After about two and a half years of having my own office, I’ve recently been sharing a larger office with one other person, and so far I’ve had two different “roommates”. Over the years I had developed the custom of grinding and brewing my own coffee rather than let the vile decoction offered by the office to pass my lips.
As it turns out, both of these officemates hate the smell of coffee!! It’s as if I were smoking cigars or something; I didn’t think such a thing was possible. In my experience even people who don’t like to drink coffee like the smell of it. Accordingly I’ve started bringing a thermos from home, and it hasn’t been too hard to make the adjustment. It saves me all those hikes to the kitchen to fetch water and to wash out the coffeepot at day’s end, but I’m still a little amazed by the whole thing.
Does anyone else out there also not like the smell of coffee, or have you run into this in other people?
Well, it does smell slightly better than it tastes, but I don’t like the smell much, especially when it’s brewing as whistlepig has said. But I hate the smell of hazelnut 10 times more than any other type.
I hate the taste of coffee and dislike the odor, especially during brewing. It’s almost painfully bitter and reminds me of a mixture of dead skunk and burning ballast transformer. It’s not that strong, of course, but that’s the general idea.
I’ve learned to tolerate it because nearly everyone I know has a strange addiction to the stuff (he typed, while taking a sip of his coke ).
I too hate the smell of coffee. Hate, detest, despise, abhor, etc…
It is for that reason, I’ve never tasted it. Although I don’t know anyone else (besides my sister) who doesn’t drink it on occasion, I could never bring myself to get past the smell and try it.
It does make for uncomfortable meetings and “coffee breaks” where the assumption is that the pot of coffee will make everyone happy. Here in the mighty US of A I’ve learned not to ask for tea (you get funny looks–only tree hugging wiccan anarchists drink tea around here), so I always bring a soda or water so I don’t have to get into it with the rabid coffee types.
The smell of coffee - especially hazelnut and french vanilla, and doubly especially if milk has been added to it - actually makes me physically ill. I get quite nauseated if people drink coffee too near me. Fortunately, the coffee available for sale in our building a) is considered quite good by most who drink it, so no one feels the need to brew their own and b) comes in paper cups with lids, which contain the smell fairly effectively.
I’ve never had coffee either, and I can’t stand the smell of it. My old office mate would bring coffee in sometimes and it would have driven me nuts if it hadn’t been in one of those cups with a lid that has a slit to drink through.
One of the reasons I despised my last job was the ever-present stench of coffee. I mean, it was pervasive; even when it wasn’t brewing, I could smell it.
It’s always smelled like boiling sweatsocks, to me.
Hmm… Those who dislike the smell of coffee, did your parents (or someone else in your household) drink it while you were going up? My mom never drank it, and as a result, I never got used to the smell. So now, I don’t like it.
And Big_Norse, make that “tree hugging wiccan anarchists and physicists”. At our weekly colloquia, there’s coffee and tea available (and even herbal tea, but by 4 PM Fridays I usually need the caffeine), and the coffee drinkers and tea drinkers seem to be about matched in number.
Both Pepper Mill and I love the smell of coffee when we pass those upscale coffee shops. But we can’t stand the taste of it. My grandmother used to make cofee every Sunday for the whiole family, and I suspect she rarely washed out the pot – it filled the air with a metallic tang that I hated – that smell of coffee is awful – and that might have helped cause my dislike of the beverage.
I’m not a coffee drinker, but never minded the smell of coffee. Until, that is, just recently when I moved to a new town and discovered that “The New England Coffee Company” is just down the road. When the wind is just right, the most putrid odor wafts onto our property. The first time I smelled it, I had just arrived home and was convinced my car engine was on fire.
I have no doubt whatsoever that roasting coffee, as zenster points out, actually gives off toxic fumes. Nothing that smells so bad could be anything less than deadly.
Damn! that’s where I went wrong, I should be hanging out with wicca and physicists instead of boring old consultants. But on the other hand, anarchist wicca physicists, that might get scary!
Both of my parents drink coffee (strong and black), but then again they also drink manhattans, and I’ve definitely never gotten to like the smell of bourbon and vermouth…
Growing up, my parents drank a lot of coffee. I hated the smell of it and swore that I would never drink it. Well, now I just love the smell of coffee in the morning. I’m not an avid drinker, but I do like to have a cup of coffee every now and again. For example, if I don’t have a cup after Thanksgiving dinner, I’m out for the rest of the night.
Non coffee drinker and coffee stench hater checking in here. The reason I never have been able to get into coffee at all is the fact that I find it painful to drink (along with hot tea and other hot drinks). The rest of my family has no such problem.
At this point I can’t stand even walking past coffee shops since the smell is so awful.
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