Office Coffee

My lips curled back in a snarl, expressing distaste milliseconds before my brain caught up.


“This coffee is sick,” I whispered.

I was alone in the kitchen on the 16th floor of my office building. Cold water, Reese’s peanut butter cups, and good old-fashioned stress had failed to keep me alert. I stared out the window at a Chicago being buried by a late winter storm.

Office Coffee was my last resort.

I drink coffee every day, like my mom. I worked at a coffee shop for half a decade, and grind my own beans at home. My teeth are not sparking white. I stood perplexed in the kitchen staring at the empty pot. Holding my empty mug. I had never made coffee here before.

My temp Elena taught me how to use the machine in the office kitchen, even though I've been here for more than 3 years. Elena moved about the kitchen with ease; she had often made the coffee on the 3rd floor she said, where she temped previously. I was supposed to know how to make it too, so I paid attention while she emptied the brew basket, poured the water, tore the small red bag and emptied the grounds.

"I like to buy my coffee," she said. "I like the flavors. Hazelnut." She hit the button and left the kitchen.

I took another sip and waited for my body to register the bitter, burning energy source. Down on the street below, people ran.  Sloshing through gray puddles, heads covered, like they would if they were caught, terrified, in an actual snow globe.

It was really coming down outside. Snow like this reminds me of college in Wisconsin, even though I wore boots to school all winter as a small Chicagoan. I remembered my first semester when four weeks had passed before my new found best friends and I (all running short on clean clothes) acknowledged that we didn't know how to do laundry. Another freshman that we met in the laundry room showed us how. It was the first of many lessons.

The pull to stand in the kitchen, look into the storm, and sip my freshly made coffee was strong. With a packet of fake sugar and a bit of milk, the coffee wasn't that bad at all.