Drinking At Work

a scientific ranking of what's good

Hi bb! Do you work in an office? Have you ever?

I ask because I’m sitting on my front porch in a flowered caftan, coffee cup on a nearby ledge, and I’m thinking about work beverages. I mean, yes, I have coffee here, but boy would a shatteringly cold lemon La Croix hit the spot right now. If I had one, I could alternate sips of coffee and fizzy water, and I am pretty sure that that would be the thing that sends my productivity into overdrive. In fact, I’m positive. That’s what would do it for me.

It’s not the work I’m struggling with; I just need another beverage option. You know?

Now, as someone who’s spent more than 15 years as a corporate copywriter and editor, working dozens of in-person contract jobs under just-discernibly-flickering fluorescent lights in dozens of corporate settings, I feel that remote work is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me.

Truly. What a positive change it’s been. I’m home by myself now. I don’t have to wear huge noise-cancelling headphones all day to block out salesguys named Doug yell-talking into their headsets all day. I don’t have to quickly make up fake answers to questions—posed to me in darkened office kitchens at 7:05 in the morning—about how I spent my weekend. These days, I almost never have to keep my face neutral as a coworker holds me hostage at my desk for 40 real-time minutes, explaining why the competitive travel dance team their six-year-old is enrolled in has been so exhausting but is really the best decision for her future.

Almost never, anymore.

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But I do miss the work beverages. I don’t know how things are outside of Corporate America, but in nearly every office I’ve ever worked in, there has been a selection of free drinks. In some places, it’s just bad, burnt-tasting coffee and water, but at other companies, it’s been entire walls—set up with glass-fronted refrigerators, the way gas stations do it—of free drinks.

We corporate workers are, of course, grateful for any freebies of any kind, but we are also ungrateful wretches who know that the “freebies” are not really free; they’re designed to keep us at work longer and are there in lieu of “perks” like “better pay.”

So, once you get used to them, there is a natural hierarchy of work beverages. And I guess??? the hierarchy is personal to every office worker, but also some of the work beverages are good and some are bad. That’s just science, baby!

Today, we’ll be ranking work beverages—the drinks you drink on the job—from worst to best.

Here is my formal ranking:

Water From the Cooler

So boring. SO BORING!!! Yes we all have our reusable water bottles and yes we know we need to drink water but godDAMN, we’re already at work, why do we also have to be working on our hydration??? WHY IS EVERYTHING A JOB.

The only time water from the cooler is even mildly diverting is if you forgot your water bottle and then you get to use the tiny paper cups on the side of the cooler. This makes the water taste pleasantly of paper, and also it is interesting to drink from a little and novel container made of something that is patently not designed to hold liquid.

Other than that, could we please have fun for even a second in the life sentence that is staying gainfully employed under late-stage capitalism???? Get healthfully hydrated on your own time, fuck!!!

Coffee Made in the Kitchen at Work

Whether it’s days-old, charred-tasting dark roast from a communal airpot that has never once been washed or a “donut shop blend” Keurig cup sputtering jerkily into the mug you brought from home, coffee made in the kitchen at work is horrible.

Either almost-black, thick, and bitter, or so pale it’s translucently brown and could pass for tea, free work coffee from the breakroom is the worst kind of coffee available. Guaranteed to give you heartburn, this coffee can, unbelievably, be made worse by stirring in:

1. A single-serving tub of CoffeeMate French Vanilla, thus turning your coffee grey and also tooth-crackingly sweet with chemicals;

2. Dairy-free powdered creamer, a substance so appalling that just mentioning it is like summoning a demon.

There is, however, one specific instance in which coffee made in the kitchen at work can go from zero to 100, and that is…

… when the only reason you’re getting coffee in the kitchen is so you can look like you have a reason to be standing in a corner with your favorite bitchy coworker, whispering fiercely about what one of your mutual office enemies has done this time, and then straightening up with your mugs and talking loudly about a work-related topic when someone else comes into the kitchen.

That’s the only way coffee from the kitchen at work can be good. I don’t make the rules!!!

Regular Soda

If your workplace offers free regular soda, like full-sugar cans of actual soda, let me ask you this: Have you ever seen anyone drink it?

I haven’t. Not really. I did once have a coworker who always had an open, condensation-beaded, full-blooded can of Coke going on his desk, even if you walked by at 8 AM, but he got fired. I’m not saying those two things are connected, but maybe have a look at the expiration date before you drink a can of regular soda in an office, is all I’m saying.

