Lunch Matters

As an important early step in my new internship, I’m doing a break room taste test. It should have serious implications in my caffeine intake for the next few months—obviously the benchmark by which any part time, unpaid employment can be judged a success.

I reported in my Twitter yesterday that the new office has, instead of an oldfangled coffee pot, one of those newfangled pod eating contraptions, which accepts a plastic “K Cup” and, in return (to steal from D.A.), dispenses a concoction which is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. (Or coffee.) In looking back on the many internships I have held over the years, I am struck by two regrets. First that I have spent so much time working for free, and second that so much of my wasted energy was powered by K Cup or FlavoPod.

No matter. These are not serious regrets—merely the typical musings of one methodically wasting his youth—and they should be put out of mind. I am today in a new office, with new opportunities for goldbricking, and lovely new people before whom I can contort in an attempt to elicit applause.

There is also new caffeine, and this time, I have options. Beside the “K Cup” contraption I discovered a box of Lipton’s tea bags. Plain, reliable, slightly burnt tasting Lipton’s—the most widely sold tea on the planet.

So what’s better? K Cup Earl Grey, or that pathetic old work horse, the tea bag? I have a cup of each to my right, and they both have points. The Lipton’s is hotter, stronger, even burly. It might tolerate a splash of milk if I had the patience to wait in the break room while the bag hangs out in the cup. But at the back of each sip is the familiar bite, which reminds me of airplanes because that is the only time I ever drink it. What’s soothing in the trauma of the air does not necessarily work in the comparative comfort of the ground.

The K Cup Earl Grey is better than one might think. I’ve often found that, confronted by pod machines, it’s best to ignore the fearsome supposition that a single gizmo can produce tea and coffee. As teas go, Earl Grey is a lightweight—the lone flavored tea that can be considered at all respectable—so to run it through such a clumsy, stupid device is only so heinous an act. The bouquet characteristic of the brew—an oil called bergamot—is present in the K Cup variety, and if one doesn’t think to hard, it’s easy to pretend that the beverage is enjoyable. But the “tea,” or whatever you want to call it, has no body. It slides down the tongue and out of the memory, leaving a dry tongue and mildly irritated stomach. If this is the best machine brewed tea can get, I feel very bad indeed for the good Captain Picard:

So which is better? The Lipton, with a bit of milk, might be just the ticket for a tired three o’clock in the office. But the milk is all the way in the kitchen, and I have two rapidly cooling cups—one strong and bitter, one flavorful and weak. Let’s see how they mix.

[splash!]

Huh! A surprise! Together, they are much worse than they were apart. Every good quality seems to have vanished mid-pour. Combined, they taste like lukewarm shower water. Oh well, we’ll try again tomorrow.