Somehow, my favourite coffee mug (as shown in promotional image above) has been lost in the office relocation. It is extremely upsetting.
Other personal mugs that have been displaced have resulted in varying degrees of displeasure (rated on a scale of 1-10).
Displeasure score of 4. It is not that upsetting because I got it at a garage sale for $5 and I was never sure if I could put it through the dishwasher (due to its snappy cork belt) and so I always hand-washed it after every use, it was sort of a hassle to have really.
Displeasure rating of 7 as this was a gift from a friend many years ago, and is part of a weird, mismatched collection of bright orange crockery I have. It was the only espresso-sized cup I own and also doubled as Yoko’s water bowl when she accompanied me to work.
And finally, to this novelty ironic porcelain cup that my sister had given to my father. He, who was neither impressed by its form nor function (”It only holds one cup of coffee! Where’s the handle?!”), gave it to me as a receptacle for one of his meticulously-made cappuccinos “to-go”. After being handed the tall cup, I finished the coffee in the car and there it sat. It stayed in the drink compartment of the driver-side door, growing an ecosystem of heat-resistant fungi from the remaining puddle of once frothy milk, coffee, cocoa powder and sugar, until one day the mini-empire of spore-sprouting organisms collapsed under its own super-strain and turned to powdery ash. I finally took it to work, scrubbed it out with boiling water and put it through several dishwashing cycles to use for my morning joe but tall mugs (even with a silicone lid) are precariously tip-able constructions for a cramped workspace so I abandoned it in the sea of disparate ‘desperado’ mugs in the cupboard above the sink. Every office kitchenette, no matter how deficient in tea-and-coffee making resources, has them: they are commemorative cups from the 1988 Australian Bicentennial, avocado-green glazed ceramic-ware from the seventies, once-stylish but now forever-chipped-and-permanently-tea-stained-Ikea china or corporate-merchandising-mugs featuring out-dated logos of Sanofi-Aventis, AMP, Mitsubishi etc. that, once imprinted, can render perfectly functional items (such as pens, umbrellas, polo shirts and laptop bags) unusable. The loss of this “I am not a paper cup” displeases me at a level 1.
I admit, I am inordinately attached to things. I really like junk and I am probably not far from placing on a yet-to-be-validated psychometric scale for “propensity for hoarding”. However, I really, really do want to get my Zabar’s mug back. Losing Zabar’s is a sore-score of 10. Perhaps I should offer a reward for it?