A Vanilla Thriller

(My boss comes up to me Monday morning, lamenting that the coffee machine isn’t working and she wants a coffee. I’m a graphic artist — so this is in no way my problem — but pretty savvy with machines, so I go to give it a once-over. I grab the key from where I know the tech keeps it, check the coffee levels — which are low, but not out — and then close everything up and make myself a coffee — that I don’t really want — so I can test the machine. Everything works fine. I tell her I can’t find a problem, but she comes to me shortly after complaining that it’s still not working. I go back to the machine with her to see where the problem could be stemming from and see that she’s ordering some sort of flavoured vanilla drink — no coffee involved at all. I open the machine again and dig deeper into its guts to find that, indeed, the vanilla is out. She keeps hovering, complaining that the coffee machine is broken and that she doesn’t have time to go upstairs to get a coffee from another machine. She continues moaning about her valuable time being wasted that she has to go upstairs to get her coffee as I’m pulling a packet of vanilla from where I know it’s kept. She then heads for the door to go upstairs to get her sugar drink as I fill the machine and lock it back up. To this day, every morning she asks me if the machine is still broken.)

Me: “It was never broken. It just ran out of vanilla.”

Boss: “So, it’s still broken.”

Me: “No. You saw me refill it. And the tech came through Wednesday and topped everything up.”

Boss: “Do you think it will be fixed by next week?”

(This woman is not an idiot! I don’t know what was happening in her brain here!)