Heh, when I was in the Navy, every shop on the ship had their own “Coffee Mess” and would get a five gallon tin of coffee issued to them each month.
I didn’t drink coffee then, but I sure loved the smell of it when they cracked that tin open...that smelled great.
The problem was, that the way coffee smelled, and the way it tasted were completely different to me. Plus, I was concerned I would get addicted. I didn’t drink coffee on a daily basis until I was sixty or so, then I absolutely had to have one cup each day or I couldn’t get going.
But back then, I didn’t drink it, though nearly everyone else did. And we had a wooden board with hooks on it where people hung their cups. And they assigned people to clean the coffee mess area each week and make coffee.
When they assigned me, I didn’t want to do it, I didn’t even know how to make coffee, and I didn’t drink it, but they forced me to do it. I was so angry and resentful about it, that I made sure it was ship-shape Bristol style every day, and when I hung up the coffee cups, I found them revolting. The accumulated scum in them was nauseating. So I cleaned them.
I cleaned them with the spray cleaner we used to clean oil and hydraulic fluid off of planes. It took that coffee cup-scum right off, down to the porcelain.
People were pissed about it, not because I had used a nasty chemical to clean them, but because (not being a coffee drinker, I wouldn’t have known) many people actually like their nasty coffee cup to have that unsightly residue, and they were pissed I set them back to their pristine state!
Well, I never had to do Coffee Mess Duty again! In retospect, I consider myself lucky they didn’t lynch me or keel-haul me! (And, on an aircraft carrier, keel-hauling is a serious business!)
Great story. We both had early lessons on how to direct our anger.
Same thing happened to me in the Air Force. I wasn't upset about it. I told them I didn't drink it, and thus knew nothing about brewing it. We had one of those big percolator machines that had the big metal basket for grounds at the top. Well, it held a lot of water, so I figured the coffee basket was supposed to be filled to the top. They didn't ask me to make coffee anymore.
The coffee urn in my ship's First Division main deck gear locker had a sign on the bulkhead: HE WHO TAKETH THE LAST CUP MAKETH ANOTHER POT.