Early morning coffee

At the Salt Mines where I work we have free coffee. Good coffee, even. Brand-name stuff. Did I mention it’s free? Just go down to the cafeteria and suck up all the caffeine you can stand without spending a dime.

Not. A. Dime.

Great, huh? Medium roast. Dark Roast. All kinds of weird anti-testosterone blends. Sugar. Milk. Cream. Whatever you could possibly want for your particular coffee fix.

Bearing this in mind, I keep running across people who have … who have … oh, dear Lord … stopped on their way to work to buy a cup of coffee. Really. Yep. No, no, it’s true. See it every day. Your work provides all the coffee you could possibly need or want, and you decide out of your own volition to stop your car on the way to work and pay for coffee.

Now, I have a long commute. Looooong. Painful. And yet I am able to wait until I get to work to pick up the free coffee. It seems that my entire being will not self-destruct if I don’t spend $4 on coffee on the way to a place where free coffee awaits me.

So what is the deal here? Much as I try, I just can’t wrap my head around why somebody would elect to pay $4 for absolutely no reason whatsoever apart from being able to carry a coffee cup with a different label on it. If you needed it that bad, why don’t I see you drinking any more coffee the rest of the day? How can that morning cup contain the magic elixir that keeps you alive, but then you don’t need another for 24 hours?

So here’s the big question: Can I have your money? You obviously have no idea what to do with it, so please give it to me. The first thing I will do is to not spend $4 per day on something I can get for free at work. That adds up to $20 per week, which is $80 per month, perilously close to a cool grand per year.

You can buy real stuff they don’t give you for free at work for that kind of money.

Just saying.