Faking It! How to Survive Coffee Conversation when you Return to the Office

Conail from accounts has changed since lockdown. You remember the days he’d open up a Monday morning conversation boasting, “I had 16 pints of the most totes delish pints of pale ale at the weekend” when he first started working with your team. You would also mentally note your hostility to a man from Mullingar using the phrase totes delish to describe any beverage.

Now though, the thirst for tasty liquor has subsided and been replaced by a new addictive substance.

“I must be on my 6th coffee this morning and it’s not even 11 yet,” he informs you as he voluntarily stops by your desk. You wish he’d wear a mask.

Unlike his binge-drinking exaggeration, his eyes, glazed and bulging, give credence to this claim. His hands begin to display a tremor and his facial expressions become slanted. Part of you worries that he may be either having a stroke or about to float off towards the ceiling like Charlie and his Grandad in the Fizzing Room in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The ceiling above your desk was installed during the Celtic Tiger. If the latter scenario occurs, it will undoubtedly collapse, killing everyone and Martin from IT’s 50th birthday party will be cancelled. This, to you, is some relief.

Yet Conail “with an i”, who we once featured in our Customer Tales on our Insta Highlight reel, is not an anomaly.

70% of your colleague’s now are charged with opinions on coffee, informed and otherwise, and it’s all rather intimidating. Fear not - we’re here to help!

Here are 3 tips and expressions to help you hold your own in any caffeine-centric conversation, whether it’s about the best pour-over method or up and coming coffee regions like Papa New Guinea - which we use in our Traversa Triple Blend.

Psst. we have loads more ideas but apparently blogs are better at 800 words…

“That is Interesting”

Martha has just made you a filter coffee using her new favourite beans from Brazil but fermented in methane and roasted in a bog-fuelled roastery outside Tubbercurry. You’re not sure if it’s coffee, oil from her car’s recent filter change or Bovril.

Hold a strong poker face, slurp the coffee and sniff the pungent aroma. Pause, look Martha right in the eyes and pierce the windows of her soul with a non-committal, “That is Interesting.”

Being dismissive of the coffee would mark you in Martha’s eyes coffee-ignorant but being too enthusiastic would mark you as amateur with an unpractised palate. Follow up with obscure questions about the bean to push the conversation back on her by asking,

“Is the coffee shade-grown or mechanically harvested?”

“What region are the beans from in Brazil?”

“What coffee-growing season do the follow?”

Now, your adversary feels noviced with your informed questioning. She will bluff her way back to her workspace. When the opportunity allows dump the coffee down the sink and not on your desk plant, which it will likely end up murdering.

If in doubt, AeroPress

John is like a conversation gatling gun at lunchtime, shooting questions and suggestions to anyone walking by about coffee shops to visit on holidays. He takes a moment to pause at times to see who he’s hit and spots you heating up three day old soup. Internally you tell yourself soup is nicest on the third day but it’s really because your bank manager promised you they’d consider you for a mortgage in 2057 if you stopped buying lunch on Wednesdays. You can’t remember what you put in the soup and now you’ve also to deal with John’s nonsense.

There was a really cool coffee trailer I drank some great Fairchain coffee from during the summer hols. Have you heard of them, they are called Rural Vaga…?”

Cut John right off with an AeroPress response. (If you don’t have one pop on here)

“Sorry John, I usually bring my Press with me when travelling.”

John’s wounded.

Hearing of people willing to go to extra lengths by bringing a coffee filter with them startles him into feeling a lesser coffee being. He shuts up

You slurp a boiling hot spoon of soup. The roof of you mouth blisters but you show no pain and leave the canteen to eat at your desk… The soup is tomato.

Become a Reusable Cup Champion

Find your niche is often cited as the best way for a person or business to blossom. With the increase of coffee connoisseurs, you have to find your own angle. You can do that by committing to only getting your takeout coffee in your own cup.

(You can pick up some sexy eco-options of us here and here - to be fair we really do exploit these blogs to plug our own stuff #EvilMarketing)

If you’re out on a 10am coffee break with workmates and the cafe won’t take your cup, shrug your shoulders and say that’s ok, I don’t need a coffee today, thanks.”

You won’t probably mind either. You had two sneaky cups of instant this morning before leaving home. You didn’t even dissolve one spoon of it. Instead, you opted to chew it whole, soften the granules with your saliva and swallow it in the hope it hit your bloodstream more quickly. Commuting to work again has hit you hard and the fridge in the kitchen misses you too.

Your work colleagues, with their single-use cup in hand will silently be intimidated and impressed by you. They too will now bring reusables to work and the cafe will be encouraged to start accepting them.

Fancy checking out what cafes take reusables pop on over to Conscious Cup’s map.

On you walk back to the office you hear the ceiling of your office collapse, look up and notice Conail float away into oblivion. You’ll be back bonding with your fridge sooner than you think.