The day the coffee machine exploded
Some time ago, Microsoft began installing
Starbucks coffee makers
in the kitchens,
and caffeine addicts waited anxiously
for the machines to reach their building.
Or at least that's what happened on the main Redmond campus.
But what about the satellite offices?
I'm told that each satellite office qualified for an iCup machine
when the number of employees at the office reached some magic value.
One of my colleagues who works at the office in New York City told me
that they eagerly awaited the arrival of the machine when they
learned that they reached that threshold.
The long-anticipated day arrived:
The coffee machine was installed in the kitchen.
And it exploded.
Okay, it didn't really explode.
But the receptacle for holding the spent grounds overflowed and burst,
spilling its guts out onto the kitchen floor.
If you didn't know what happened, you'd have thought it had exploded.
The reason it exploded was that, although the New York office
is rather small, it does have a very high number of visitors.
As you can imagine,
clients pay visits to the New York offices
for meetings, presentations, all that stuff that clients visit
offices for;
but the underlying algorithm for determining how many coffee machines
each office receives doesn't take into account
how many visitors each location receives.
Oh, and happy Guy Fawkes Day.
Try not to blow up any coffee machines.
