From dog walking to church services – we need a coffee

A question that first appeared on TikTok, posted by a woman expressing her dismay at young applicants showing up at her office with a takeaway drink, has sparked debate around the world.

There must be no discussion about this – of course it is not acceptable. It’s sloppy, it’s rude and it’s just plain wrong. If I was hiring staff and someone walked in with a coffee, I would sign them off immediately. If you can’t spend half an hour without coffee in hand, it’s not a good sign.

But that is not the subject of this column. Furore simply made me wonder why the world is so obsessed with this drink.

I walked past a sports field the other day where half the people watching on the sidelines were munching on takeaway coffee.

I traveled on a train last week, saw many passengers with takeaway coffee.

And I shook my head in disbelief while reading online about churchgoers asking if it’s okay to carry coffee in services.

Often, when I’m travelling, I’ll see people rushing around, a mobile phone in one hand and a take-away drink – most likely coffee – in the other. Some walk dogs while eating. I often wonder what would happen if they fell.

I don’t know why people don’t just hook up to a drop.

Railway stations, in particular, are a hot bed of coffee pleasure. At mainline stations there are not only a few coffee stands in the main hall, but also on individual platforms.

Small shops now sell take-away coffee, as do petrol stations – do people drink and drive? Surely this affects concentration?

Younger generations simply cannot function without it – and they are ridiculously picky. Not for them the instant coffee of my youth – Gold Blend or Mellow Birds. They splash out large sums on fancy coffee machines.

Many people have expensive coffee machines. Photo: Pixabay

Many workplaces now have expensive machines, not like in my day – some granules in a cheap plastic cup that we filled with hot water.

When I was young, cafes sold coffee or tea, one or the other. It was delivered in a small cup with a saucer into which it would hit. Now the average cup is five times the size, and there is a bewildering array of coffees, from Americano to espresso, latte and cappuccino.

The first time I heard of a coffee other than plain coffee was in the mid-1990s in the US sitcom Frasier, when the character Niles ordered strange-sounding concoctions in his local cafe, which is memorably “double decaf, non-fat latte, medium foam, with just the faintest whisper of cinnamon dusted.” The show was played in Seattle, where the first Starbucks opened in 1971.

Now there are such establishments on every street in every town and city center across the UK. We – that’s not including me, I hate the drink – are obsessed with coffee. People must have bladders the size of reservoirs.

If, as the media constantly speculates, the Russians are looking for ways to incapacitate us, they don’t need to target submarine cables or oil pipelines, all they have to do is disrupt the supply chain for coffee beans.

A society with coffee, but a new thing in this country. We have, in fact, come full circle – in 17th and 18th century England, coffee houses were common, serving as social places where men would meet for conversation and trade.

The drink was described as thick, hot and unpleasant, but with a pleasant aftertaste.

One thing is certain, not a drop would leave the premises. You wouldn’t see Georgians dying in horse-drawn carriages hanging pots of stuff.