That moment at work in which I nick on the heap this tiny bit of greyish Holy Grail with a slightly hemmed edge, which contains my scalding hot coffee… That is the moment I am talking about. The one that heralds the beginning of a very, very long day.
One cannot say I burst out laughing at work. I don’t know about you, but I have tried everything to get through the morning. For a start, good mood goes hand in hand with five well creamed coffees crammed with their three sugar cubes each. And yet, this survival kit is as difficult to get as an all-inclusive Super Bowl pass. At 8 a.m. on the dot, before the drafting session, I still remember us lining up in front of the tiny coffee machine with our baleful looks. And already there, we had to barge our way through. From proving that a lack of caffeine makes us edgy to pretexting a staggering pressure drop. “Excuse me, can I go before you?” is a request that must have echoed more often in these premises than the favourite saying of hack writers, “we need a killer headline”. I don’t know about you, but in my case, from cockcrow, the lack (of caffeine) awakens my apathetic frame of mind, reprehensible in the workplace because it is impossible to stifle it without gulping a whole bag of dopaminergic placebos. Well, we won’t do you a Beigbeder trailer in his 99francs.
But I can assure you that, in the morning, I have forgiven everything. From the stench of after-shaves and rancid Chanel in the jam-packed train, to the people in a hurry bumping into you on the platform with their Freitag, to the deafening sounds of the open space and its non-identified reeks. So when I finally arrive at my workplace, one must not deprive me of five or six soft paper cups which enable my brain dazed by topicality to overcome this dreadful perspective of slogging for ten years, staring on the same flickering screen, with the fingers stuck on the same scruffy keyboard.
Thus, when a panel of creative people (these individuals who colour the tiniest part of my achromatic everyday life in 150X100 cm), has the idea of giving back to my good mood its spontaneity having already expired (at the age for work on-site), I applaud. Finally a hint of imagination! Imagination is a partner of reliable work, trust me on that!
Paper cups printed with mischievous skits on the goblet side make me laugh and relax. I want schoolboy humour for breakfast. Banters as a screen saver. Blarneys at the cafeteria. Viral ads which pop carambar jokes on the Euronews website. Besides, I am certain that six google employees, treated as buddies by their punchy boss are more productive than fifteen rigorous labourers. Hence, I welcome the initiative of the Etienne&Etienne agency, which, in view of their visuals’ success, has set up a contest in which enthusiasts of the small black (well yes, it is its french nickname) send their jokes revolving around the theme of coffee. Dear friendly readers, please forward us your words and drawings! My mood depends on you! As from thy spirit I shall guffaw! So that I could be hell-bent with laughter before the precious tumblers.
Creative souls, may the FARCE be with you! I would then move on more harmoniously from the breakfast world and its traditional decoding of inscriptions on the back of my corn-flakes box to the decoding of dispatches on my tea mug.
Meanwhile, I leave you to it, there is a capsule eying me up and I can’t ignore it.
PS: Message to all start-up engineers capable of building an exploitable eight facets coffee machine: get in touch with me!
- Check Etienne&Etienne website and send your skits to blagues@trottet.ch
