"You see, Watson, but you do not observe."

One for Sherlock Holmes.

What do you make of this?

At the convenience market where I routinely buy my morning coffee there are usually four pots cooking on the hot plate---three pots with black handles full of regular, and one with an orange handle for decaf.

Sometimes, though, like yesterday, there are two pots with black handles and two with orange.

This morning they were back to the usual arrangement of three and one.

Comments

[coturnix]

Hmmmmm, they had regular coffee in one of the decaf pots, as all the others were dirty and in the dishwasher.

Or, the new employee likes decaf. (S)he worked yesterday for the first time and was promptly fired.

Or, a person who does not usually fix coffee had to do it yesterday and made a mistake.

Or, whatever...but beware of the colored band...

[blue girl]

They do it secretly just because of you.

They like to observe you observing that.

Don't doubt it...it's true.

[Greg]

They WERE all black when the clerk brewed them. Your very observation turned 2 of the handles orange.
Jeez, Lance... everyone knows that!

[Jennifer]

Having worked in a Starbuck's back when there were only 4 in Chicago (I think they still had horse-drawn carriages way back then!), I would say that the color means nothing other than what pot was available at a given time. The contents may have some relation to the pot, but most likely it does not. Granted, Starbucks did not use the orange/black pot method, but I know on many a busy morning, the client got whatever shot was pulled... it could have been decaf or fully loaded. I tried to keep it honest just in case someone had a true medical reason for no caffeine.

Other than that, I like the Heraclitus theory. Your mere observation changed them.

[NeddieJingo]

What you need to do, Lance, is note the number of orange and black handles each day for a month or two, see if any PATTERNS emerge. Morse code, perhaps. Ogham script. Binary code. Could be anything. Write the patterns down in a secret notebook and then eat the pages, so they can't be intercepted. Sit in your car in the parking lot with binoculars, note who comes in at what times of day, who's decaf and who's high octane. Buttonhole store employees about it on their smoke break. Ask 'em point-blank, see if anybody gets shifty-eyed and evasive.

But you know damned well they'll lie their heads off. Easily, with the practiced assurance of somebody who's Had the Training, who does this every day, who Knows What The Game's All About....

How do you prove a negative? It's aaaaaall conjecture. All purest speculation. You can't follow everybody home from that shop and look in their windows and catch 'em in their little charade. Somebody will talk, somebody will Alert the Authorities, which is of course the Kiss of Sweet Death in this line of work....

Join us, Lance.... Join us!

[Jennifer]

Oops. I think I meant the Heisenberg theory not the Heraclitus theory that is unless you plan on stepping into the same pot of coffee twice!

[Linkmeister]

Check that ostensibly decaf pot for Five Orange Pips.

[Chrys]

I refuse to believe that the store would use an "decaf" pot for regular coffee. That's just WRONG! For some reason, they just had 2 pots of decaf on the burners yesterday morning.

Now to completely bore you, here's why a decaf pot had orange handles...

At a restaurant, you know the decaf pot; it has that orange handle. But why orange?

Of course, the natural answer is that it's a good visual aid for the bleary-eyed among us awaiting our first morning's cuppa joe; if the server approaches with an orange pot, we can snatch our cups out of the way and ask for the real thing. But there's more to the story of how orange become the universal sign of coffee "lite."

It harks back to 1923, when General Foods introduced Sanka, the first decaffeinated coffee (the name Sanka was derived from the French word sans, meaning "without," and the first syllable of "caffeine"). The brand bore a distinctive orange label, as did the instant version that was introduced in 1932. To promote the brand, General Foods provided coffee shops, diners and restaurants with distinctive orange-handled pots in which to serve its naturally decaffeinated brew. By the time other brands introduced decaf versions of their own coffee, the orange pot had become synonymous with "no caffeine," and the tradition continues today.

Now you're sorry you even brought this up, right?

[blue girl]

Oh my God, Jeddie -- you gave up WAY too much information over the Internets.

They are watching. They are reading.

Did you not memorize Page 14.bej of Section FF.88 in the third and most top secret edition of the, ahem, *Handbook?*

Through intense observation, Mannion will learn on his own. He'll learn enough to know what to do next.

Duh!

[Tom]

That dang-fool convenience store clerk thought he'd "encourage" the regulars to switch to decaf, or at least half-caf, and what happened was, you know Jed Green, you went to school with all his cousins, you even dated one of them, well anyway, he was out driving the salt truck and a deer run out in front of him, and if he'd been just a half a second faster on the brakes, if he hadn't had to settle for decaf... They had to cut that sumbich in half to get him out of the truck, and now he's on the life support with tubes running out all over him, poor sumbich, just half a man, right down the middle, and him with his wives pregnant(that's right, I said wives plural, and what of it? They're Siamese twins, can't cut them in half, no sir, and anyway only one of em is pregnant, I think, I'm pretty sure that the wife's woman-parts doctor said that they've got two uteruses, or is that uteri? I never can get my Latin plurals right). All because some numbskull shop clerk read on the Internet that Americans are too dependent on caffeine.

That goddang Internet, it'll kill ya, I tell you what.

[Exiled in NJ]

Lance, Lance. Observe of the mystery of the pot that did not bark in the night. If we eliminate all the things it can possibly be, what is left is the answer. So pour yourself a bowl of dregs, use Intelligent Design and start over.

[Matt]

The pot handles, my good friend, skim only the surface of this conundrum. To get to the heart of the matter, it is to the arrangement of the Tastykakes that one must look.

[blue girl]

Yes Matt -- you are correct. Wiser words have never, EVER! been uttered.

[coturnix]

Dunno. I'll have to ask my smarter brother (who eerily resembles Marty Feldman).

[Exiled in NJ]

Tastykakes? They disappear somewhere just north of Sloatsburg, don't they?

Whatever you do, avoid the Moors at night.

[coturnix]

Was the waitress a redhead?

[DuWayne]

Dear gods, coffee from a convenience store!!! What barbary have you, to drive you to that. The best way to get coffee is to make it at home - do you drive to the store? Don't you realize how hazerdous that is?

Before I moved to Portland (odd I have yet to find green beans here) I roasted my morning beans the night before so they could de-gas, ground them after my water boiled, let the water sit for five-seven minutes (however long it takes me to dress) then pour the (distilled) water through my cone filter. Now I am stuck with coffee from a shop that sells coffee beans marked with the date roasted. I get it the day it's roasted (I got a deal going with the employees) but by the third day it's getting a little stale. I havbe to go to this place three times a week - it's not too bad because they also have great loose leaf tea and my 3yrold son loves it (and they love him thank gods) but by the third day I feel quite the barbarian with my stale lame coffee. But I may have a lead on a place that will sell me green bean so I may get back into the land of truly great coffee every morning.

All in all if you do drive to get your morning coffee, I hope your especialy carefull. You could use your hazards to let folks know soemthings not quite right. . .

[Lance]

DuWayne,

You're torturing me. It's still 1978 here in Mayberry. Good coffee is as unknown as cell phone reception. The video store rents 20 tapes to 1 DVD.

But don't worry. I walk to the store, don't drive. So I'm not a menace to traffic.