Koffie

One more month before the movers come to pack up our stuff and ship it back to the U.S. Before we start getting too sad and reminiscing about the past 18 months, we need to write a blog dedicated to the phenomenon of koffie (coffee) in the Netherlands.

John sometimes wonders to himself what on earth he will do at work in the U.S. when he is not being asked every 15 minutes if he would like something to drink. The reason the question comes so often during a day at work is twofold: 1) apparently the Dutch need to have about 5 liters of coffee in their system each day, and 2) the coffee cups one uses at the office are about the size of a Dixie cup. Now, if anyone in the room would like a cup of coffee (or tea or water or hot chocolate), he or she must go around the entire room and offer to get something to drink for everyone. John has seen coworkers interrupt phone conversations to ask the all-important question: what would you like to drink? And this is why John avoids needing a cup of water during his work day; he could never remember what all of his colleagues ordered to drink! The choices are endless: espresso, coffee with sugar, coffee with milk, coffee with milk and sugar, cappuccino, decaf coffee...there are seriously about 40 buttons on the coffee machines at work.

Because the coffee-getting ritual is observed so fervently around the country, certain conveniences have been invented to make the process easier. (One of the conveniences, unfortunately, is not larger cups.) The cardboard cup holder pictured here is necessary to cart all the cups back from the coffee machine. The question in red, by the way, says, "Will you get coffee?" This brings up the second convenience invented for the coffee-getting process.

Obviously it gets frustrating if the same person in the office ends up getting coffee for everyone about 10 times a day when other people, like John, refuse to ever get thirsty so as to avoid trying to remember what everyone wants from the machine. Douwe Egberts, the big coffee company here in the Netherlands that supplies most of the huge coffee machines in business places, has come up with Koffiemanager software for you computer! This ingenious program can be added to multiple computers in a room and will randomly choose different people at regular intervals to go get coffee for everyone. Furthermore, the program takes the stress out of having to remember what everyone orders. A pop-up will ask everyone with the software what they want to drink and deliver all the choices to the person who is assigned to go get the coffee!

Because John changes work groups so often, he has not been in the position of being able to utilize the Douwe Egberts Koffiemanager software. He may have used the cup holders a few times, but all in all John has remarkably avoided going to get drinks for the most part. Erin works in a church, so there is no €500 coffee machine available, and everyone buys their own coffee pads to use in the Senseo machine. The congregation might have a problem if they found out they were financing a Douwe Egberts super deluxe coffee machine at the church office (although the staff would probably be grateful if anyone would like to specifically donate one).