Has your employer, perhaps done like mine did a couple of months ago, decided that the tanking economy was a good excuse to stop supplying Free Coffee for everyone (except the office boffins, of course… what’s good for the goose is NOT good for the gander in this case).

For the record it was running around $500 a month for coffee and the supplies every month for around 225 employees (actually a VERY cheap price for that many people according to a friend of mine in the business… he said normally it would run about 3 times that) since almost everyone is gone from the base driving they “might” have gotten one cup in the morning before they left but most everyone subsists on what they can find in the field.

Granted the 60 drivers at the sub-location I work out of   had more access and tended to drink a lot but still everyone was very unhappy when they stopped providing it… even though we supplied out own coffeemaker and all the drivers chipped in to make sure we had plenty of sugar and creamer. The lady in charge at the main base seemed to be under the impression that two handfuls of sugar packets was more than sufficient for 60 people for a week.

Surprisingly after the company stopped the service our Union stepped in and is subsidizing part of the cost for my work location… smart thinking.

So a lot of us, even before that, had the habit of carrying a thermos (I keep mine filled with iced tea usually).

Despite the high initial outlay (about $35, check out all the offerings at www.thermos.com and look at the stainless steel food carrier bottles as well… indestructible and worth the money) for a good Stainless Steel 1 liter bottle I saved that back in less than a month. If I stopped at the local Seven-Eleven and got a large coffee I would have paid for the bottle in less than three weeks. And the Seven-Eleven would let me refill the thermos for the cost of a large cup… but the thermos holds twice what a large cup holds… so three guesses where their biggest expense is… Yes the cups and supplies… not the coffee itself.

As it is, I make tea or coffee at home and the cost is way less even when buying top quality tea of coffee… not to mention I’m not wasting all the Styrofoam cups and lids, stacks of napkins, all the little plastic creamer cups, paper sugar packets and stirrer sticks. So it’s an environmentally friendly thing to do as well besides the saving money part.

There is the small bother of washing the thermos out at the end of the day but a minute with a bottle brush and it’s done… worth saving $2-3 dollars over stopping at the convenience store.

So how many of you are getting the short end of the coffee stirrer… Is your employer cutting back on beverages for the office?

Any of you carry a thermos as well?

Thought about doing so?

Or think it’s too much of a bother?

Photo credit: stock.xchng.