A challenge worthy of Solomon.

I love my job and my bosses, and I'm not just saying that in case they ever find this blog. I really do. They treat me great, they've hired lots of awesome people, and they seem to take a sincere interest in making us all happy.

While I heartily applaud their most recent morale booster, it also seems to have painted them into an interesting corner, and I'm curious to see how they get out.

The situation: The other day, the president invited us into the "diner" area to try out some gourmet coffee samples. They came from the amazing little one-cup coffee maker shown here. It's not life-changing brew, but it sure as hell beats the Yuban or whatever we had before.

The problem: Well, they haven't said whether we're keeping the coffee maker, but dozens of caffeine addicts have made their opinions clear and are shielding the machine like it's the dauphin in The Scarlet Pimpernel. (Too obscure? Maybe, but how often do I get to reference The Scarlet Pimpernel?)

The only comments I've squeezed out of an upper manager are: "We haven't decided yet" and "It's quite expensive."

Now, to be brutally honest, I could live without the thing. I'm sure most of us could. But man, it's nice having it around. It's the most popular addition to the office since Emily (as someone noted on the chalk board...not sure who...), so how does an exec pull it out of the diner now? Why let people try something great (our trial period is going on a week now), that you might yank from under them later?

Oh well. It's times like these I'm glad to be a grunt who doesn't have to risk a single-cup-fueled mutiny. As long as they keep the meat muffins coming every Friday, I'll stick around.