Creamy Topping

Oh! An internal memo! That’s good, because our computers are too slow to properly play episodes of MacGyver at CBS.com. While I can spend hours patting myself on the back for singlehandedly slowing down the system, there’s still lots of time to kill in the day. What better way then to turn all my efforts on what has become the Pie Chart Puzzle?

Here’s the memo:

Based on the coffee/tea usage numbers (see attached chart) the Sumatra Coffee and the Chai Tea selections supplied will be replaced with two (2) sustainable trade brand coffees and teas. There were two coffees and three teas that met the pricing point needed for the swap, and the lowest usage product of each one was selected. The sustainable trade coffee selection will be Kenyan Dawn, a medium aromatic full-bodied coffee. The sustainable trade tea selection will be Malawi Garden Tea, a flowery medium- to full-bodied tea. The sustainable trade products being introduced will support a cooperative of over 2,500 farmers in local communities where these products are grown. Purchases of these products go directly to the communities and positively affect the future for the local farmers and their families. While we regret not being able to carry the two products being replaced, the pricing points on the replacement products necessitate that two lesser used, but similarly priced products be dropped to support this move.

It’s really cool that we’re going to get two (2) sustainable trade brand coffees and single handedly save 2500 (2500) farmers (slaves). I’m a little concerned that these farmers are members of the notorious Kenyan Dawn movement. Or is Kenyan Dawn the name of the coffee? You, my dear readers, must decide: Terrorist organization running wild in the wilderness or sustainable coffee farmed by marked-for-death “farmer” types?

If I ran a terrorist organization, though, there are two things I would insist on: First, we’d be river pirates. Second, we’d be called Malawi Gardens. Not in honor of the tea in the memo, mind you. I’d pick the name because, man, land on Malawi Gardens when I have two hotels on it. I dare you. I’ll clean you out, bitch.

The real joy is the attached chart. Ready? Here it goes:

So, let’s review. The three flavors on that chart that seem to vie for the most attention are the ones which will be discontinued in favor of the free trade bullshit. One of the three will survive and, to spoil the game, we know which one: The Intense Dark Roast. Or “Rst,” which is Russian Standard Time.

Though the Intense Dark Roast is the second most expensive, it’s going to stick around. Instead, the cheaper Sumatra (which, by the way, tastes better) gets taken off the list.

We also get to see that the weird shit – Jasmine Green Tea and Blueberry Balance – are extraordinarily expensive. But judging from the violent defense of those flavors in today’s staff meeting, they’ve been wisely passed over.

Nobody is quite clear on what the numbers indicate. Yearly, I suppose. The percentage must be consumption. So nine percent of us are regularly sucking down that filthy Creamy Topping.

In theory, you’re supposed to use the Creamy Topping (ingredients unknown) to top off your coffee and make a cappuccino. What comes out is sticky white nastiness that sort of goes all Andromeda Strain on the coffee. If, indeed, it’s coffee that comes out of those goddamned bags. I know that the “Choco” is about as far from Chocolate as you can get. But, then, so is Hershey’s syrup, so I don’t know why I complain.

With Creamy Topping and Choco leading the way, though, do the Powers That Be really think staff can comprehend the idea of fancy coffee?

Apparently, the Kenyan Dawn coffee comes from the Ndumberi Estate, which went into bankruptcy and was liquidated in 2007. Flavia moved in shortly before the liquidation. While trying to figure out more of what, exactly, the scam is, I ran across a cute little article detailing the 100 beheadings that went on in the neighboring Ndumberi village last year. Perhaps that’s what you do to your accounting staff after you go out of business and get bought out by robber barons from the UK instant coffee industry? Or maybe that’s where Creamy Topping and Choco comes from – the ground up flesh and bones of Flavia Corporation’s slave laborers.

In the days before Flavia-sponsored mass beheadings, the estate was owned by a coffee company called Valentine, which spent much of the 90’s and early 2000’s killing all of the landholders and creating the massive coffee plantation that would later provide the “luxury” product soon to hit our breakroom. Originally, the land was owned by those local farmers. But since they’ve all been ground up, I don’t know how it works today. Maybe we’ll be supporting the 2500 abandoned tenements spread throughout the estate. For just pennies a day, you can feed the wild dogs and feral children who roam the estate – constantly dodging the unforgiving guns of the Flavia Security Patrol.