Just when you think the full assortment of breakroom stupidities have been invented and catalogued, some fool comes up with an entirely new variety.
Today, I noticed that the coffee in the main pot seemed almost transparent, so I stepped up to take a closer look. On initial inspection, it seemed as if the "coff-tea" (see my previous blog on that subject) might be making a return appearance; the odor, however, did not suggest tea as a component. Grabbing my cup, I filled it up with the mysterious liquid; with the mug completely full, I could easily see through to the very bottom. This product was even weaker than the dreaded coff-tea!
The pot itself was quite full, almost halfway up the large container. Typically, a single brew will fill the container perhaps a third of the way up; with the small amount of people in the office lately, there is rarely a need for more than one brew cycle to be run, so something was definitely not right here. I pulled out the filter cup to make sure there were grounds in it, and there were: really USED grounds. Like, these coffee grounds looked like they'd been washed over with about 50 gallons of water. The filter itself was partially disintegrated, presumably the result of repeat-brewing erosion.
Why would someone keep brewing the same grounds? I wondered. Then I noticed that there were no filters on the counter, where we usually stack the extras. The coffee itself, being kept in a drawer, would not have been in plain sight either. The coffee machine is an industrial version, with permanent water-line hookups to the wall. With no need to ever manually add water, perhaps a local idiot thought the coffee magically replenished itself as well..??
That must be it. Like some futuristic film-reel from the 1950s might have it, you simply walk into the breakroom and press the button marked BREW. Like magic, the coffee starts pouring out and soon you are kicked back with a fresh cuppa joe! Perhaps the idiot with the happy brew-finger was also wondering why donuts and other treats weren't also magically dispensing from a hole in the wall like they did for cartoon space-dad George Jetson.
Ignorance is breakroom bliss.