"office" news and stories

While running out to Starbucks is one way to get your coffee fix in a flash, the Cuisinart Coffee on Demand is an even easier way. The small, stylish machine takes up less room than most countertop coffee makers and dispenses one cup of coffee at a time, directly into your mug without the need for a carafe. The way that it works is that the coffee is brewed and stored inside a thermal reservoir inside the machine, which keeps it hot for up to 4 hours.

The product is suggested for entertaining, perhaps so guests can refill their mugs easily at a party, but the real target audience is anyone who has more than one cup of coffee per day. It would work particularly well in an office or home office, where you are likely to "refresh" your coffee every hour or so anyway.

Source

In every office, there is someone who has a jar of candy on their desk. It might be a jar of hard candies, jelly beans or M&M's, but there will be a jar and people will inevitably find reasons to walk by it and grab a treat or two on occasion. To give your office mates a buzz, replace the candy jar with Rocket Chocolate. The individually wrapped milk chocolates have 150 mg of caffeine in each piece, which is as much as three cans of Coke and only slightly less than two cans of Red Bull. The creamy chocolate will help to quiet your sweet tooth, but the pick-me-up of the candy is what will really help get you through the afternoon.

Either your co-workers will be grateful for the extra buzz or they'll wonder why their second cup of coffee seems to be affecting them so strongly -- especially if they take more than one chocolate. Just try to make sure you don't let anyone with a caffeine sensitivity grab a piece unknowingly.

Source

In almost every refrigerator in every home, there is a package of old, mysterious food. It could be furry, smelly or have actually developed into a new life form by the time you find it and dispose of it. There is one place that contains food more frightening that the home refrigerator: the office refrigerator.

To say that this appliance is the black hole of food is inaccurate only in the fact that some of the food eventually resurfaces.

There are a variety of standard food items in office refrigerators. Most of them contain some form of creamer, often the non-dairy varieties, as well as variously dated cartons of milk. There are always a few jars with condiments like mustard, mayonnaise and jam. The number of condiments is directly proportional to the number of people who work in the office and have access to the fridge, so despite the fact that no one can recall ever adding anything themselves, a fridge in an office of 50 people will have a dozen bottles of salad dressing, a few jars of mayonnaise and at least 3 different mustards, in addition to pickles, soy sauce and ketchup - none of which anyone can find when they want to use it, of course, which leads to the addition of even more condiments.

It's (almost) always fun when someone holds a mirror up to our daily routine. The Sydney Morning Herald recently ran a piece that categorizes the ways people eat in office environments. I don't know that I'm familiar with the folks that eat cereal throughout their workday, but I can definitely relate to the image of folks creating mini assembly lines for sandwiches and salads at their desks, as well as those with a seemingly endless supply of plastic snack tubs. The myriad of smells that come out of a high-traffic office microwave also gets a nod, as does the offensive tuna can left to stink in the trash.

If you thought that the country most likely to have its residents eat pre-prepared food was the United States, you would be wrong. While the sheer number of people dining out in the US might be greater than in most countries, the average Briton will eat 365 meals a year out of home - one every day. In comparison, the average person eats out only 306 times per year in the United States, coming in third after Italy, where the Italians dine out 308 times each year. Also high on the list were the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, France and Germany.

The survey, conducted by the group Datamonitor, showed a link between a stronger work ethic and the likelihood of eating outside the home. The reasoning for this is that in countries where employees work longer hours and seem to have trouble tearing themselves away at the end of the day, the employees eat out more frequently. They also show a stronger inclination for fast, snack and pre-prepared foods that can beat eaten on the go or at a desk, as opposed to choosing to dine restaurants.

Source