Things could all be different

[resonant]

Did you ever think about how strange it is, really, that coffee is such a staple that your better employers provide it for their employees? And even places that don't will usually at least provide the machines and the space to do this really somewhat complex cooking task.

And this is not even mentioning sugar and artificial sweeteners and creamer and stirrers and cups ... And all of it is sort of an accident of history and food fashions. One flap from the quantum butterfly and the necessary refreshment could be something else entirely.

Like maybe in Night Vale every office break room has the makings of cream of tomato soup.

Comments

[king_touchy]

Cream of tomato soup? Then God knows what they prepare in the break rooms in Desert Bluffs. I'm appalled and curious to know.

[woldy]

It's totally contingent! I was reading a book abut the history of coffee as a commodity in England that made exactly this point :-)

[nestra]

It may be red, but it's not tomato.

[resonant]

In Desert Bluffs, there is and always has been a third tap at every faucet, which dispenses a delicious mixture of precisely the vitamins, minerals, and psychotropic drugs required for daily health, which is why we should all be grateful that our municipal water supply is privatized and provided by StrexCorp. Cities with government utilities have to worry about fluoridation. Am I right, Steve Carlsberg?

[resonant]

Like salt & pepper! Salt as a staple seasoning seems inevitable to me, but in place of pepper we could totally have had allspice!

[krait]

I think about this a lot, because I don't drink coffee. You really notice how prevalent something is when it's provided everywhere and you don't drink it! (Especially when your own caffeinated beverage of choice is NOT provided.)

[resonant]

Sure - similarly, as a non smoker I really notice all the facilities provided for smokers. Imagine if companies provided used-needle disposal!

[krait]

Heh, yep! I used to joke that I was tired of working, so I was going to go stand around outside with a pencil in my mouth for fifteen minutes and call it a smoke break.

[grammarwoman]

As another non-coffee drinker, I would really be down with on-demand cream of tomato soup.

[lexin]

I know what you mean - coffee is often provided when tea is not.

[krait]

Precisely. I'm halfway to the point where I'm willing to try bargaining with the church; Just provide hot water and I'll bring my own teabags, please! (My employer, not being one of 'the better ones', does not provide coffee, so the main place I encounter the coffee bias is at church.)

[resonant]

I'd be arguing for something like bruschetta. Labor-intensive, sure, but coffee used to be labor-intensive, too. Grind it, boil the water, strain it ...

On second thought, you know how work coffee is kind of prefab and always way too weak - now I'm imagining the probable quality of break room bruschetta.

Or the bruschetta equivalent of keurig cups!

[jenna_thorn]

I've got the business partners who visit our site trained. The folks who come here for quarterly business review know that I have tea bags at my desk and will give them away for the asking. 8-) So they break from sales meetings, come by to visit and say howdy, grab a sachet of Constant Comment, and bip to the break room for a styrofoam cup and hot water.

I'm a secret weapon for the Sales Department and most of them don't know it.

[niqaeli]

It is interesting, although I find it perhaps not irrelevant that a caffeinated beverage ended up the necessary refreshment. But I have theories about the prevalence of ADD/et al and the instinctive self-medication thereof. *g*

That said, I do wish more places in the States gave me the necessary things for making tea being as my preferred caffeination is iced tea. *wry*

[china_shop]

Fwiw, businesses usually supply coffee, tea and milo¹ for employees in New Zealand. We're a Commonwealth country, so we have a high proportion of tea drinkers, but I don't know the history behind the prevalence of milo. :-)

¹ An instant malted hot-chocolate drink.

[jedusaur]

It's true, they do, but it's not an accident of history or fashion; it's a necessary precaution. You never know when there's going to be an outbreak of triproboscal moths, and they'll eat your spleen if you don't offer them something else. You don't really need your spleen, of course, so most people don't bother keeping a hip flask of soup on hand. But it's best not to trust them to accurately identify a spleen, as it's very dark in there and the extra probosces don't actually add a whole lot of sensitivity. I know, what's even the point of them then, right? Well, evolution works in strange ways, and the Glow Cloud works in even stranger ones, and no one knows for certain which one of them came up with those little fuckers.

[out_there]

HEEEEEEEEEEE!

[out_there]

Hee! I wonder if it's a Commonwealth thing, because Australia is the same. There's teabags (and at my workplace, there's the choice between basic tea and green tea, which is nice), and there's instant coffee (not the brewed coffee that always seems to be in the background of USA TV offices, but the add spoonful of dehydrated coffee to hot water type of instant), and there's milo for those who like a hot sweet drink without caffeine.

Like maybe in Night Vale every office break room has the makings of cream of tomato soup.

