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I have a very serious coffee addiction. This is no secret to anyone who has known me for more than a day. I need at least a couple of cups first thing in the morning just to allow me to function as a human being. This insane cranky person comes out if I don’t keep a steady level of caffeine in my system throughout the day and working in customer service has just made this addiction worse. Do you want me to be nice to the poor unsuspecting customer who comes to the counter wanting to rent a Mercedes for ten dollars a day when clearly that is a ridiculous request to begin with? Then I need to be well caffeinated so that I don’t inform them that they are crazy and then walk away from the counter. Apparently, in customer service, you have to be nice even to the obnoxious ones and that, occasionally, gives me some trouble. But that’s where the coffee comes in and saves the day!
Now, I am not that picky about the form that the caffeine takes to get into my blood stream and makes me the Suzy Sunshine of the car rental world, but the lack of options is sometimes difficult. Most often, coffee in New Zealand comes in the form of instant coffee. Not exactly my favorite option but it is by far the cheapest and easiest especially in a tiny cramped closet behind the rental desk that serves as an office, storage room, coat closet and kitchen. The other major source of caffeination is the espresso based coffees purchased from either Patagonia (yummy) or the airport cafe (not so yummy but the tiniest bit cheaper). But they are just way too expensive to keep up with my habit at about $4.00 per coffee. If my habit was only one a day, it might be possible to have the delicious trim flat white with one sweetener that the girl at the coffee shop starts fixing for me even before I make it all the way up to the cash register (yeah its that sad I know). But my 8 cups a day minimum threshold to maintain sanity would make that a bit out of my price range. But what I really miss most of all is just a normal filter coffee. You know like the coffee pot that everyone has in their kitchen. Like the one I had back home that was on a timer so I would wake up every morning to a freshly brewed pot of delicious french roast coffee in the kitchen. The smell of which alone was enough to make me get out of bed in the morning. They just don’t seem to have those here. I hear whispers of one coming up for sale on occasion but I never can get to it. There must be a black market for filter coffee coffee pots out there somewhere and I want one. Back alley transactions do not scare me. Must have coffee pot!
can you buy coffee grounds in NZ? Or just beans? I’ve been trying to come up with a small, lightweight gift to bring you when I come in August, and if you can get grounds, I can bring you a french press. Or a one-cup electric grinder. It might be worth the adaptor plugs, and I can fit both in my carry-on.
Oh you are too sweet! I have actually just been given a french press since this post went up. And yes you can buy grounds. Save your pennies for getting settled into your new life down under