remember fondly the moment I realized that moving with my boss to this new company meant never having to drink shit company coffee ever again. I think I wept. Hell, I’m weeping a little just thinking about it.
Have you suggested that the change the k-cups they are buying? The extra-bold cups are great.
Our Land Rover dealership had a Keurig, and we fell in love with it. We got one for the office and one for home. We use it for coffee, tea (no problem with taste, as someone noted on page one) and hot chocolate, plus we have the “my k-cup” adapter to run our own ground coffee through it.
It rocks! 
Have you tried using the actual packs of espresso? Flavia coffee comes in strengths from mild to espresso