Coffee break

Since the pandemic started, I’ve taken to buying coffee online. I drink one cup per day, so the ludicrous price doesn’t seem so onerous. Most of the suppliers are relatively small, so I feel like I’m supporting small business, even if it is only once every couple of months.

The latest order went to an outfit called Black Rifle Coffee Company. First off, I could do without all the rah-rah militarizing of…coffee. (Don’t believe me, you can hunt them down.) Honestly—it’s like you’ve got to be Delta Force to be man enough to drink their stuff. I get enough of that in the tech world, where everyone competes to talk about how much coffee, and at what strength, they drink.

(Actually, BRCC was one of the recos I got from colleagues. I’m just going down the list.)

Second, I also loathe marketing blurbs that fling a lot of words at you, but don’t give you any useful information. I want coffee I can use for espresso. End of. But, no, I had to slog through pages and pages of he-man crap about throw weight and destructive capabilities.

I only persevered because it was a colleague’s reco.

Well, I eventually chose a type and placed my order back on 30 August. A few days later I received notification that my order had shipped.

That’s not unusual. The smaller companies don’t roast large batches so it can take a while for them to get round to your order. Usually I get the beans within a few days, even when they’re shipped ground.

However, at the weekend I clicked on the package tracker and blow me if it doesn’t tell me that my delivery is scheduled for…14 September.

Eleven days to get from Salt Lake City to Virginia. That's less than 200 miles per day. How do you do that? And no—this isn’t USPS, it’s FedEx. (So much for all the rah-rah about loving America.)

I paid $5.95 for shipping, on top of the $13.99 for a 12oz bag of coffee. And for that I get the slowest delivery of about anything not coming from a third world country?

Something this outfit seems to have forgot about Americans is that we don’t like being ripped off. And we don’t like crappy service. Y’all can take your patriotic guff and shove it right up your French press. I'm moving down my list.