Remote meetings are a special kind of chaos that no one prepared us for. Screens freeze at the exact moment someone pulls a face. Audio cuts out mid-sentence, leaving everyone nodding along to absolutely nothing. And somehow, despite three rounds of "no you go ahead," four people still start talking at the same time.

The technology gets blamed every single time. The wifi is slow. The microphone is cheap. The camera hates everyone. But here is the thing nobody wants to say out loud - the technology is fine. The people are just not awake yet.

Think about it. Most remote meetings happen first thing in the morning. Everyone is blinking at their screens like confused owls, pretending to look alert while secretly hoping no one asks them a direct question. The brain is present in the technical sense only. The rest of the person is still somewhere between the pillow and breakfast.

There is one fix that nobody puts in the meeting agenda but everyone quietly relies on. It is not a software update. It is not a better headset. It is a hot cup of coffee sitting just off camera, doing the actual heavy lifting before the first slide even loads.

Caffeine is the unofficial IT department of remote work and honestly it deserves more credit than it gets.

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Roaster Notes

Asroma Café Small Batch Coffee Roaster (​https://aromacafewaterloo.ca/​ )

Waterloo, Ontario

In their own words: “We had a shared dream of owning our own quaint food space since we were teenagers. We were able to take action on this dream when we purchased the cafe in the spring of 2018 and we’ve never looked back.

Jeff (he/him) is our coffee roaster and guardian of the beans. He is also our chef.

Monica (she/her) is the bread maker, cake decorator, and baker of all things.”

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Caffeinated and slightly conspiratorial

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