The Coffee Queue: How Developers Solve Real Problems
At a company I once worked for, we had a very specific rule: only one carafe of coffee in the office at a time.
Not for health reasons.
Not for logistics.
But because someone decided that a second carafe—at 65 cents per refill—was too expensive. For reference, that’s about three cents a cup.
Now, the coffee was awful. But it was all they offered. And in the morning, everyone wanted it.
The Real Problem
Here’s what happened:
- People showed up to the breakroom in waves.
- The first few got their coffee.
- Then someone hit an empty carafe—and had to brew a new pot. That took 3–5 minutes.
- Others would arrive, unknowingly walk into the same dead-end, and suddenly…
A line formed. - While they waited, people got irritated, started complaining, and by the time they returned to their desks, they were annoyed—not at the coffee, but at whoever decided the coffee was worth more than their time.
This was a real workplace friction point, every single day. But no one had formally written it up.
Eventually, the VP—tired of hearing people grumble—half-jokingly said:
“If you write up a reason to have two carafes, I’ll pass it along.”
So I did.
Enter Queuing Theory
I wrote a breakdown using queuing theory:
- With one carafe, we had a G/G/1 queue with uncertain service availability and catastrophic wait times during peak hours (i.e., mornings).
- People don’t know if the carafe has coffee until they try. If it’s empty, someone starts brewing, but anyone arriving during that time is stuck in line.
- This creates a hidden queue that builds frustration, burns time, and kills morale.
Adding a second carafe transforms the system into a G/G/2 queue:
- It introduces redundancy, smooths out the peak demand, and reduces the probability of service failure.
- Most importantly, it preserves flow. People get in, get coffee, and get back to work—without standing around venting about mismanagement over a three-cent decision.
What Happened Next Was… Hilarious
Shortly after I sent the email, someone was screen-sharing during a meeting with several VPs and managers—and my write-up was still open on their screen.
They paused the meeting.
Then they read the email out loud.
And instead of brushing it off, the room fully invested in the problem. They started laughing—but the logic landed.
It was too real to ignore.
That same afternoon, the company publicly announced a new two-carafe policy. Just like that, the coffee bottleneck was fixed.
Why This Matters
This story isn’t about coffee.
It’s about how developers—and engineers in general—solve real problems:
- We recognize patterns.
- We model load, latency, and friction.
- We identify failure points no one else sees.
- And we make systems work better for the people using them—whether that’s a distributed microservice or a miserable morning coffee queue.
Real engineering isn’t always glamorous.
Sometimes it smells like burnt coffee.
But it makes things better.
And yes—sometimes it even gets your policy changed before lunch.