The "Coffee Cup" War.

"Lemmee 'splain....no, there is too much. Lemmee sum it up..." (~Inugo Montoya, in The Princess Bride)

OK, I'll bring you up to speed. Somebody at work keeps throwing away my coffee cups. I buy one from the dollar store, use it at work, leave it under the counter, and the next day it's gone. I've gone through four cups. After loosing the third cup, I started to keep my new cup and my creamer in a box under the counter. I wrote a dire warning on the box, stating that if anyone threw out my cup again I would personally hunt them down and throw it at them.

All hell broke loose.

People saw the note and complained high and mighty. I had to sit and listen to a scolding from the store manager and the H.R. director. My note qualified as "threat" speech, and under company guidelines I was given a write-up with a final warning (meaning, "one more mister, and you're gone.") I protested about the cups. They completely blew it off. They said that the cups had been thrown out when cleaning the counter. It's all my fault for not keeping them in my locker, taking the bar code off of them, and putting my name on them. Nobody in the store will come clean and tell me who's been doing it.

Needless to say, I am royally pissed. I would have thought it was common sense that a ceramic coffee cup sitting by the coffee maker just might be some one's property, and that common decency would lead people to respect another person's property. I see now I was wrong.

Yesterday, I discovered the fourth one disappeared. Before I left that night, I poured a puddle of coffee on the counter and left the carafe on top of it. Today I am off, so I'm going to let them stew on that for awhile. I'm going to go in early to work tomorrow and do some shouting. Whether or not I remain there after this week remains to be seen. Stay tuned.