Caution: The Beverage You’re About to Enjoy is Extremely Hot!

“What? 180 degrees? How can you serve that water? 90 degrees is boiling, that’s absurd!”

Synopsis:
       While working up in the cafe on a usual day, dealing with all sorts of assholes, a particular couple had walked up to me and requested two drinks. Yet when the man asked for his tea, he made it a point that I gave him the hottest water we had. After fulfilling his request, the man disregarded my warning of how hot the water is, and well you can guess what happened next...







An excerpt from: Caution: The Beverage You’re About to Enjoy is Extremely Hot!

It was then that a couple, an older man in his 60’s and his wife, a similar age, had come up to the café, and placed their belongings down at a table on the far left side of the café. They rummaged around the bags of books they had bought, took out a few to read, and became settled. It was only a short amount of time until this couple stood up, and walked up to my register.

After glazing their eyes over the pastry case, seeming to not be so enthralled at the choices, they moved their glare to the drink menu above my head. I gave them some time to think about what they would like, and then walked up to the register and said,

“Hi how are you guys? How can I help you?”

They disregarded my greeting, said nothing, and continued with a dead stare at the menu above. I stood there for a few more seconds, until the man had spoken.

“I want a large tea, a hot tea not iced. Oh, and unsweetened as well.”

I replied, “Ok sir, well we have a large variety of steeped teas, we have two types of green tea, a pomegran-“

“Just black tea.” He interrupted.

“Fucking asshole” I thought, yet I said “Ok” as I started to take out the canister of tea bags and remove two for the large drink. “What can I get for you ma’am?” I asked.

“Just a small coffee with room for cream.” She replied.

“Sure thing” I replied. “Anything else I can get for you today?”

“Yeah” the man said, “Make sure my water is from that machine, I want it really hot, not from the canteen.”

You see we had two different types of hot water we were able to use for hot teas. One of them was a canteen we filled with hot water from the coffee machine that we would just run hot water through, and this was moderately hot; many customers preferred this temperature. The other was hot water directly out of our espresso machine. This water was extremely hot, as it is used to provide the steam that powers our milk steamer for lattes.

I warned the man that the water out of the machine is extremely hot, yet he insisted. I poured a cup of coffee for the woman, and then filled up the cup with two tea black tea bags and the hot water from the machine. I handed the cup to the man and said,

“Here you go sir, just let it steep for a few minutes first, the water is scorching hot. I put an extra cardboard sleeve on the cup to help with the heat.”

The man took offense to my advice and said, “I’ve been drinking teas for years kid, I know what the hell I’m doing.”

This had pissed me off quite a bit, because I had been nice enough to place an extra sleeve on the cup, and warn him about the temperature again, yet this fucking asshole tells me he’s the god damn tea master. 

“Good I hope you fucking burn yourself” I thought to myself.

As the man lifted up his cup, he left both cardboard sleeves on the counter top and took the cup in his hand without anything else protecting it, as if to say, “Go fuck yourself with your advice, I’m man enough to handle the heat.” The ass hole didn’t even throw them out; he just left them there in front of me.

I took the sleeves and threw them away, as I walked into the back kitchen to get some things out of the freezer. When I returned from the kitchen and walked back out to the bar counter, there stood the man, holding his limp hand up with his other, like a child that had just gotten hurt.

I walked over to him and asked, “What seems to be the problem?” I was looking at his hand now, which started to become spotty with red dots forming.

“Well the cup was so hot in my hand that I dropped it, and it spilt all over this hand.” He said as he was pointing to his injured hand.

Oh the fucking irony I thought. After telling this man multiple times about the water being extremely hot, and even placing an extra sleeve on the cup, this man practically spit in my face, and then proceeded to be burned by this hot water I had warned him about. I love karma, because it’s a fucking bitch.

I looked at his hand and had wanted to laugh, because this was exactly what I had hoped for, yet I stayed serious and said, “Seems to be a bit of a burn there. You should have kept those sleeves I had put on there.”

“What sleeves? I don’t see any on my cup.” He said as he looked back at his cup on the table where his wife sat looking concerned.

“Sir, I had placed not one, but two sleeves on your cup, and even warned you of how hot the water was, yet when you lifted your cup, you let both sleeves fall off and then continued to your table.”

He was trying to play stupid with me, and I wasn’t fucking playing around.

“I don’t remember seeing them” he replied.

“They were on your cup, trust me” I said.

The man’s wife had gotten up and started walking toward us. When she arrived she said, “Why is that water so hot?”

I had wanted to laugh because this is specifically what this man requested, and now it’s the machines fault?

“The water is that hot because the machine uses the steam produced from it to run the steamer wand you see there for steaming milk.” I said as I pointed over to the machine. 

“Well how hot is that water?” she asked.

Mind you her husband is standing silent with his hand limp; he went from trying to be badass in one moment, to becoming the biggest bitch I’d ever seen. I walked over to the espresso machine, grabbed a cup, filled it with the same water, and placed a thermometer in the cup. After a couple of seconds, the needle rose to approximately 180 degrees Fahrenheit.

“The water is around 180 degrees Fahrenheit ma’am.” I said looking at the needle.

She seemed baffled by this news and nervously replied, “What? 180 degrees? How can you serve that water? 90 degrees is boiling, that’s absurd!”

I started to laugh, being a chemistry major; I wanted to instill some knowledge into this woman which I had thought was common sense.

“Ma’am water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit. If water boiled at 90 degrees, the world would certainly be in a bit of trouble.” I said.

“I meant Celsius.”

I laughed, “Sorry, still 10 degrees off, water boils at 100 degrees Celsius.”

She paused. That shut her the fuck up for a few seconds.