午夜福利1000集合

鈥淢y co-working space is full of caffeine fiends,鈥� says Beverly Ridge. 鈥淲e try to share the hot drink duty, but remembering who wants what on any given day is a tall order. How do we avoid tempers boiling over?鈥�

Making the pilgrimage to the kettle to perform the teatime ritual can be a sacred duty in the workplace. But take a co-working space of transient colleagues, stir in a dash of office politics and a sprinkling of awkward requests and you will be thirsting for a technical solution.

The first problem is how many mugs you are dealing with (and how many of them want a drink, ho ho). Some thirsty colleagues will be closing deals on the phone or immersed in coding zen; others want in so rarely that you forget to ask.

A desktop-mounted flag could signal a need for tea, though this semaphore system would soon have the office looking like the United Nations. The answer: an integrated at-desk ordering system for distraction-free drink requests.

I envisaged a menu that gives each beverage a numerical code 鈥� just memorise your usual, or consult the list when you fancy a change. Better yet, button mash and break up a boring afternoon with a mystery drink. Two digits would give 100 possibilities, which sounds like a lot, but things soon add up when you have six kinds of espresso, two kinds of milk, sugar and then double shots to consider. Not to mention all the varieties of tea: Earl Grey, chamomile, green, fruit teas鈥� Best make it three digits, for 1000 possible options. All without having to look up from your sales reports.

Now for the clever bit. A Wi-Fi enabled board at each desk would translate the code into English and post it to your team鈥檚 channel on the web messenger Slack. Finally, an iPad in the kitchen lets the round master see the orders on Slack while they wait for the kettle to boil.

Of course, the system needs everyone to share their Slack passwords. For those that did not want to, I made accounts for their mugs instead.

I鈥檓 not sure how much time this will save me: the mugs soon began asking when I was going to build a biscuit order add-on鈥�

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