More Coffee Woes.

Remember that old coffee maker that I found up in the cabinet?



Well, it seems that the motto of the folks at Sunbeam is: "Waste not, want not."


See, this coffee maker has less than 3 feet of power cord. To plug it in, I have to set it atop the microwave oven, which makes the top of the reservoir stick up above the underside of the cabinets. I thus have to set it so that the front edge of it hangs out off the microwave. The other night, I was an hour into my shift when I decided to make a big pot, to last me all night. I loaded it full of water and ground beans, and turned it on.


Funny thing about this-- the coffee maker pushes hot water from the reservoir through the coffee grounds in the basket, and drips into the glass carafe that's sitting on the hot plate up front. In so doing, it moves about 3 pounds of water from the back of the light plastic machine to the front of it.

The front of it, which was on this occasion hanging out over the carpet, past the top of the microwave.


So there I was, cup in hand, eagerly awaiting the last drops to drip through the grounds, when the machine jumped off the microwave at me.


Well, that's how it seemed, anyway. The contraption was up at about shoulder height, and by the time it reached the end of its short little cord, it had dumped the entire full glass carafe of coffee onto me and the PD carpet, and had dumped hot, saturated coffee grounds out of the basket and all over my freshly-pressed uniform trousers. In an attempt to catch this monstrosity of plastic and aluminum, I managed to impart a second degree burn onto the outside edge of my left hand. The carafe hit a chair next to me, and shattered, demonstrating quite clearly how an airburst provides for much more devastation in a given bomb. Glass traveled more than 15 feet on carpet.


I had as complete a mess as I could imagine one could make with a simple device and four scoops of ground coffee.

And I still didn't have any coffee to drink while I cleaned up. Damn.