Old Patriot Coffee

The Old Patriot Coffee House was right on the way to work. I suppose that's why I took to stopping there mornings. It was convenient and homey, and the coffee -- Old Patriot Coffee, they called it -- was always steaming hot, plentiful, and delicious. And it gave me diarrhea.

So, why did I keep drinking it, you might ask? Well, it wasn't at first obvious that the coffee was the culprit. It took a lengthy process of elimination to finally put my finger on it, and by that time, I was hooked ... on the place as much as on the coffee. And I figured Joe Bob, who was the proprietor of the Old Patriot Coffee House, probably didn't know there was a problem with his coffee. It only made sense for me to try to fix the problem before throwing the baby out with the grounds, as it were. And so, I laid the problem at Joe Bob's feet.

"Joe Bob," I said, "it's about your joe. It gives me the runs."

"Yep, yep, yep," nodded Joe Bob vigorously. "That'd be the phenolphthalein."

"I beg your pardon?" I squawked, somewhat taken aback. "You mean you knew?"

"Oh, yes," he continued nodding. "I do it for my customers. They like it."

"I beg to differ!" I replied. "I don't like it!"

"You don't have to beg so much," said Joe Bob, not unkindly.

"And I don't think these good people like it, either," I continued, taking in the assembled clientele of the OPC House with a grand sweep of my right arm. "Not only is phenolphthalein a laxative, it's also a suspected carcinogen. Well, folks, how do you all feel about this?"

The reactions ran the gamut from mild disgust to abject horror, but the typical comment was, "So, that's why ..."

The head went up and down thoughtfully. "All right, all right," bobbed Joe Bob. "Fair enough. I will fix the problem."

We clapped and cheered.

"But it might take a while," he added ominously.

I confess that it didn't sound ominous until some two months later, when no apparent progress had been made on the coffee. Everyone had switched to tea by then. Or to other liquids, too ghastly to mention. Two months turned to three. Then four. We were all suffering withdrawal symptoms, when ... it appeared.

"It" was a machine ... or device ... or something that Joe Bob had installed between the coffee maker and the coffee pot. It fairly bristled with pipes and tubes and valves and whistles and thingamajigs.

"Joe Bob!" I exclaimed. "What in heaven's name is ... that?"

"That, my good man," said Joe Bob, a touch smugly, it seemed, "is the Dephthaleinator! It removes phenolphthalein from coffee."

"Gosh," I said, "that's almost impossible to pronounce. But even letting that pass, it's a lot of trouble to go to take something out, when ..."

"Nothing's too good for my customers," said Joe Bob.

I shrugged and decided to give it a chance. Before the day was out, I was racing for the john again.

"Joe Bob," I said the next morning, "it isn't working. I -- we -- appreciate all your hard work, but ..."

"Don't worry!" said Joe Bob, raising a reassuring hand. "I will address the problem with the next release of the Dephthaleinator! And if that doesn't work, I'll get it the next time, for sure."

"But Joe Bob," I pleaded. "Phenolphthalein is not a naturally occurring ingredient of coffee! All you have to do is stop putting it in! It's cheap. It's simple. It's 100% effective."

Joe Bob shook his head pityingly. "Nope," he said. "Can't do it. Don't you think I thought of that?"

"Well, of course, I knew you'd thought of it," I lied. "I just don't understand why you don't do it."

"As a layman, you can't understand the technical complexities involved," said Joe Bob understandingly. "I have a whole team of Java Gurus working on this. They originated the whole process. They maintain it. They massage it. They make it work!"

"Begging pardon," I interjected, "but it doesn't seem to be working so well. If they know the coffee-making process so well, why don't you just ask them to fix it? You know, stop adding the phenolphthalein?"

Joe Bob shook his head again, for all the world like a schoolmaster trying to explain calculus to the dullest pupil in the school. "You don't understand," he said. "They can't find the place in the process where the laxative is added. It's too hard! The only workable solution is to create a complex new machine to extract the laxative at the other end."

I looked at him with awe. He had gotten through to me at last. The light had gone on.

"Wow!" I gasped. "You guys should be in software development!"