Dear Annie:
My name is igor. I am a senior completions design engineer with a calgary-based service company. The office coffee where i work is quite terrible, I mean to the point that i’m surprised it even exists. i lost a bet in the field once where i had to drink an emulsion of equal parts N2-charged slickwater mixed with viscoelastic surfactants and lord knows that it tasted better than the coffee in my office kitchen. I can’t afford to buy coffee every day! need help, Annie! What should I do? – igor (He/him/his)
Dear Igor: Okay, so here’s the deal. First of all, thanks for letting me know that you’re a dude with the pronouns next to your name. Hmmm… Igor, huh? With that name, I would have never guessed you had a pocket rocket and maracas. Anyhow, about the coffee: it is a well-known fact that oil and gas service companies aren’t exactly experts at serving up the best coffee service… in fact, they aren’t known for serving up the best oil and gas services either. But if there’s one thing I know, it’s now to elevate sour 4 API sludge coffee to at least 20 API joe that is oooooh so sweet.
1) Frack Off: Okay, this technique is based on a 2017 UofT at Austin study of frack fluids impacting the quality of the water table near Midland, Texas, and here’s how it works. Step 1: Convince your management team to buy recycled frac fluid from one of your clients – in fact, you can cut them a deal on your completion design services if they give you a few cubes of the stuff. Step 2: Brew your coffee with this stuff instead of water. Hey, the taste of that toxic shit HAS to be better than the taste of your current office coffee.
2) Filter Off-Kilter: When was the last time you inspected the filters used in your office coffee machine? A couple of years ago I caught Darcy Flowman using his ex-wife’s soiled panty hose in the 2P office’s machine, so you never know what’s there. Whatever is there, replace it with invert coated drill cuttings. Why? A pico-particle chemical reaction between the invert and the coffee grinds has been known to transform the resultant coffee into something akin to a high-test shot from the Third Cup. Also, the taste of diesel HAS to be better your current office shit.
3) Charitable Jo-nation: For this technique you’ll need to round up some of your colleagues and an old cowboy boot. Place the boot next to the coffee machine and everybody who swears, passes out, or vomits after a sip of the office brew, dumps a loonie into the boot. When the boot is full, use the funds to pay for hypno-therapy sessions for the office manager so that he levels-up on the coffee bought for the office. None of this Van Shit stuff anymore.
4) See You Latte: This one is easy, Igor. Quit your fucking job and get a real job at a place that actually has coffee benefits. Done and done.
That’s all I’ve got for you, Igor. As you can see, the main thing here is to do your best to make a very shitty coffee situation incrementally better. Office coffee is bad, just make it not so bad and you’re winning like Charlie Sheen.
Annie Syco (He-She)