For me, the morning routine on the cube farm begins with a trip to the coffee vending machine. This evil monstrosity has been our source of caffeine since that fateful day in July when workmen carted away our beloved coffee urns. Since then, coffee has been acrid and unmistakably mechanical in nature. It’s hard to describe the subtle difference between a cup of freshly-ground coffee-maker coffee and machine-pressed liquid. They are similar, I suppose, but there’s a certain roundness of flavour that the machine fails to capture, and a delicate hint of machine parts seems to linger, unless that’s just my imagination.
There are two flavour selections on the machine’s panel: French and Hawaiian. Despite my expectation of either croissant or ham-and-pineapple, respectively, they taste identically bitter to me — like Safeway brand, but with a hint of WD-40.
When I noticed that both hoppers were empty in the machine, a subversive notion overwhelmed me. I opened the machine and very deliberately filled the French hopper with Hawaiian and the Hawaiian hopper with French. If nobody notices, then I believe my point will have been made.