THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 12, 1995 TAG: 9504110010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 46 lines
Coffease, a drive-through coffee kiosk, has opened in Virginia Beach to sell time-thirsty motorists quick cups of good coffee. As staff writer Mylene Mangalindan reported this week, Coffease lets you buy a cup out your car window, so you don't feel guilty about taking ``a big bite out of your schedule.''
Coffease kiosk is providing a needed service to people on the go, of course.
But, really, coffee is not supposed to be consumed on the run. It should be sipped and savored by people reclining comfortably, with their feet propped up. Our thoughts while sipping coffee should be not on work or traffic but on fishing or golfing or loved ones. Or we should be having pleasant chats over coffee before plowing back into our jobs.
The country has gotten so busy - with husband and wife and teenage kids working - that the term ``coffee break'' is starting to sound quaint. Wasn't that something people took back when they weren't so all-fired busy?
Some jobs still have coffee breaks, of course, but they surely are fewer and fewer. A diminishing percentage of workers are unionized, and a lone worker, or a handful of workers, can hardly demand a coffee break.
In some pressure-cooker offices, workers are considered slackers if they leave their desks for lunch, let alone for coffee.
So coffee, today, is consumed while getting to or doing a job, and in large caffeine-thick quantities that speed us up. Someday we'll have special drugs to make us more productive, but for now there's caffeine.
We once asked a coffee deliveryman why Juan Valdez picks coffee beans one at a time. The deliveryman apparently got asked that question often, for the answer was on the tip of his tongue: ``Because he is paid by the hour.''
Maybe Juan Valdez used to be paid by the hour, but today he's probably paid by the bean.
Our lives are an interesting circle. Because we are busy, we need more conveniences, like a drive-through coffee kiosk, and because we need more conveniences, we need more money, so we'd better be busy. by CNB