One addiction feeds another

Trip 14: Perth to Darwin

Purpose: Regulator Liaison Meeting

Total Distance Traveled: 6, 500 km

Distance Traveled Year to Date:  51, 807 km

Look! In the corner! Free coffee!

When was the last time you stopped and thought about how much your caffeine addiction is costing you? I’m not talking about your health or longevity here; I am talking about what really counts and that is the fiscal cost. Your hard-earned coin. Actually, don’t think about it because if you do the emotional cost will be irreparable. Whatever the case, like me, I am sure you want the product you are paying for.

A cost-benefit assessment for me goes a little something like this: for every 10 coffees I buy, which results in little change from a ‘fitty’, I will adore two, enjoy three, tolerate four and want to throw the tenth back at the ‘wannabe’ barrister that literally stole money from me under false pretenses. 

It is my own fault I know, but when I walk into an establishment and I see a proper machine there is a part of my brain that acts without any rationale. It simply will not allow me to turn on my heel and walk away. I see a coffee machine and I want coffee even when I know that it is about to be made by a jackaroo in ‘double pluggers’, a pair of Stubbies, a Trucker’s singlet and a 10-gallon hat. Yes, this happened in Gregory in far north-west Queensland [the next town on from Bourke and Wills if you are picking up what I am putting down]. What was worse on that occasion was that when I asked for a Latte he had to ask the sheila behind the bar in the adjacent pub what that was. Thankfully, with that, she stepped in and he stepped safely to one side. 

The problem: A fancy coffee machine does not a nice coffee make. It is the person driving the machine that is the key ingredient and, I am sorry, but just the same as you need a licence to drive a car, you bloody well should have a licence if you want to make me a coffee and make me pay five bucks for it! It is that simple. 

I have, on occasions when I am lamenting the purchase of crap coffee, proposed to anyone who will listen, a strategy to ensure that no person shall ever have to pay for crap coffee again. This is my strategy: If coffee growers, roasters and retailers, together with coffee machine manufactures really did care about us (the Consumer), they would install an emergency cut off switch into all commercial machines which renders the machine inoperable if anyone but a fully qualified barrister steps within three feet of it. How would it know? Well, all qualified barristers would need to have Personal Identification Transponder (like what the Vet inserts into your puppy) inserted subcutaneously into their wrist. 

A far less ‘Orwellian’ solution would be to let us make our own coffee. I would be quite happy to MYO and pay for the privilege. It would not take any longer, because you have to wait around for an age anyway; and at least you’d know what you were paying for, and if it is crap you have only yourself to blame. 

How did I arrive at this epiphany? It happened when I saw a commercial coffee machine with unfettered access tucked neatly away in the corner of the gambling section of a sports bar in the NT. Joy of joys! Free quality coffee anytime of the day or night. 

I guess it is a little opportunistic and even underhanded of the proprietors to freely feed a person’s addiction to caffeine in order to sustain or even enhance their addiction to gambling. But I could not care less; it was coffee, it was free and I could make it just so.