The Great Coffee Catastrophe

If you’ve never seen an entire office brought to its knees...

The Great Coffee Catastrophe
Word Count: 1,832

If you’ve never seen an entire office brought to its knees by a single pot of coffee, then you’ve never worked at Weaver & Sons Accounting.

It all started on a Tuesday, which, as everyone knows, is the worst day of the week. Mondays at least come with a sort of grim determination, like soldiers storming a beach. Fridays bring the promise of freedom. But Tuesdays? Tuesdays are just Mondays with less hope.

By 8:45 a.m., the entire staff had already gathered around the coffee machine. It was a cheap, boxy contraption someone’s cousin had “donated” six years ago, and it had survived on duct tape and whispered prayers ever since. People didn’t even call it a coffee maker anymore. It was “The Machine.” Capitalized. Like it deserved a place in the company directory.

“Why does it smell like burnt tires?” muttered Lila, the receptionist, wrinkling her nose.

“That’s just its way of saying good morning,” said Darren, the junior accountant, who hadn’t slept since tax season began two weeks ago. His eye twitched every third second like clockwork.

At precisely 9:00 a.m., The Machine let out a grinding noise that sounded suspiciously like a goat being strangled, followed by a puff of steam and a smell that was definitely not FDA-approved.

And then? It died.

The silence that followed was louder than any scream.

“No… no, no, no,” whispered Marge, who had worked at Weaver & Sons since the Reagan administration and firmly believed caffeine was the only thing keeping her heart ticking.

Someone gasped. Someone else cried softly into a stapler. Darren dropped to his knees like a man watching his house burn down.

“We’ll just, we'll just make tea,” offered Simon, the new intern, trying to sound helpful.

Seven pairs of bloodshot eyes turned on him. He visibly shrank two inches under the glare.

By 9:15 a.m., productivity had plummeted. Without coffee, phones went unanswered, emails stacked up, and three people forgot how to use the copy machine. The boss, Mr. Weaver himself, stumbled out of his office with his tie crooked, mumbling, “Why is there darkness in the middle of the day?”

That’s when Lila proposed the only plan anyone could agree on: someone had to go get coffee from the shop down the street.

Naturally, they nominated Darren.

“I can’t,” he said, pale and sweaty. “If I step outside in this state, I’ll walk into traffic.”

So they drew straws. And fate, being the cruel comedian it is, chose Simon the intern.

“Don’t mess this up,” Marge warned, handing him forty crumpled dollars. “And don’t you dare come back with decaf.”

Simon saluted, though his hand trembled.

The journey to the coffee shop should have been simple. One block, a right turn, and there it was: “Bean There, Done That.” But Simon was not prepared for the battlefield that awaited him.

First, a construction crew had decided this was the perfect morning to jackhammer the entire sidewalk. Simon had to sidestep a crater, leap over a wheelbarrow, and duck under a rogue beam that swung like a medieval trap.

Next, a flock of pigeons descended, apparently mistaking Simon’s hair gel for breadcrumbs. He screamed, spun in circles, and sprinted down the block while pedestrians recorded him on their phones.

Finally, sweaty and feathered, he burst into the coffee shop like a man returning from war.

“Eighteen large coffees!” he shouted at the startled barista.

The barista, a man with a handlebar mustache and the patience of a saint, raised an eyebrow. “All large? Any flavor? Any milk preference?”

Simon froze. He hadn’t asked. He hadn’t written it down. He hadn’t even considered that coffee came in more than one form.

“Uh… black?” he croaked.

Eighteen large black coffees. That’s what he ordered. That’s what he carried out, balanced in three cardboard trays stacked precariously. That’s what he almost dropped when a skateboarder zoomed past and clipped his elbow.

By the time he returned to the office, he looked like he’d fought in three separate wars. But he had the coffee. Sweet, life-saving coffee.

The office cheered. People clapped him on the back, someone started humming the national anthem, and Darren actually wept.

For one glorious moment, Weaver & Sons came back to life. Phones rang, keyboards clacked, and Marge laughed for the first time since 1998.

But then Mr. Weaver took a sip.

“This… this is all black,” he said, his face turning a shade of red not found in nature. “Where’s my soy latte with caramel drizzle? Where’s Marge’s hazelnut? Darren needs triple espresso or he’ll collapse!”

The office erupted again, this time into chaos. Someone accused Simon of sabotage. Someone else demanded they all unionize for better coffee rights. Darren dramatically fainted onto a filing cabinet.

And then, just when it seemed all was lost,The Machine sputtered.

A cough. A hiss. A belch of steam.

And then, against all odds, it came back to life.

The entire office froze. Slowly, reverently, they watched as thick, tar-like liquid poured into the pot. The smell was awful. The sound was worse. But it was coffee. Their coffee.

By 11:00 a.m., balance had been restored. Simon sat at his desk, feathers still stuck in his hair, sipping the one black coffee no one else wanted.

“Welcome to Weaver & Sons,” Darren muttered beside him, his triple espresso in hand. “You’ll fit right in.”

And Simon, despite the chaos, despite the humiliation, couldn’t help but grin. Because in an office where survival depended on a sputtering, duct taped coffee machine, he knew one thing for certain: he’d never have a boring Tuesday again.