Saturday, March 29, 2008

Hot water over ice – neat

So I do contract work for a large company. They have a cafeteria and also a large break room at each end of the building. With some smaller break rooms in the middle. The break rooms have a sink, with no disposal. At least one built in ice maker. And a coffee maker. Because the ice makers are built in, the only people that know how they get water to the ice maker, to make ice, is the facilities person. They aren’t talking. I suspect there is a ¼ inch flexible tube coming off the water line from the sink. The coffee maker sits on the counter and is very simple to use. Wait. No it isn’t. I’ll cover how many different ways people can “make” coffee, in another post. Running to that coffee machine, is a ¼ inch flexible water line. Pretty slick really, as it has a little cut off valve on it. You need that when the seal lets loose and the coffee urn starts pissing coffee all over the place. My point is, you can SEE the entire water line. There is no filter on it. So, we have pure city tap water running to the coffee machine. Since I’ve never yet seen facilities yank out the ice machines and replace a water line filter, I have to conclude there is no filter on there either.
Where does all this leave us? It leaves me wondering what some people fill their lives with. When I want a glass of water, and I try to drink two or three a day at work, I take my plastic glass down, and put ice in it. I do it the nice sanitary way. I remove the ice shovel from the neat holder on the side of the inner ice compartment. I plunge in to get a shovel full of ice. I then dribble the ice into my glass. I don’t touch the ice shovel to my glass. I don’t want your germs and you don’t want mine. I return the shovel to the holder. I do NOT toss it into the ice, like about 25 percent of the people do. The one person I want to stop doing this, is the last person out at the end of the day. See, the ice maker makes ice all night long, until it reaches some sensing point to stop. You toss the ice shovel in there and by the next morning, that baby is plowed under. Now, you get some one (like me), with their hand all in that ice looking for the ice scoop. I hope they washed their hands after using the bathroom, and before they dug around for the ice scoop. OK, now I have a glass of ice. Ice made with tap water. Unfiltered tap water. I proceed to the sink and turn on the tap and fill the glass. I have now magically made “Ice Water”. I’d put it on my weekly status report, but I don’t think they care.
Here is how some people make Ice Water. Someone explain this to me. They bring in their glass, or even better, use a Styrofoam coffee cup, and fill it with ice. Ice made with tap water. Remember, unfiltered tap water. They then proceed to the coffee machine. See the coffee machine also has a Hot water dispenser. Remember that ¼ inch line running to the coffee machine? The one with no filter on it either? It tinkles out water. First it has to bring in the water from the unfiltered ¼ inch line. Then, it must heat it. Then, when you push the button


you get a heated, unfiltered tinkling stream of water. It takes about 2 minutes to fill your average sized drinking glass. With unfiltered water. So what is the point of pouring HOT water over ICE!!! Room temperature water?

Meanwhile, the coffee that was making came to a complete standstill. Seems the hot water dispenser gets priority over the actual brewing of coffee, by the coffee machine.

Again, what is the point? Other than to prove you can melt ice by pouring hot water over it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

So my fiend orders hot water over ice at restaurants and it just boggles my mind. Why would you do it?