Saturday, February 11, 2012

Just Making a Cup of Coffee

Readers of Bil Keane's comic strip, The Family Circus, are aware that he regularly would do a strip in which Billy would go from Point A to Point B in the most roundabout route possible. Every so often, I have one of those adventures.

A couple of days ago at work, I got up from my desk to make a cup of coffee.  We have one of those K-cup machines and a variety of flavors to choose from. I made my choice and realized that it was the last K-cup in the box. So I put the old box in the trash, got a new box down and opened it up.

I inserted the K-cup and realized that the light was flashing on the machine; it needed to be refilled with water. I removed the water canister and went to fill it from the water cooler. The water cooler was empty and needed a new jug. Well, the jugs are rather dusty, so I first had to wash it off.

I put it on the counter next to the sink and reached for a paper towel to wipe it off. There was one towel left on the roll, so I was able to wash it off, but not wipe it dry. Since the men's room is right next to the kitchen area, I got a second paper towel from there, but noticed that there were only a couple of towels left there as well.

So I went out into our warehouse, where the kitchen and bathroom supplies are kept, and got new roll of towels for the kitchen, a package of towels for the men's room, and, since I was there, a few more rolls of toilet paper.

After putting the paper towels were they needed to be, I realized I needed to wash my hands because the box they were in in the warehouse was pretty dusty. As I should have expected, the soap dispenser was virtually empty, so I had to refill it from the big bottle under the sink. Doing that emptied the big bottle, so it went into the trash with the empty paper towel roll, the K-cup box, and the rest.

Surprise! The trash can was now filled and needed to be emptied, so I pulled out the bag and brought it out to the can in the warehouse, then came back and installed a new bag.

Then I finished wiping down the water jug and put it in place. Then I refilled the water canister for the coffee maker. Then I finally did what I had started out to do.

As I was returning to my desk, one of my co-workers said, "Gee, it sure took you a long time to make that cup of coffee."

2 comments:

  1. As a father, surely you've encountered children who refuse to do a simple task because "it's not MY job" and leave it to someone else, who leaves it until beyond the last minute and then puts everyone out? I suspect your coffee-making trek was caused because someone else should have done all those things and didn't; and being the nice person you are, you stepped in and did all those tasks yourself.

    I know at my job, they got new cleaners in over the summer holidays and it's only because of constant (or it seems that way!) badgering of the management that some bins have actually been emptied in the past week or so! Eww.

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  2. VERY funny blog entry. Fortunately, you act the same way around the house, which is one reason why things run so smoothly!

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