Coffee

After her first year of college, Herself signed up with a temp agency for summer employment. She was (and still is) proficient at routine office tasks, and was quickly assigned to a small company for two weeks.  After the first three days, the company called the temp agency and requested to have Herself stay for the entire summer.  And so she did.

On the whole, the other people in the office were pleasant and helpful.  There were various Characters:  the laboratory assistant with the slightly shady and sorrowful past; the productive, quiet mentor; the petulant and demanding superior; the 50-ish woman who was ineffectual yet had been with the company so long that no one could imagine letting her go; the twenty-somethings who were rumored to be conducting a clandestine relationship.

It was a decent working environment. Herself's desk was mercifully out of the way, and so she did not have to interact with any other individuals very much. She did her work, and when there was no work to be done, did her best to look busy. 

Eventually, it became apparent that the 50-ish woman was rather beholden to the petulant and demanding superior.  Perhaps it was he who kept her on at the company.  She catered to his whims, his tantrums, and his moods.  As the summer wore on, she began to attempt to teach Herself to similarly coddle the superior.  Herself resisted.

One day, the woman stated that Herself should prepare a cup of coffee every morning and deliver it to the superior's desk so that it would be waiting for him when he arrived.  Herself declined. A conversation along the following lines ensued:

Woman:  Do you have a boyfriend?
Herself:  I do.
Woman:  Wouldn't you make coffee for him?
Herself:  No.  He can make his own coffee.

Afterwards, the woman essentially left Herself alone for the remainder of the summer - apparently, Herself was appallingly feminist and untrainable. Herself continued to type, edit, file and perform all the necessary tasks to everyone else's satisfaction, and received praise for her work from both her mentor and the temp agency.  No one mentioned coffee. 

It was not so much the instruction to prepare the coffee that rankled Herself, as was the manner in which it was presented.  She did not work directly for the superior, and he had spoken to her only once or twice in passing.  If it had been part of a morning routine along with meeting and discussing the day's tasks, that would have seemed appropriate.  Even if they did not interact regularly, if he had asked Herself directly and politely, that would have been acceptable.  Without any such contact, however, Herself found the order to be strange and improper.

Ultimately what was more shocking to Herself -- besides the impropriety of the suggestion of treating a superior at work as equivalent to a boyfriend -- was the implication by the older woman that proper treatment of a boyfriend would include preparing and delivering coffee, sight unseen, on a daily basis.  She contemplated the matter during her down time at her desk.  To prepare coffee for a boyfriend seemed quite domestic, implying a commonality of daily life and an intimacy that Herself not only did not have with a boyfriend, but in which at the time she would have been uncomfortable participating.  No thank you.

Some twenty-five years later, Herself still does not make coffee; she does not know the necessary proportion of grounds to water for the coffeemaker.  She does not feel any need to learn.  Nevertheless, she understands that it is similar acts that are indeed tiny signs of caring for another person.  And so, she tries to facilitate the small comforts of daily life for those she loves:  she makes cookies; she pushes in the chairs and picks up the plates; she fetches a towel or a glass of water; she puts shoes away; she obtains preferred snack foods; she wrangles the laundry and provides an extra blanket; she tries hard to take care of all the little things, sight unseen.  It makes her happy to do so.

No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted. - Aesop