By Matthias Kaufmann, Heike Klovert und Lina Moreno (Illustrations)
Which personality fits you best?
Coffee is as much a part of an office job as plants are in the garden. But not everyone consumes it the same way. We’ve put together a list of 8 coffeeholics and sugar snouts. Tell us in the comments below, which one you identify with the most.
Soda, beer and coffee, measured by consumption, are likely to pass for American national drinks. Last year each American drank an average of 134 litres of coffee (and growing), while spending US$87-88 billion in 2018. The classic, ground filter coffee remained the number one – with a market share of 57 percent. Latte macchiato and cappuccino cannot compete on the popularity scale.
However, not only are the coffee drinks very different, but they differ in the way they are consumed. You don’t need to be an anthropologist to find that out yourself. Read here what types of coffee drinkers we have identified in our journey through the country. Which one is closest to you?
… drinks two cups of filter coffee and a mocha before taking her first sip of water in the morning. Whenever you meet this colleague, she is coffee high. Be happy. In the morning, right after getting up, it’s very difficult with her. If her husband can afford it, he stays lying in bed until he hears the howling grinding of the coffee machine in the kitchen. All her colleagues know: When she reaches her caffeine level, she’s actually quite nice.
Characteristics: Yellow teeth and bad breath
Natural enemy: The cleaning service when it approaches with the descaling agent for the coffee machine.
Actual benefit: Also destroys coffee residues that have been compacted on the hot plate throughout the morning.
… doesn’t really like coffee. But he can’t admit it in the office. At the latest when his colleagues go on a pilgrimage to the coffee machine after lunch, he trots along to avoid being considered an outsider. Already smoked during school times only to be a part of it. On good days he pulls tea out of the machine, on bad days a latte macchiato. With extra milk foam.
Characteristics: He usually has half a cup of cold coffee on his desk, which is left over from one of his lunch breaks and is slowly starting to mould.
Natural enemy: coffee.
Actual benefit: Keeps the conversation going at the vending machine – because that’s why he’s actually there.
… consumes coffee like a meal: with double sugar and triple milk. Coffee does not have the purpose of stimulating circulation. It fills the hole, which others stuff with a candy bar in the late afternoon. He is moderately suitable for small talk in the coffee kitchen, because he usually appears when the large masses have already gone astray.
Characteristics: Is a bit chubby and rarely rejects a biscuit or a piece of cake.
Natural enemy: insulin.
Actual benefit: Is the only one who eats the dry coffee cookies. Because he really, really likes them.
… does not consider a heart attack to be a health risk, but a lifestyle. Coffee is usually deep black and highly dosed. Several times a day he pours an espresso into his left ventricle. He always hurries hyperactively through the corridors and drums with his ankles on the table at meetings. At noon he likes to talk about his racing bike in the garage, which he wants to ride again at the weekend.
Characteristics: Extremely lean physique and twitching eyelids
Natural enemy: His cardiologist, who has been trying to talk him out of all this for years.
Actual benefit: His last stay in hospital financed his cardiologist’s Maserati.
… turns up her nose at the vending machine brew from the office machine and only drinks a cappuccino at her favourite café around the corner on Saturdays and Sundays. The beans are pre-digested by cats and cultivated according to strict organic standard and gently frothed up organic farm milk. She is a regular guest in the café, also because she certainly doesn’t meet her bosses there.
Characteristics: A pitiful look whenever she passes by the coffee kitchen in the office. In her leisure time, she is committed to the species-appropriate cultivation of Bach flowers.
Natural enemy: Where to start?
Actual benefit: Is the only one who knows how to appreciate a good cup of coffee.
… would like to drink litres of latte macchiato, but he can’t, because he doesn’t tolerate milk. He’s often late in the morning because he’s standing in the café next to the company that prepares latte with soy milk for $7.99. For retreat and conference days, when vegan coffee supplies are difficult to ensure, he has tablets to treat stomach problems. But he often forgets to take them and then misses them in the second half of the day.
Characteristics: Brings new horror stories of restaurant experiences from every holiday. Suffers from flatulence.
Natural enemy: The milk foamer at the coffee machine in the office. He would make himself black coffee and pour his brought along oat milk into it. But the hose is blocked due to old milk leftovers.
Actual benefits: When he’s desperate, he cleans the pump hose after all – which nobody else does. Without his work on the pump hose, half the staff would probably have died long ago of poisoning.
… likes to drink a gin or two. And after breakfast again. But because alcohol is frowned upon in modern companies, he always pours a sip of black coffee into the cup. Sounds nasty, but because his homemade coffee is pretty strong it doesn’t really stand out in taste. Of course, all his colleagues know about it, but they like it and keep it tight.
Characteristics: If you’re not in scent range – none.
Natural enemy: The next managing director who may not turn a blind eye.
Actual benefit: He has an open ear for all concerns over a cup of “coffee”.
… doesn’t get any excitement out of whole beans and capsules and even less out of foamed milk. Doesn’t even know how to operate the 10,000 euro machine in the coffee kitchen and doesn’t want to learn it either. Brings her own thermos jug to the office every day, which keeps the fluids in it lukewarm until late afternoon.
Characteristics: advanced age and cup saucer with flower patterns
Natural enemy: The colleagues who queue up to her when the 10,000 Euro machine is out of order again.
Actual benefit: Always has a thermos flask with her for the case described above.
Which Coffee Type are you? Let us know in the comments below.