Burnt Coffee

As coffee is the main life line for many office workers we of course of a coffee maker in the office. It is fairly old, but it gets the job done. This is what it looks like:


We do not use the burner on the top though as that end of the machine is under the upper cabinets in the kitchen. But two is plenty as we have never needed to have more than two pots of coffee going at once. Water is poured into the opening at the top right and comes out at the pot in the bottom left.

The general rule for our office is that the first person in in the morning starts the first pot of coffee. Most of the time that's me, no big deal. Just put some coffee in a filter, add some water and we have coffee. So simple that I'm amazed at how many people have trouble doing this.

Before I go home at the end of the day, one of the things I do is make sure that the old filter and grounds have been dumped out and that one of the pots is empty and ready in the bottom left burner for coffee the next morning. If I don't do this and someone else makes it to the office before me, there is about a 90% chance that they will not notice there is not a pot there and proceed to start the coffee. (I say 90% on that, but it has happened every time I have forgotten to put a pot there at the end of the night.) The water, once added to the top, will automatically start to run through the system. There is less than 5 seconds between when you add it and it starts to run out. Therefore if there is no pot coffee goes everywhere and guess who gets to clean it up? Though the last time this happened the person who did it tried to clean it up themselves only for me to find a half cleaned up a mess later. The cleaned up what was on the counter and made it to the floor, but not what ran under the machine or the puddle in the burner itself. I understand that they needed to get a pot in there to catch the coffee still coming out, but you hold it up while you mob up the liquid under it. You don't just let it sit there and burn away.

Another thing that one might think would be a simple concept is that when the pot is empty, or there is less than a cup left, either dump what is left or at the very least turn the heat off under the pot. I don't know how many times I've walked into the kitchen just to find a small amount of coffee sizzling away in the bottom a pot and making an awful smell. Of course if they do decide to remove it from the heat, they just set the whole thing in the sink without even bothering to dump it out. It doesn't take more than a few seconds to run some water into the pot, rinse it out and set it aside, yet a pot will sit there in the sink until I notice.

The next bit that I don't understand is those who are too impatient to actually wait for the coffee to finish brewing before pulling the pot to pour a cup. Doing this allows coffee to pour onto the burner and then they just put the pot right back on top of it. So now there is coffee directly on the burner sizzling away which is an even worse smell than when it is just burning in the pot. Nearly every day I'm having to clean burnt coffee off the burners and the bottom of the pots because they've either pulled it too early or they've simply spilled all over and not cleaned it up.

As time goes by I become more and more amazed at how people who have been drinking coffee for years from this coffee maker still have no clue how to use it properly and don't bother to keep it clean in anyway. I really doubt they would leave messes like this at home, but it seems here 5 seconds to check the pot is in the right place or that you've not spilled every where is just too much to ask.