Coffee Made At Home Specifically For Your Commute

Delicious! Incredible! Just the way you like it!

Except it’s undrinkable. Even though this coffee, made specifically for you, is delicious, it cannot be fully imbibed and enjoyed on your commute if there is any chance you might be in an unpredictable traffic situation. Or if you’ll be on a train for more than 30 minutes.

You’ll shit your pants.

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Seltzer (Unapproved Brands)

Fun as a novelty but vile after you’ve tried whatever new (and pretty bad) flavor they’ve come up with this time, your personally unapproved brands of seltzer will forever remind you of being imprisoned at work with nothing but a lightly flavored haze of chemicals on your tongue to distract you. Everyone’s list is different, but my list of unapproved seltzer brands is:

• Bubly

• Waterloo

• Nixie

• Spindrift

and that’s because I’ve spent years of my life sitting around conference room tables in body-shape-concealing cardigans, gripping cans of lime-flavored Bubly, sipping and nodding while managers who have no real concept of how work gets done on a granular level suggest “fun” new projects that will take me months to complete.

It’s not Bubly’s fault, but offices love to stock these and I can never really forget how the whole experience tastes.

Poppi or Bubblr

Does your office stock one of these brands? FUCKING RUN, BABE, you are working in a startup that feasts on the flesh of Gen Z workers and YOU ARE BEING UNDERPAID.

What are you trading the waking hours of your young life for??? It is not normal for anyone you work with to text you after 6 PM on a weekday, it is not normal for leadership to expect a quick-turnaround response to an email they sent on a Saturday, and if your company is aware of and stocking the trendy brands of beverages their youngest workers like, they don’t want your hard work and dedication; they want your blood.

Hot tip: Poppi is delicious but also there are companies out there with such good work-life balance that you’ll get hauled into your boss’s office for answering a single email on vacation; they’re harder to find but they exist and I’ve worked for several of them!!

Diet Coke

At last, at last. We’ve arrived. Nothing—NOTHING—hits harder at 2 PM in the office than the ice-cold, ultra crispy *crack* of a can of Diet Coke being opened.

The silver bullet. The antidote to mid-afternoon doldrums. The sheer naughtiness of drinking a chemical beverage you know is terrible for you but also crave endlessly. The eye-watering, caffeinated sting of it all.

I recently saw someone in a video refer to Diet Coke as their “fridge cigarette” and thank you very much, that’s the only thing I’m calling it from now on!!!

Can only. For no reason I can figure out, Diet Coke in plastic bottles is disgusting.

A $7 Coffee or Tea You Left Your Desk to Go Get

Wow. Wow.

The definition of a “little treat”, I challenge you to find ANYTHING that you want more than a $7 coffee or tea you left work in the middle of the day to go get.

Maybe you went alone, to get away from coworkers stopping by your desk all morning to say, “Oh, did you get your hair cut?” after you did, indeed, get your hair cut.

Maybe (and more likely) you swung by the desk of your Work Wife (ungendered) before you headed out to the coffee shop, whispering, “Get your shit, I just heard why Constance really got fired and it’s not what you think”, your mouth barely moving, your eyes darting around the room.

A $7 coffee or tea you left your desk to go get is expensive, yes, but what price taking half an hour away from “just circling back!” emails and possibly exchanging scalding hot gossip that is so hyper-specific to your career interests that no one else, including your own partner at home, could possibly understand????

Seltzer (Approved Brands)

WHAT IS IN THESE.

What are “natural flavors”?? I know a couple years ago there were some scare-tactic articles going around that said La Croix was bad for you, but has anyone ever really investigated since?? Would I even care if they had?? HOOK ME UP TO AN IV OF LA CROIX, FULLY 80% OF MY BODY WEIGHT IS NATURAL FLAVORS, LET THE ENAMEL PEEL OFF MY TEETH IN SHEETS!!!

The preferred beverage of most employees in every office I’ve ever worked in, La Croix is so superior to all other seltzer brands (except Polar, which is also excellent) that I was once witness to a minor riot at a company when the power-hungry office manager tried to swap La Croix out with something cheaper.

Within days, we were clutching cans of Pamplemousse in our sweaty palms again, and she had learned a little lesson about sending company-wide emails if you don’t want company-wide replies.

Did I miss any, bb? I just remembered that my current office also stocks a purplish flavor of Vitamin Water, but I can’t even look at that stuff without remembering how it feels to be 21 and convinced that Vitamin Water is good for me, i.e. I’ll puke!!