A Real Cup Please

Here I am in Cincinnati Ohio training some of our staff on our new product. I had a great day yesterday traveling ¾ of the way across the country on a non-stop flight. I watched a good flick (August Rush) and read a little in the latest John Grisham book, the Appeal.

The day was going fine and relaxing as I checked into the Sheraton hotel and headed up to my room. Since I got in about 3pm local time I decided just to work for a few hours from the room instead of heading over to the office. I sat down fired up the computer and took off. For some reason I cranked out so much stuff and the next thing I knew I was hungry. It had been 4 hours that I sat there and worked. Being that late I decided I would fix myself some tea and call for room service.

Sure enough there is the obligatory coffee pot in the room with the individual packs of coffee and even a couple of tea bags. Being a tea drinker I always travel with my own tea since the stuff in the hotel rooms has probably been sitting there for years. I look and the only cups in the room are “Plastic Foam Cups”. "Styrofoam" is a brand name applied only to Dow Chemical's plastic foam products, none of which is cups.

I am not a fan of Plastic Foam Cups, especially with tea and NEVER use one if you have lemon in your tea. The acid in the lemon breaks down the foam who knows what that does for you. I just don’t like the fact that if you put tea in a foam cup the thing creates foam on top similar to the head on a draft beer. What kind of reaction is occurring to make that happen? None of this happens with the paper cups you get from the coffee shops, only with a foam cup.

So I call room service and place my order, a BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwich with a side of Jalapenos and an empty coffee mug. “A real cup please”, and everything is right with the world again.