Today I Appreciate My Coworker, With Whom I Stole Paper Cups For Tea

At my job, we have a coffee maker, a water heater, and tea bags, but alas, there are no cups. This lack of cups deems all of the aforementioned items completely useless, which is sad. Very sad.

I worked at the same place last year as a writing tutor and it seemed as though our snack bar was significantly more loaded up with cookies, crackers, chips, and other snacking items. Oh, and cups.

So, my coworker, Laila, and I decided it was about darned time we got some cups! With both of us working three hour shifts tonight, we decided caffeine would be an asset to actually, you know, helping us help students write.

Alas, grocery stores are not within easy walking distance from the tutoring center as we work up near the residence halls on campus. However, there's a quick-service cafe ("BruinCafe" otherwise known as "B Caf" to those cool enough to shorten it) right near the dorms that hosts a plethora of paper cups. Surely they'd be willing to give up a couple for the cause of tea?

In a break between sessions, Laila and I make our way down to B Caf (yes, I'm one of those cool enough people to abbreviate BruinCafe as such) and head straight towards the coffee section of the cafe because we figured, you know, coffee cups would be best for hot drinks. Laila bravely asks one of the baristas (is B Caf fancy enough to have baristas? A debatable point for later) for one of the cups, and...

"No. Sorry."

Laila and I look at each other.

"You can't just give us a cup for - um - water?" Laila asks.

The worker, strapped into an unfortuante apron and visor uniform shook her head again.

"No." That was it. Note that we were the only ones in the cafe at this point, staring at the stack of coffee cups waiting, just waiting, for delicious tea to fill them. No one was exactly clamboring for coffee at 6:30 PM, anyway.

We would not let this bureacracy-tied barista stop us from fulfilling our caffeinated dreams, however. Upon exiting, we saw stacks of paper Pepsi cups beside an unattended cash register. We look at each other again and nod. Perfect. Without saying a word, we follow out of B Caf and each swipe one cup from the top of the stack. Empty paper cups in hand, we giggle all the way back to the tutoring center about our stealthy accomplishment. True, we only stole about 5 cents' (if not less) worth of glass - er - plasticware from UCLA, but it still felt like a secret mission and accomplishment in which we could revel and savor the sweet taste of clever victory.

This post is not to endorse stealing, of course. In fact, stealing is bad. However, there's something that inherently bonds people together when they share a secret mission or goal together, even if it's for something as silly as some cups to make some tea.

The only sad part about this story is that the water heater at our tutoring center doesn't work. So, after all of that adventure, we found ourselves still tea-less in the end. However, the adventure was half the fun, anyway, and the conversation with all of the tutor-less coworkers kept us awake enough that the time at work flew by without any yawns or sleepiness.