My H is on a coffee rotation at work. He brings the powder creamer. It is out for everyone. I buy the large powder creamer at Sam’s and fill up the smaller 16 oz counter size when he brings it home (about once a month). That is no big deal to us providing creamer to anyone who needs/wants.
Buying a fresh refrigerated item in a small office - manners would have been asking if able/willing to share…this person may be good to work with, but doesn’t know boundaries/manners.
You will have to decide if you just buy more when you are at the store, or if you use one of the ways to secure your cream at work.
I prefer cream just because you use less to achieve the same effect. Therefore you dilute the coffee less and also cool it less (I like my coffee really hot!). But otherwise they taste the same if you just use more half and half. Also some (but not all) half and half brands have a surprisingly long list of ingredients; less is more imho.
Re post 56: Yep, I know SOSConcern, these types of problems may seem ridiculous but that’s the beauty of this board! It’s a place for [possibly undignified] dithering. In real life, no one wants to hear about this stuff but somehow on an anonymous message board it is all fodder! It is some sort of weird sociological alchemy. I for one am glad that the OP posted her question! If someone raised this in real life, I’d probably say, irritably, “just tell the person it’s for personal consumption.”
[there’s no sarcasm whatsoever intended in this response; I understand your laughter but I’m nonetheless interested in the problem.]
[i am assuming you are laughing because the number and detail of of the responses seem out of proportion to the problem; correct me if I’m wrong].
Thank you, OP, for starting this thread! Office kitchen etiquette is, apparently, a hot topic. Eons ago, as I was driving home after dropping Mr. at the airport, the host of my favorite radio station ranted that someone ate her sandwich out of the common fridge and asked the listeners for advice. It touched such a nerve! Calls started pouring in with all sorts of suggestions, from reasonable to ridiculous to dangerous to disgusting (such as adding phenolphthalein to tuna filling, making a sandwich with roaches, etc.). It entertained me all the way to my house!
Just like nottelling, I like to share my food with others, too, and I for a while I felt awkward about writing my name on an item that is obviously not going to be consumed in one day. However, my Spartan biotech existence taught me to be a bit more scrooge-y about my food. Apparently, years of starvation during grad school result in heightened desire to scavenge for food… Don’t count on leaving your bread and balsamic dressing in the otherwise empty communal fridge, it will be consumed!
I buy all kinds of things for my staff…we have deer park delivery bring not just water, but iced tea, pellegrino soda, perrier, etc. Plus we have keurig machines and k cups, creamers and different sugars. It gets a little crabby around the office when creamers run out or water runs low. The funny part is that all someone has to do is call deer park themselves to get them out quicker or tell the person who orders supplies that something is running low…some people would rather complain.
I won’t even tell you the hoarding that goes on when we order snacks for the office.
Some college parents were discussing on our facebook page male room-mates taking food/meals, snacks, drinks etc that other room-mates had placed in the kitchen/frig. It wasn’t that this kid was poor, just lazy, poor manners, a mooch, whatever. I was shocked at some of the suggestions parents came up with (similar to what BB said in post 63).
To me, you cannot correct someone that doesn’t want to be corrected - for the college fellas, you just finish out the year locking your stuff up and not room with the guy again.
@eyemamom has hit it where you get to some of the human behavior people can and will exhibit in work when it comes to food and drink. Some people do not have any impulse control, manners, or boundaries in certain areas.
Yes it seems dumb to spend the time and energy figuring out this situation by OP, but it is annoying and aggravating. And how many annoying and aggravating situations do we remember years later? To me, I would want the satisfaction to have good working relationships and not have my cream pinched!
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Some college parents were discussing on our facebook page male room-mates taking food/meals, snacks, drinks etc that other room-mates had placed in the kitchen/frig. It wasn’t that this kid was poor, just lazy, poor manners, a mooch, whatever. I was shocked at some of the suggestions parents came up with (similar to what BB said in post 63).
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College dorm mooching is a real problem. I think that’s why a number of those mini-fridges have locks.
I agree, it’s usually not because the moocher is poor. If a poor person takes food, it’s hard to get really upset… No, it’s usually someone who has the money but doesn’t take the time to buy his/her own snacks/drinks.
@thumper1 - I don’t use it either. However because I have weight to lose, I resort to skim milk. H somehow prefers it even at home - maybe because of his work coffee drinking. My dad seemed to prefer powder creamer too, although if there was half and half or full cream on the table, I believe he would use that.
My father-in-law loves to drink half-and-half. I think older people who remember drinking non-homogenized milk remember drinking the cream off the top of a jug of milk.
In South Africa last month, I liked it that the waiter always asked, “Warm milk or cold?” when I ordered coffee. So I’ve started warming up my cream before I pour the coffee at home.
I started drinking coffee at age 12, when we visited the family farm in Switzerland (the farm where my dad grew up, and his older brother inherited under the laws then…) - they brought in the milk right from the cow. So I decided to drink coffee milk, half coffee/half milk (and the milk was the top cream portion). Parents were unsure about bringing me on this trip, but because PanAm and the group airline rate was $300 for adult and $150 for any children 12 or under, they decided to bring me along with my older two siblings. I also think they didn’t want the wrath of my great-grandmother either - she named me and took care of me as a baby on an extended US visit; to say I was her favorite is an understatement - the other siblings didn’t matter to her and she was grumpy/mean to them.
My favorite story…I went to a restaurant supply store and bought a bunch of things for the office including individual boxes of cereal, granola bars, gold fish and some pizzas.
Apparently the woman who could never be happy stomped around the office complaining I didn’t bring milk too and it wasn’t right that she’d have to provide her own.
My office is very small in a large institution. Our department is not rich by any means. One of our docs gave our office a new Keurig she didn’t need - so nice! However a couple of women who work in the department seem to feel that it is the departments responsibility to keep us stocked in K-cups. I FULLY don’t support this! The department has plenty of financial woes - buying coffee should not be on the top of the list!
So one of the people who believes this orders supplies for the office - she has been ordering K-cups. I REFUSE to use them. I have a refillable K-cup, buy a bag of coffee for $6 and a small container of half and half and I have coffee for weeks. Really, I can manage to provide my own coffee!
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In South Africa last month, I liked it that the waiter always asked, “Warm milk or cold?” when I ordered coffee. So I’ve started warming up my cream before I pour the coffee at home.
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One of the benefits of the “Mini Moo’s” is that they can be kept at room temp, so they don’t cool down your hot coffee that much.
@acollegestudent You would have liked the milk choices when I was growing up. There was a choice, I think it was called “Extra Rich Milk,” that was available. It probably had the fat content of somewhere between whole milk and half/half.
