The Great Coffee Caper: How a Caffeine-Starved Intern Toppled Office Tyranny:

It all started with a stapler.

Not just any stapler—the stapler. The crimson-red Swingline model that perched on the desk of Gerald Fitzpatrick, Director of Efficiency and self-proclaimed “Lord of the Spreadsheets.” Gerald ruled the third floor of Brantley & Brantley Accounting with the iron fist of a man who alphabetized his paperclips and timed his bathroom breaks. His latest decree? No coffee before 10:15 AM.

“Productivity peaks post-midmorning hydration,” he’d announced, adjusting his tie adorned with tiny calculators. The office groaned. We were accountants, not monks. But Gerald’s true crime wasn’t the coffee embargo—it was his theft of the communal Keurig. He’d locked it in his office, reserving its caffeinated magic for himself.

Enter Marigold “Mari” Perkins, our sleep-deprived intern. Mari was a whirlwind of mismatched socks, half-finished crosswords, and a perpetual glaze of exhaustion from juggling night classes. On Day Three of Gerald’s java tyranny, she slumped at her desk, staring at her screen saver (a dancing taco) like it held the secrets of the universe.

“I’ll die,” she rasped to Clive from HR, a man who owned 14 Hawaiian shirts and a nervous habit of humming show tunes. “I need coffee now, or I’ll start auditing my own soul.”

Clive slid her a sticky note: “Gerald’s out by 3 PM. Office key’s in the ficus.”

The plan was simple: sneak into Gerald’s office, borrow the Keurig, brew a cup, and return it before he noticed. Mari practiced her stealth walk (a crouch-waddle hybrid) and rehearsed excuses (“Just admiring your ergonomic chair, sir!”).

But fate, as it often does, intervened with a banana peel.

At 2:58 PM, Gerald left for a “synergy seminar.” Mari tiptoed toward his office, key in hand, when Dave from IT materialized beside her. Dave was a conspiracy theorist who believed pigeons were government drones.

“You here to hack the mainframe?” he whispered urgently.

“Uh… sure. Totally.”

“Cool. Don’t touch the plants—they’re listening.”

Mari slipped inside Gerald’s sanctum. The room smelled of lemon disinfectant and existential dread. There it was: the Keurig, gleaming like Excalibur. She plugged it in, shoved in a pod labeled “Dark Roast Desperation,” and hit brew.

Whirrr. Gurgle. Hiss.

Then—silence.

The machine emitted a death rattle. A puff of smoke curled upward. Mari stared, horrified, as error messages flashed: “OUT OF ORDER. PLEASE CONTACT YOUR OVERLORD.”

Panicking, she grabbed the Keurig, only to trip over Gerald’s perfectly aligned trash can. The machine flew from her hands, crashed into his bookshelf, and unleashed an avalanche of binders titled “Tax Code: Volume 1-47.”

Gerald returned early.

The scene he encountered: Mari buried under a mountain of binders, Clive attempting to yank her free while singing “Defying Gravity,” Dave lecturing a potted fern about chemtrails, and the Keurig—now in three pieces—spitting coffee grounds like a dyspeptic fountain.

“WHAT,” Gerald boomed, “IS THE MEANING OF THIS?”

Silence fell. Mari emerged, clutching a binder titled “Deductible Donuts: A 10-Year Study.”

“It was me,” she blurted. “I just… wanted coffee. And maybe to live a little.”

Gerald’s face turned the color of a boiled lobster. “Coffee,” he hissed, “is a privilege. A reward. You think chaos fuels productivity? Look at this… this anarchy!” He gestured wildly at Dave, who was now interrogating a desk lamp.

But then, something miraculous happened.

The coffee machine, in its death throes, sputtered one final stream of espresso—directly into Gerald’s left nostril.

The office froze. Gerald blinked. Then, slowly, he raised a trembling finger… and laughed.

It started as a snort, morphed into a wheeze, and erupted into full-bodied guffaws. “My… my nose!” he gasped. “It’s… it’s brewing!”

The next morning, the Keurig sat proudly in the break room, duct-taped but functional. Gerald, now sporting a coffee-stained tie, had rewritten his decree: “Caffeine permitted 24/7. Chaos… tolerated.”

Mari became legend. Clive started a jazz band. Dave married the fern.

And the stapler?

Gerald gifted it to Mari. “For your next rebellion,” he winked.

She used it to staple his sleeves to his desk. But that’s another story.

THE END