I can make all the coffee I want

Our company provides free coffee and tea for us. The coffee comes by way of a coffee maker and it is up to us to cooperate and make a new pot when it runs low. For the tea, the company just provides free tea bags. I mostly drink tea and make a pot in the morning and drink it throughout the day. I sometimes drink coffee, though, so I take a turn making coffee when I see that the coffee is low. Some days it feels like I'm the only one making coffee because every time I walk into the cafeteria, the coffee pot is nearly empty and I end up making a new pot.

Today, I happened to be in that area more often than usual and, again, the coffee was almost empty each time I was there. Making a new pot is simple and takes only a minute or two. That's because the coffee comes premeasured in bags and the water is plumbed right into the machine. You just put a clean filter in the basket, add the coffee grounds, put the empty pot under the the basket holding the grounds and hit the switch. If it's so easy, why don't more people pitch in to help? I don't know.

I get the feeling that no matter how often you make coffee, it would still disappear quickly and there would be almost no coffee left the next time you came in. The faster you make it, the faster it disappears. My theory is that people rush to take coffee when the pot is nearly full for two reasons:

• So they won't have to make a new pot
• Because they think it is fresh

Otherwise, they will skip having a cup and wait for someone else to make the new pot. I used to get really upset about the number of people that act this way. But you can't change that behavior in people. So, I changed my attitude to look at the good I am doing. It's good to be helpful. I feel like Thomas the Tank Engine. He's happiest when he's being, " a really useful engine". As long as I don't spend too much time doing it (that's not why I am employed here), I'm being a really useful engineer.