Research & Development

            After repeatedly spilling hot liquid on themselves before they could even remove all of their morning eye boogers...while in a vehicle that runs on explosions...while traveling seventy miles an hour...while listening to the place where comedy goes to die a perky yet sad death, also known as drive-time radio...coffee executives believed that America was ready for a change.  Coffee had become America’s approved drug of choice, so much so that Americans were willing to pay five dollars for a cup of the most abundant resource on the planet filtered through a handful of the cheapest food on the planet.  The people flocked to these little rip-off artists like five-year-olds to a sugarfall. 

            On the way to the factory or the airport or the insurance sales office, people would idle their cars and wait in line to pay their five dollars and get their mild speed rush for the morning.  They’d sip their coffee out of throwaway paper cups, occasionally stopping to blow on it in an effort to cool it down, sometimes even having the patience to wait until boiling liquid cools on its own.  There was a problem, other than the obvious problems (1---Americans are so cat-in-the-dryer stupid that we can't figure out the connections between boiling liquid and the cooling effect of waiting two minutes, and 2---the average 21st century commute to work is already a hellish experience that Michael Douglas once starred in a movie about "Road Rage"---not "Road Mild Annoyance"---not "Road Orgy"---The fact that this is a real phenomenon is sad enough.  Not being able to quickly and easily enjoy one of the only good parts of it didn't help.).    

            The little plastic lids that covered the coffee container, in order to prevent spillage, actually wound up causing the very thing they wanted to prevent.  It was what the R&D world calls a design flaw.  Their parents just called it "stupid," THEIR parents called it "really, truly stupid", THEIR parents are horrified that anyone would pay five bucks for coffee (they're also dead), and THEIR parents are too mesmerized by the flashing lights and the magic metal boxes to mentally process the stupidity of five dollar coffee.  But, the R&D world prefers the term "design flaw."

            The plastic lid had one little cheap ‘80s Halloween mask mouth hole from which the sipper was to sip. It sounds simple enough, but every time the car hit a bump or the drinker moved his hand too fast the coffee would jump out, ruining that new pantsuit or white button-down shirt.  Even more widespread was the physics of it all.  You take a sip, often tentatively since it’s hot, and then tilt the cup back down, which causes the fluid at the top to go back down, and if that fluid moves fast enough, it causes a hot coffee burst to jump up, often back out of the lid, again spilling on you.  It was a national problem that necessitated a national solution.  Something had to be done.           

            Rodney Kershaw had worked for Happy Beans brand coffee for years in R&D.  He was the first guy to say, “Hey, let’s convince people that coffee from obscure countries they’ve barely heard of is better.  Sumatra?  Sure.  Guatemala?  Why not?  Ten bucks, that's what coffee goes for in Loompaland.  People pay more for sushi, and it's wasn't even considered human food until fifteen years ago.”  

            Kershaw was good at this, a natural born sycophant, and not excessively moral, making him the perfect corporate executive.  But now, Rodney was in a bind.  He was the one who’d invented the infamous coffee lid to begin with, and now the people were souring on it.  Genius has a way of figuring things out most of the time, even faster if it's evil.  Rodney launched a national competition for people to design the new and, presumably, improved coffee lid.  He hit the talk shows and created an eye-catching web site.  The people, since they were the ones with the ruined clothing, responded.  The winner was going to receive free coffee for a year and a bumper sticker.  The company would, of course, receive millions of dollars.

            Meeting with his boss, Jonathan Happybean, one Tuesday afternoon, Rodney ran down the list of finalists.  Jonathan had understandably been taunted pretty mercilessly as a child, and thus had the proper American motivation to make people he’d hated give him their money.  Jonathan knew that something had to be done about this looming lid issue, so he was restless.

“Dammit, Rodney, we have to find a solution.  We’re supposed to be the best part of waking up.”

“I know, I know.  People have come up with a lot of ideas, but most of them are pretty out there.”

“Like what?”

“Well, the guy who said that if we filter the coffee through his dog, that it won’t spill, or the woman who says that her breast milk will solve the problem.”

“CC that one to me.  Rodney, there’s got to be a solution.  Let’s hear some of that good old-fashioned American ingenuity.”

“I’m pretty sure that was outlawed in 1985, but I’ll try, sir.”

             After another week full of mainly ridiculous ideas, Rodney once again met with Mr. Happybean.

 “OK, so what’ve you got for me today, Rodney?”

“Well, sir, we’ve got some decent suggestions.  Bendy straws keep coming up, but I think that’s just the product of rampant nostalgia.”

“Those wouldn’t work for hot liquid.”

“Metal bendy straws would.”

“I don’t know, metal straws?  Seems kind of creepy and disease-causing.”

“Right, right.  I hear you, sir.  Actually, the best idea I’ve heard comes from a young mother in Ketchikan, Alaska.  She suggested that we just raise part of the lid so it’s even more like the kiddie sippy cups.  I think this would actually cut down on spillage and, as a bonus, be more regressively breast-feedingish.”

“Kershaw, you're a genius!”

            Sure, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal now, but that’s the way history tucks us into bed at night. We take the invention of the wheel for granted, but when the five guys dragging a cart full of recently-processed moose intestines looked over and saw one man pulling a deer carcass by himself on a crazy mobile contraption, they were amazed.  We don’t think twice these days about buying a loaf of pre-cut Wonder bread, but the first guy who sliced bread made such a splash that we now measure every other invention by how long it’s been from the time that a new wonderful idea was created to the time that someone put cut up bread in a package for a sushiesque mark-up.  The history of the now-standard two-inch raised coffee lid is a lot like that, only not actually real.