The Rules of Office Coffee Etiquette

I’ve been at my new job for less than a week and a half. In that time, I’ve made five pots of coffee. Five. Most of those I had to make for myself because the pot was empty. A few I did because I took the last cup in the pot. Why did I do that? Because that’s what courteous office workers do. It’s one of the unspoken rules of office coffee etiquette.

At first I thought that I had coined the term “office coffee etiquette.” I certainly hadn’t heard it anywhere else. A quick search on Google, however, quickly demonstrated that I wasn’t the first, the second, or even the third. How, I wonder, have so many people defined this concept the same independently of one another?

It’s because coffee is a natural resource of the office environment. All office workers need it from time to time (and if you don’t I want to know what you’re taking). If people aren’t courteous enough to make the coffee when it runs out, others suffer as surely as farmers in a drought. To paraphrase Frank Herbert’s Dune, the spice coffee must flow.

If you spend enough time in an office setting, you learn this implicitly. And while there’s some disagreement on the details, the consensus on the rules of office coffee etiquette seems to include the following (in Commandment form ):

• Shouldst thou pour the last drop, thou shalt breweth a new pot. If you empty the pot, or reduce its contents to less than a full cup, you are obligated to make another. No exceptions. And no, it doesn’t matter if you made the last one.
   
• If thy cup runneth over, thou shalt clean up thy mess. Seriously, nobody likes a messy coffee station. If you spill coffee, creamer, sugar, grounds, whatever, clean up after yourself.
   
• Thou shalt clearly distinguish the caffeination of thy brew. Yes, some people like decaf. Heck, I’ve been known to drink it in the afternoon to avoid messing up my sleep schedule. That being said, it’s not kashrut to give caffeine to those who don’t want it or not give it to those who do. Label your pots and use the correct ground for each when brewing.
   
• Thou shalt not steal from the coffee station. There are offices in which the coffee is not provided for free, but on an honor payment system. And, though I’ve never encountered it myself, there are supposedly some sick individuals who like to swipe the whole pot and not return it. Seriously, the coffee station is a precious communal resource. Stealing from it is paramount to stealing from your fellow office workers.

I’m sure there are probably others, but those are the most important points. As I said, this should be common sense to anyone who’s worked in an office for a reasonable period of time. May those who should know better and still choose to violate the rules of office coffee etiquette feel the unbridled wrath of their coworkers.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 at 11:08 am and is filed under Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.