8 Very American Situations Where Holding a Coffee Doesn't Make Sense

America was practically designed for road trips.

Unfortunately, so was the American cup holder.

Your phone is in one.

There's a water bottle in the other.

Your passenger has somehow acquired a 44-ounce fountain drink.

And now you've decided what this vehicle really needs is another 16 ounces of hot liquid.

So begins the great reshuffling.

Water bottle goes between your legs.

Phone moves to the door.

Coffee gets the premium cup holder.

Then you hit a pothole somewhere outside Nashville and immediately reconsider the arrangement.

Coffee on a road trip sounds perfect.

Until you're the one driving.

You enter Home Depot with a coffee in one hand and a very reasonable shopping list in the other.

Twenty minutes later, you're trying to maneuver a sheet of plywood onto a cart while carrying screws, a tape measure and something from the plumbing aisle you're only 70% sure is the right size.

The coffee?

Still there.

Somehow.

You put it on a shelf for “two seconds.”

Then spend the next fifteen minutes trying to remember which aisle you abandoned it in.

Eventually, some Home Depot employee finds a perfectly good cold brew sitting between two boxes of deck screws.

Another one lost in service.

You've got the headphones on.

The mower is running.

The grass is slightly longer than you should have allowed it to get.

And you still haven't finished your morning coffee.

If you've got a riding mower, maybe you've been blessed with a cup holder.

If you're pushing?

Good luck.

Coffee ends up on the porch.

Then the work begins.

Forty-five minutes later, you remember it exists.

By then, your nice hot morning coffee has become a room-temperature reward waiting beside the front door.

The lawn looks great, though.

One hand has the tongs.

The other has your phone because somebody can't find where you parked.

There's a folding chair under your arm, burgers on the grill and someone has just asked whether you brought the mustard.

This is not a coffee-friendly environment.

Even if you successfully find somewhere to put the cup, you're now responsible for remembering which of the 17 identical cups sitting around the tailgate belongs to you.

And once the game starts?

You're carrying your phone, ticket, maybe a jacket, probably food...

and apparently a coffee too.

At some point, caffeine became luggage.

If you work at a desk, coffee has a natural habitat.

Put it beside the keyboard.

Try not to knock it over.

Done.

But mechanics, contractors, warehouse workers, landscapers, electricians, kitchen crews and anyone else whose hands are actually part of the job have a different problem.

You can't exactly hold a wrench and a latte simultaneously.

So the coffee gets parked somewhere.

On the workbench.

On the truck.

On a shelf.

On the ground.

Anywhere that looks reasonably flat and unlikely to result in disaster.

Then work happens.

Twenty minutes later:

“Where did I put my coffee?”

If you spend your day working with your hands, the most inconvenient part of caffeine might literally be the container it comes in.

There's something wonderfully American about being awake at an hour you'd normally consider offensive because someone said the fish bite better early.

It's dark.

It's cold.

You've got your rod.

Tackle.

Bait.

Phone.

Maybe a cooler.

And because it's 5:17AM, obviously you've brought coffee.

Then something finally bites.

Suddenly, nobody cares where the coffee goes.

It gets dropped onto the dock.

Balanced on the side of the boat.

Wedged somewhere questionable.

Because if there's a fish on the line, the coffee has officially lost priority.

Which is fair.

You didn't wake up at 4:30 to catch a latte.

Saturday morning.

You're standing beside a soccer field, baseball diamond or football field with coffee in one hand.

Then your kid walks over.

“Can you hold this?”

Sure.

Now you have a jacket.

Then a water bottle.

Then somebody needs a snack.

Your phone rings.

Another parent starts talking to you.

The game restarts.

Your kid does something important.

You try to clap.

You cannot clap.

Because one of your hands has been assigned permanent coffee duty since 8:06AM.

Eventually, the cup goes onto the grass.

Where it remains until approximately three minutes before you leave.

Parenthood: the only job where your hands are apparently public storage.

This might be coffee's natural American predator:

The garage project.

Maybe you're working on the truck.

Organizing tools.

Changing the oil.

Fixing the thing you told your spouse would “take twenty minutes.”

Whatever it is, the process is remarkably consistent.

Step one: bring coffee into garage.

Step two: put coffee somewhere safe.

Step three: immediately forget where “somewhere safe” was.

Step four: spend the next hour occasionally remembering that you had coffee.

Eventually, you find it behind a toolbox.

Cold.

Untouched.

And somehow covered in a very light layer of something you definitely don't want to drink.

At that point...

just let it go.