Caffeine Achiever

I don't remember when I started drinking coffee.

I was that young.

No. Really. I spent my grade school breakfasts hunched over the funny papers, drinking cafe au lait from 16 ounce mugs my parents purchased at the local craft fair.

When I was little, one of my father's chores was to buy coffee for the house and his office. We would go to the local roaster once a week carrying our bedraggled paper coffee sack for refills of the family blend (50% Kenyan, 50% dark Columbian). I carried on this tradition of the weekly trips to the coffee store for my snooty whole beans all the way through college.

At some point in the 1990's, all the coffee plantations *cough* I mean companies like Starbucks switched over to just carrying vacuum packed bags of coffee at the store. Which made everything easier for them and nothing easier for the environment. Save being really crafty and weaving strands of the heavy plastic sacks together to make prison art handbags and picture frames, the sacks are pretty much unreusable, even as dog poop bags.

So I was very pleased that Allegro Coffee decided to go old school and start selling their coffee in COMPOSTABLE bags. Which really means they're selling their coffee in plain old brown paper bags. But stlll, this makes my unsustainable coffee habit just that much better environmentally.

I called their customer service line and made the operator's day. I'm sure she hears only complaints from customers. I raved about their awesome new packaging. Companies need to get positive reinforcement when they do something smart.

Which makes me more of an aging hippie?

Calling customer service hotlines with all my free time?

or

Thinking sustainable packaging is an interesting topic for a blog post?


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OCTOBER 16, 2008

Today I registered on Yelp! so I could start being one of those know-it-alls who reviews local businesses. I decided to register after noticing that three restaurants that I really love all had some snotty remarks made about them. I spent an hour writing up reviews under my new Yelp! pseudonym.

Thirty minutes later I got a thank you email from one of the restaurant owners. Apparently my interweb disguise did not shield my identity enough and she instantly knew which of her thousands of customers had written the latest review.

If I'm busted for my niceness, does it still count?