Why are offices using k cups? Sounds both extremely wasteful and expensive.
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
97 points (86.5% liked)
Showerthoughts
34423 readers
1140 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
They took our coffee maker away and put one of those Keurig and everyone in my team complained and got real snarky with leadership until we got our old coffee maker back.
So wasteful.
As someone who used to take care of office supplies (I was in accounting, btw) because everyone in the office is lazy and doesn't wanna deal with complex things like grounds and filters.
Interesting. As a consultant I've worked in several different offices, but here in Norway I've never seen anything but either filter coffe or automated bean to cup machines. The staff in all those places have also been pretty good at maintaining the machines.
Ours orders the bags that are filters. Like big teabags.
Because depending the culture of your employees, the pot never gets emptied, grows mold, and filters get reused for that unique taste. No matter how many beatings are given to employees, they will continue these bad habits even when you terminate half your staff for this. In fact, some pride themselves of drinking out of a pot that has a disgusting mountain of old grinds at the bottom of it.
Instead of spending the time to constantly deal with this, the inconvenience is now they didn't throw the cup away or it's empty. Production is up again and moral is improved by 2%.
Just didn't really occur to me that this is an issue. The offices I've worked in here in Norway, most people just do their part to keep the coffee machines orderly and clean. We had mold once when we forgot to empty the filter before the Christmas holiday, but first person in the office emptied it, cleaned the filter holder, left it in a mix of water and vinegar to kill whatever was left, and a couple of hours later (9 o'clock ish) we were brewing coffee again.
Their way is optimal. If you remove the old k cup while putting in the next k cup, you open and close the machine half as many times. This reduces wear and tear while forcibly obligating each user to remove exactly one k cup per use.
Take your cup out and leave the lid open so it has a chance to properly dry and doesn't accidentally a mildew situation
I'm so glad I don't drink coffee...
Mjam, leave it in there for the weekend to ripen!
I remember a seldom used office coffee machine that everyone complained made the coffee taste "funny", they got the message about the necessary cleaning after maggots started crawling out. 🤢🤮
Mhhh...Protein :p
Also, the k cup is slightly hot immediately after use.
It won't burn you but it can be unpleasant.
I have the same policy with public toilets. If you flush at the start to verify that it's working and flush at the end then it's double the flushes. That's why I only flush at the start. All my coworkers complain, but they're not concerned with the environment like me! So wasteful!
I still don’t understand why people love K cups so much. They make the coffee taste like plastic. I can’t stand them.
even the inventor was taken back by the waste of it all. Him and the guy who started bitcoin I think are the inventors with the most regrets.
I think that prize still goes to Alfred Nobel
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
This is the guy with the most regrets. He put lead into gasoline and is responsible for CfC coolants that depleted the ozone layer. He also developed a device to grant him a greater degree of mobility when bedridden which unintentionally killed him.
While I agree he had a massive negative impact on the world, I don’t read any remorse in that biography, instead even after he personally got sick from lead poisoning and recovered, he still pushed for leaded gas. He just sucks
It was dynamite right. Honestly I don't see him as having as much regrets. As sucky as the war usages were it still helped in building and mining and such.
He literally regretted his invention so badly he founded the Nobel prize
load more comments
(55 replies)
They taste like cheap instant coffee
Is it the used item after a single-use, or the entire bin after several uses?
For the single-use, it actually kind of makes sense not to take it out. There are 2 possibilities when you go to the machine: it either has a used capsule, or it's empty. If you're the type of person that wants to throw away the used capsule each time you make a coffee, then you potentially need to throw away 2 capsules each time you make a coffee. Someone else's when you get there, and your own after making coffee. If you never throw away your own capsule, then you guarantee that you will only ever have to throw away max one capsule when you get to the machine, and so does everyone else after you (assuming they do the same).
And if you murder everyone who leaves the capsule in, eventually the problem completely solves itself!
As for the bin, that's a diff story, and I guess someone just needs to bite the bullet and empty it.
I vote for the murder option. People need to start conducting themselves better. We live in a society. Same goes for the ones leaving their cart out in the lot.
What is a K cup?
What Keurig calls their disposable 1 time use coffee containers. I also hate them just in principal
I'm not sure that's a thing in Europe, at least I never heard about that company. I only know these Nestlé trash
you absolutely have nespresso in Europe though
Which is Nestlé, right? ;)
load more comments
(2 replies)
As someone who has never worked in an office, this sentence is so weird to me
it fucking sucks when the pot is empty, so if you kill the joe, you make some mo'
I simply fire them if they do that.
The problem is that I work in Home Office exclusively....
People are trash.
We have a communal package area for resident and admin packages. Sales will literally open their shit in drop off and leave the open box in the area.
Started breaking them down and leaving them outside their offices. Fuck em.
I'd be such a cunt and leave a k cup on a shitheads desk but how would you know?
I'm siding with team leave it in.
Take one out, put yours in.
Everybody removes one pod. Fair and balanced as all things should be.
I’m going to set aside my dislike for pod machines and coffee in general to point out that warm moist environments encourage microbial growth. It is best to open and empty the machine so it can breathe between uses; especially overnight or over the weekend.
You're the kind of person who parks all the way on the passenger side of a parking spot, aren't you?
This guy, I bet he even reclines in his airplane seat.
view more: next ›