Cup o' Joe

Tonight Paul told me a story about this past week at work involving coffee that I thought deserved to be mentioned on the blog and which inspired this post.  Paul and a co-worker are good buddies and apparently prank each other on occasion.  This co-worker also happens to know that as a practicing Mormon Paul does not drink coffee because they have discussed this finer point of our religion.  So apparently a few days ago Paul was getting himself a cup of water from the breakroom when he suddenly thought, "hey, it would be nice of me to make a cup of coffee for my buddy and take it to him."  So he poured a cup of coffee (he can't remember if he used the decaf, regular, or strong option) and then added this and that (he said he dumped in some raw sugar and then some kind of creamer and whatever other stuff was sitting there) and took it to his friend.

The friend was immediately suspicious when Paul said "I brought you a cup of coffee!  I made it for you!"  The friend's first question was "what did you do to it?"  Paul explained that he didn't put anything bad in it and so the friend took a sip and exclaimed "this is awful!"  Bahaha - I am sure it is so much funnier hearing Paul tell this story in person because I was seriously cracking up. 

The second story I have involving coffee is from when I was a summer associate at my law firm during my 2L summer of law school.  As the only Mormon out of 27 summer associates, I naturally got some questions at social events about my religion, principally dealing with why I wasn't drinking alcohol.  Inevitably coffee would come up as another "banned" substance for a practicing Mormon.  One person asked whether there were any Starbucks in Utah and I deadpanned, "Oh sure.  But they aren't allowed to sell coffee.  Just hot chocolate."  Everybody, and I mean everybody, gasped and totally bought it until I couldn't help but laugh about the joke. 

My third coffee story is from when I was a senior in high school working my first job as a waitress at a Mexican restaurant in a small town in Nebraska.  I was still pretty new on the job and had not even an inkling about coffee terminology so when I asked a customer what he wanted to drink and he asked for "coffee, black" I responded, "sorry, but we only have regular or decaf".  That man laughed and laughed and told me to go ask another waitress what he meant.  I remember the other waitresses looking at me like I was from outer space when I explained the conversation to them.  It was one of the more embarassing moments of my life.