This morning, as I was driving home from what turned out to be a 27 hour shift, I was struck by a thought. (Or a mild seizure. I often have difficulty distinguishing between the two.) How much bad coffee have I consumed in my 42 years? I probably don't really want to know an actual quantity. After all, we all know that there is no beverage served more often than Bad Coffee. You can get it nearly everywhere, and there is really no way to tell without tasting it.
A couple disclaimers first. I really began drinking coffee during my time in the Marine Corps, so my personal "bad coffee" bar is set exceptionally low. Military issue coffee, like all other military issue items, is produced by the lowest bidder. As always, the bid is low for a reason. Canadian grown coffee, anyone?
The second disclaimer- I have been working the streets since I got out of the Corps in 1993, and spent a big chunk of that time working the graveyard shift. Some of those nights, the need for caffeine outweighed all other considerations. That meant gas station coffee, and I highly doubt I will ever be that desperate for caffeine again. Once more, the bar has been lowered.
It's also worth noting that EMS is a caffeine saturated profession. Think about it folks, your lives are in the hands of a bunch of at least partially burned out adrenaline junkies all jacked up on coffee, Mountain Dew, Red Bull, and any food that can be either easily reheated or eaten cold. (Preferably one handed. Easier to drive that way.) Makes you want to start taking better care of yourselves, doesn't it? On my shift at work, we've joked more than once that our official mascot should be a hummingbird.
We do occasionally get good coffee. One of the perks (Sorry, I know. It's a lame pun, even for me. Nothing else works.) of the county I work for is coffee. It's Folger's, which one of our firefighters refuses to drink. He's a coffee snob, so he brings his own from home. It's normally something good like Costa Rican Tarrazu or Sumatran. You can always tell when Dave's working, because everyone drinks the coffee. At the other end of the spectrum is the coffee made by one of our EMT-I's. You can tell when SHE made the coffee by trying to put a spoon in the cup. If it either stands up or melts, Cindy made it. It's funny to see the firefighters come in when she's working. They always hesitate before pouring coffee, then ask if it's Cindy's coffee. Sometimes, just for fun, I lie and tell them "No." Most of us are immune by now, but the reaction of the susceptible few is always fun to watch.
Perhaps the worst coffee I encounter on a regular basis is the dreaded ER Night Shift Special. At best, it's barely tolerable when it's fresh. Caffeine content seems to be the primary concern. What gives ERNSS its distinctive bouquet is nothing more than time. Normally, coffee is one of the first activities of the shift, just like everywhere else. The degradation occurs when the night rush happens. Every ER has one, especially on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. When it hits, it hits hard, and the coffee just sits and stews, sometimes for hours. Every EMS provider knows the rest. The pot's sitting there, half empty not because anyone has been drinking coffee, but because half the water has boiled away. If you inhale deeply when walking past the pot, the airborne caffeine is enough to get your heart rate well into the 200's. By about 7 in the morning, that last little bit of coffee in the pot is sufficiently concentrated to make it the drug of choice for cardiac arrest. Hell, a couple tablespoons spilled on the floor is enough to make the tiles beat most of the time. You know the shift is over when the guy in the hazmat suit grabs the pot and heads toward the sink. Don't tell the EPA, and don't pour it into a styrofoam cup if you decide to drink it. They've been known to dissolve on contact.
Good or bad, we need that coffee. It may be to keep us awake, it may be to GET us awake after a long night. Or it may just be that we need a few minutes to sit down, collect ourselves, push some images out of our head, and get ready for the next one. The coffee's just a prop.
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