Americans are resourceful, especially when it comes to even the briefest moment of leisure. When labor unions first negotiated a 40-hour work week, the only break in the day was for lunch, and even that was brief. That just wouldn’t fly for a workforce that was not only addicted to caffeine, but cigarettes as well. So, it wasn’t long until the coffee break was introduced and workplaces all over the nation were transformed. The break room was introduced, styrofoam cups were invented, and non-dairy powdered creamer was hailed as the best invention of the 20th century. Next came sugar packets, plastic stirrers, and eventually lids with perforated fold-back tabs so the coffee could be consumed without as much danger of a spill.

All because of the coffee break. Ostensibly, vending machines probably owe some of their success to coffee breaks as well, though their initial placement was elsewhere. Coffee breaks have taken on a life, and ingenuity, of their own. While rules vary from company to company, federal law still mandates two fifteen minute breaks for every eight hours worked, in addition to a minimum of 30 minutes for lunch. Even for those very strange and bothersome people who don’t drink coffee, we all need a moment to step away from what we’re doing, stretch our limbs, let our mind relax and wander a bit. A cup of coffee, especially in the middle of the afternoon as we’re starting to hit that post-lunch slump, keeps us fresh.

Efficiency experts, of course, hate any kind of departure from the grind and have tried since the beginning to find ways of minimizing the impact of coffee breaks on production. Carefully positioning of break rooms, staggered break times, and even some humorous attempts at automating coffee delivery have been attempted with varying degrees of success.  Evil managers have attempted to bogart coffee breaks as well, delivering new assignments mere seconds before one was about to leave their desk. There’s no end to what mean people will do to keep us from our coffee.