Responsible Service of Coffee

It is 7:33 pm at the RSL.

The place is packed. A ramshackle band is playing in the background, disjointed yet somehow beautiful. I have found a quiet corner after a full day’s work and would like a coffee. This proves unexpectedly difficult.

There are two counters. One sells alcohol. The other appears to sell food. It is not clear which jurisdiction governs coffee.

I ask.

Coffee, I am informed, stops at 7:30 pm.

Three minutes ago, this was an ordinary beverage. Now, under cover of darkness, it has become contraband.

Alcohol remains freely available. Nobody is cutting me off from booze. Earlier, I ordered my single glass of wine and received what was clearly a generous pour, perhaps in recognition of my visibly dishevelled state.

Nearby, Gambling Man staggers towards the exit clutching his glass. Before leaving, he attempts to stuff the final morsels from the 7:30 food-delivery cut-off into his mouth.

He appears to understand the system perfectly.

I do not.

This is what fascinates me about systems. Their priorities are rarely found in their mission statements. They are revealed through friction.

The things a system is designed to sell are obvious, accessible and easy to obtain. The counters are visible. The pathways are established. The transactions continue seamlessly into the night.

But ask for something outside the dominant purpose of the environment, even something as ordinary as coffee, and the infrastructure becomes strangely opaque.

Which counter?

What time?

Whose responsibility?

Why not?

There was no technical barrier and, as far as I know, no sacred rule requiring the coffee machine to be cleaned at precisely 7:30 pm.

The man was standing beside a functioning machine, preparing to clean it. He could have made one final coffee, served it, and continued with exactly the same task two minutes later.

Instead, 7:30 became an immutable boundary.

The machine still worked. The staff member was still there. The coffee still existed. The additional effort would have been minimal.

Nothing prevented the service from being provided except the point at which someone had decided it would no longer be provided.

This raises another question.

What happened to after-dinner coffee?

It used to be part of hospitality. People finished eating, ordered coffee, and stayed awhile. Coffee marked the transition from consuming a meal to lingering over conversation. It was not a strange or unreasonable request. It was practically a ritual.

Now alcohol remains available deep into the evening, but coffee has been quietly recategorised as a daytime beverage.

Perhaps this is why the coffee machine feels strangely familiar.

It resembles the end of a fixed-term contract.

Until the end date is mentioned, everything remains possible. There are projects to develop, collaborations to pursue, manuscripts to finish and plans stretching confidently into the future.

Then somebody says your contract is ending.

Nothing has materially changed. You are still there. The infrastructure still works. The capability remains. There is technically enough time to make one more coffee.

Yet the system begins cleaning the machine around you.

Possibility closes before the contract does.

Nobody explicitly says that useful work must stop. There may be no rule requiring anything to wind down at that precise moment. But the approaching boundary changes how everyone behaves.

Investment retreats.

Decisions are deferred.

New work becomes inconvenient.

The person remains fully operational, standing beside all the equipment required to contribute, but the system has already begun behaving as though they are gone.

We often judge systems by whether something technically exists. There is a coffee machine, therefore coffee has been accommodated. There is a staff member, therefore service is available. There is a researcher, therefore the work continues.

But presence is not the same as access.

Capability is not the same as permission.

And an arbitrary boundary can close possibility long before anything has actually ended.

A system’s real priorities become visible in what it makes effortless and what it treats as an inconvenience.

At 7:33 pm, alcohol, gambling and a ramshackle but beautiful band remain part of the supported evening ecosystem.

Coffee does not.

Gambling Man staggers freely into the darkness clutching his glass. I remain between two counters, sober, tired and apparently the evening’s greatest public-safety threat.

The machine is still warm.

The person is still standing there.

But administratively, it is already over.

Contraband request denied.