“Do you have styrofoam cups or something for people?”
“For what?” I asked her.
“For the coffee back here. It smells good, and I want a cup,” she replied.
To clarify, between my office and the nurse’s office, there is a small room that we keep a fridge, a small coffee pot for water (that I purchased and brought for hot chocolate for the three of us in the area), and a larger coffee pot for coffee (for me and the nurse). The nurse brought in coffee from home this week, and I pitched in with creamer and sugar (and I’m bringing some of my favorite coffee tomorrow). We had some coffee brewing this afternoon when the person who covers my desk while I’m at lunch came in and smelled it.
“That coffee is just for us,” I responded.
“Oh, yeah,” she said back jokingly, thinking I was joking. “After all I’ve sorted and worked on for you today and yesterday, you’re going to deny me coffee?”
“No, really. I mean that this is our coffee, meaning that we bought it ourselves and brought it in. It’s not the school-purchased coffee.”
“Well, I’m going back down to the other end to get some down there then,” she said and stalked off, obviously ticked off at me.
I’m not sure why, if she wanted coffee, she didn’t bring it down with her. She usually brings water or juice down with her, and I’ve rarely seen her with coffee, so I’m not clear on why suddenly she needed/wanted that coffee (other than it smells and tastes MUCH better than the school-provided coffee, obviously.) I’m also not sure why she thought it was community coffee when it was in a room that very few people go into other than me, the nurse, and my boss.
But I still feel guilty for not letting her get some coffee, even though I know that if I do it once, she’ll keep coming down and trying to take some. If we let her do it, then we have to let other people do it, and it spirals from there. I explained this to the nurse, too, and told her that we really just can’t tell everyone to take what they want, when they want, or we’ll be buying several bags a week and will quickly be providing good coffee for everyone in the building. There are two lounge areas in the school where at least one pot of coffee is ready to go, one of which is situated right next to the lady who comes at lunch to cover my desk, so why did she come down empty-handed and then want our tasty coffee?
And why do I feel guilty for not letting her have what the nurse and I discussed, planned for, and brought in ourselves?
You are horrible!
Ha, not really. I would have told her the same thing. Like you said, you give a mouse a cookie and the next day his five friends will want a cookie, too. I know I changed that expression, but I like my version better.
She didn’t talk to me at all when she came down today. Grr. Oh well, I got a lot of comments on how nice my office smelled today, since I brought my own favorite coffee in this morning. Someone even walked in and said, “It smells like good coffee in here!” That’s because we like good coffee in our office (and I never drank the school’s coffee, because it just doesn’t taste that good no matter how much sugar and creamer you put in it.)
What you say is true, and I don’t have money to buy coffee for the whole school nor the time to grind all the beans for the entire school (because that’s how I roll).
Offices are nutty like this. I worked at an office where there were some coffee afficianados who brewed their own coffee (which they kept locked in their desks). We could have some after they came and got their cup, so a few of us poor ones kept an eye out and dashed in when we could get it, heh.
Still, it’s a bit presumptuous to think anything is yours in an office environment like that. Still, this is fairly common. You do have to protect your stuff in public areas, otherwise people just free-for-all for it (as in the above, heh).
You can offer to let them chip in too, but it is a bit silly for someone way down the hall to want to do that. Offering may make them less grouchy about being rebuffed, though.
That’s the thing, though. It’s not a public space at all. We do not allow students, parents, or pretty much anyone to go through there, so I don’t know why she thought that suddenly a coffee pot appeared and she can just take the coffee that’s there. Everything in that space is personal to the people who work in that office area. All the other “coffee areas” are in the lounge areas, which are public spaces for all staff members, but this is an area that very few people are even allowed really. (I mean, we also keep our food in that little fridge back there. Does that mean she can just go in there and take any of the food in there she wants? Of course not! It’s a personal area for the few of us in that area. It’s where I hang my coat and keep my personal things during the school day.)
If she were in the office more than 30 minutes a day (and that’s right before she leaves for the rest of the day), then I might ask if she wanted to chip in. However, she has coffee literally 10 steps from her desk all freaking morning, and she doesn’t even come down to my office until noon, and she leaves for the day at 12:30. It’s just plain ridiculous.