Just a Theory

Hello friends,

As I've said before, as many of you might remember, every morning I take a walk with my lovely wife, along the harbor. It's very beautiful walk. I've shared pictures of it.

Always, either before or after the walk, we stop at our local coffee shop, talk to the people who are there, and get our morning caffeine fixed.

When we take an early walk before the cafe is open, I take the coffee home and start my day.

For the past month or so I've noticed a surprising trend. When I finish my coffee and I go to rinse out the to-go cup to put it in the recycling, I noticed there is still a quarter of an inch of coffee at the bottom.

And putting this together with the fact that I've also noticed that the coffee does not so easily spill out as I drink, I've realized a disturbing trend.

The little tiny air hole at the at the back of the lid has gotten smaller.

Okay I know this sounds weird but it's true.

And this is not at just my coffee house. I have found these minuscule holes in every cup of takeout coffee I've gotten in the last few weeks.

That includes Starbucks, the coffee lids at the conference I've been at in Las Vegas, and the coffee I got on the airplane.

I'm not quite sure if this is a conspiracy because I can't really figure out who would be benefiting from making a smaller hole in take-out container lids, but obviously something is going on here.

And I know, like all good conspiracies, it sounds crazy. But I'm telling you it's true.

Now I don't want to get into the whole “ you should use your own reusable coffee mug that's better for the environment.” I know and I am where that using takeout containers when I don't have to is bad.

But but I don't really have any other addictions. And, as a friend once said to me as she threw out an empty plastic water bottle, “ we need to leave something for the archaeologists to find in the future.'‘ It's hard to argue with science.

Before I sat down to dictate (because I left my laptop at home) this newsletter, I had to search the hotel room for something sharp enough to enlargen the air hole in my lid.

Eventually, I spied the tongs in the ice bucket. Those worked handily, and now I am enjoying my coffee.

The really odd thing about this is not the fact that some manufacturing oddity, such as a dulled stamp is running rampant across the container lid industry. It's that I spent several weeks thinking I was crazy because I was having a hard time drinking my coffee.

It really goes to show how subjective our perception of reality is. Until I realized that the stupid little hole in the lid was smaller, too small to let enough air in as I try to drink out of the business end, I thought there was something wrong with me.

These thoughts can spiral: should I make a doctor's appointment to see if my lungs are working properly? Has old age finally caught up with me? Is my jaw malformed?

As a software developer I deal with bugs all day long. Generally, there are two types of bugs. There are local bugs, and there are systemic bugs.

A local bug is when somebody has just made a silly mistake. For example, they use a plus sign instead of a minus sign and the value is wrong. Systemic bugs are actually easier to find, because everything is wrong. But until you look at everything, all bugs appear local.

It took me to get a coffee from another establishment to realize I was dealing with a system-wide issue.

I have now validated this ”too small hole” issue across a number of different stores for a significant amount of time, so I feel confident it's a systemic issue.

If you think about it, it could almost make sense. The minuscule amount of energy that could be saved by pressing the stamping machine a fraction of a millimeter less could add up to a fairly large number across the entire run of coffee container lids.

Everybody is trying to cut corners these days.

So now my coffee drinking habit has started to include the quest for some kind of device to widen the air hole in the lid before I start to enjoy my coffee.

One must adapt or die.

Happy reading, happy writing, happy sipping,

David