I hope so. And the upscale employers probably have croutons and bread rolls available to eat with your soup. (The cheap ones totally rely on instant soup packets sitting in a sad little heap by the kettle.)

[j00j]

That's a really good point. I also wonder about the social rituals associated with breaks at work. Like does everyone go hang out around the Bloodstone Circle and chant for a bit to relax/prevent outbreaks of lizards? Do they drink some beverage that turns you into a cat for a few minutes so you can take a nice nap in the sunbeam and then get back to work feeling refreshed?

[resonant]

I think I'd be on board with your theories. It's not really natural to expect people to sit down in the same room doing more or less the same thing for eight hours every day; that requires some chemical support.

But with a slightly different history, it's possible that companies would be providing us with coca leaves to chew.

[resonant]

Wow, milo. My current company offers hot chocolate mix in those little packets, some with tiny marshmallows in them -- it's kind of high-end that way.

[resonant]

I can just see it! At Night Vale Community Radio, they work on a shoestring (until the City Council bans shoestrings), and so for years they've had that familiar cheap-employer mix -- what's in the office all the time is cheap soup packets, stale oyster crackers, and a kettle that shouldn't rattle the way it does, but at least once a week the employees go to the equivalent of Starbucks and bring in the really expensive organic fancy tomato soup for everyone.

[resonant]

Do you think they like the soup because its color reminds them of blood, or because its salty flavor reminds them of ... well, blood?

[jedusaur]

Oh, there's blood in it. Unless you drain the tomatoes first, but why would you do that if you were making soup?

[china_shop]

We're the same with the instant coffee. I guess once you're already providing hot water, it's easy enough to offer milo as well as the more standard beverages. :-)

[majoline]

The closest non-cold drinks vending machine has multiple types of coffee and, alternatively, hot chocolate. Heh, too bad Night Vale's not in Italy: the pizza vending machine.

(Though, weirdly enough our cold drinks machine has more Minute Maid juice options than coke et al.)

[resonant]

I love this so much I had to read it to the kidlet.

[resonant]

My college library used to have one of those drink machines, which also gave out cream of chicken soup. But they all squirted out of the same nozzle, which kind of put a damper on the whole thing.

At the ice rink in our old town there was a vending machine full of things that hockey-playing kids need -- boot-mending tape and shoelaces and such.

There is no telling what's in the vending machines in Night Vale.

[tevere]

Milo is such a staple of the Australian workspace that even the Aussie soldiers stationed in a tiny mountain town in the middle of East Timor had it provided to them (along with tea and instant coffee) when I paid a visit.

[resonant]

That cat-sunbeam thing sounds so nice. But it would be impossible to keep breaks to a reasonable time period. Turn me into a cat and I'm sleeping in a sunbeam for twenty hours.

Maybe there's a smoker/nonsmoker division -- some people are bloodstone-chanters, and the ones who aren't always suspect that they're getting the short end of the stick when it comes to office breaks.

[jedusaur]

Hee, thanks. Night Vale is so great. :D

[giglet]

My office no longer has coffee (although there is hot water and a French press, way at the back behind the tea-making supplies). Instead of a coffee fund, some of us chip in for fruit: a box of organic fruit is delivered each week.

My office mates are kinda awesome.

[out_there]

but at least once a week the employees go to the equivalent of Starbucks and bring in the really expensive organic fancy tomato soup for everyone.

Hee!

You know, now I'm imagining Carlos during his first week there -- a slight headache from caffeine withdrawal and occasional shaky hands that he initially assumed was an adrenalin-related side-effect of the way that Night Vale both refuses to follow the laws of physics and frequently kills people, and how after asking people and getting confused facial expressions when he suggested having coffee at the labs, he went ahead and built himself a coffee machine. he uses it to brew the coffee beans that John Peters (you know, the farmer) grows around his fields to keep insects (and hooded figures) out of his imaginary corn crop.

[resonant]

"Oh, these little plants? We tried for years to find a weed control spray that would kill them, but nothing worked; they spring up everywhere. I'm just grateful that now we've found a use for them. It's no wonder they're a pest repellent, though. Have you tasted those beans? Bitter!"

[resonant]

Wow. I want to come work where you work.

[blushingflower]

Even when there is tea, it is often clearly an afterthought.

[niqaeli]

Yes, I'd definitely agree the exact caffeination form that became so common is definitely a quirk/accident of history!

[out_there]

*giggles*

[laurenthemself]

I had to lobby for literally years to get my workplace to bring Milo in. They asked me to stop putting it in the suggestion box. I did not.

[likeaduck]

This just reminded me of the vending machine in my university dorm that was full of pudding cups, juice boxes, plastic-sealed hamburgers and sandwiches, and that one can of sardines that never got bought.

[giglet]

I want you to come work where I work!

Only, the commute would suck.