fearlesstemp | damn you, french roast! DAMN YOU TO HELL!

When last we left today's Totally Awesome Temp Moment, I was mid-sentence. To pick up the story: An attorney asked me to put together a coffee tray for him.

Defining Characteristics of Yours Truly:

-I am always late.
-I am very forgetful.
-I hate bringing people beverages at work.

Which is why though I smiled politely and said, "Of course!" in a chipper way, inwardly I was thinking mean thoughts full of expletives.

The coffeemaker in the kitchen is basically a Coffeemaker for Dummies, which is good because I'm quite dumb when it comes to coffee (as I am when it comes to higher math and poetry).

Complicated Coffee-Making Steps:

1. Pull out Thing Holding Filter and Grounds.
2. Dump out Thing Holding Filter and Grounds.
3. Put new filter and grounds (which are stored in convenient one-batch-bags) into Thing Holding Filter and Grounds.
4. Put Thing Holding Filter and Grounds back in its original location.
5. Press big orange button marked "BREW"

It's so easy. And I've totally mastered that part of the whole deal, so that the coffee itself was prepared to perfection. Not prepared to perfection? The carafe to hold it.

I will preface this by saying that this is TOTALLY not my fault, and in fact the fault of faulty labeling, to the point that if I could sue my coworkers or manufacturers for Embarrassment (the way one can tack on Pain and Suffering to lawsuits [which I do support]), I would be putting together paperwork right now.

Okay, so. The carafes are these tall cylindrical things with an indicator on the side showing how much coffee is left. One showed five cups, the other (marked Decaf) indicated it was bone-dry. I had a long lazy debate over whether I should just give the meeting people the five cups or go to the extraordinary trouble of making another batch (see details of proposed extraordinary trouble above).

And then I decided to go the extra mile and make them a new batch. Let this be a lesson to all of you: Never go the extra mile.

I switched the carafes, hit brew, and stepped back to start preparing the rest the tray. Halfway through the preparations (which involved, mainly, dumping some cream and sugar into a bowl and staring at the box of cookies in the middle of the table, wondering if they were the same cookies that were there last week, and if they were edible, and if they were edible, whether I should have one), I turned to see if enough coffee had been prepared for me to snag a cup, and saw COFFEE EVERYWHERE! OVERFLOWING! ON THE FLOOR! ALL OVER THE COUNTER!

COFFEE EVERYWHERE!

I realized immediately that the carafe had not been empty, and that the indicator was broken and either (a) it had just happened or (b)it has been broken for a while and no one had told me about it, which is unacceptable if I am going to be asked to make people beverages! Because an uninformed coffeemaker is a cofeemaker who ends up staring open-mouthed in horror at a volcano of French Roast in the office kitchen!

And then I went all Indiana Jones on the thing. Remember in Raiders of the Lost Ark, at the very beginning when he has to get the Random Priceless Artifact and switches it with a bag of coins? I felt very Harrison Ford today, standing there with a cheap paper coffee cup (company mugs are on order) and paper towels, preparing to put the cup under the flow while moving the overflowing carafe to a secure location, and then replacing it with the half-full carafe..

It was a totally excellent plan, except the part where the flow of the coffee was too powerful and sent the paper cup on its side, spraying cofee even more, creating a bigger mess. But it was a good plan!

The best part was spending five minutes wiping down everything, including parts of the floor, for renegade coffee. And then having to deliver the crap ten minutes later, to a group of people who were probably wondering what kind of idiot takes a half hour to make a pot of coffee.

Whatever! And now it's five, and I have to go, and I am posting without editing.