Whoops: My random comment about coffee became a product ticket

If you like to work, it’s nice to work at a place where everybody takes their work seriously. There’s none of the “group project” problem at school where one kid does the whole thing and everybody else takes credit. Everyone at US Mobile is the one kid who does all the work.

It also means everyone’s pretty good at their job. And there might be nobody better at their jobs than Matt and Juan, our NYC office manager and NYC office barista. That’s right, office barista.

Our CEO likes to say that the best cafe in midtown Manhattan is private and in our office. I’ve tried the whole menu, and many of the other cafes in midtown Manhattan, and can’t disagree. 

Well Matt and Juan, the crazy bastards, have whipped up something new (maybe literally whipped up? Not sure if there’s whipping involved here).

A cold brew with mascarpone cold foam. Take a look at that thing!

It’s Friday afternoon and now I’m wishing it were Monday because I want that thing. So I comment in the Slack thread:

Damn does the system take preorders? 😂

Oh yeah, forgot to mention: Huan on the Product team created a web app that lets you order coffee. It sends the order directly to Matt and Juan, then you get a Slack notification when your coffee is ready. Like I said, everyone here likes work.

So Matt posts the picture of his new piece of art mascarpone cold foam cold brew coffee and I comment “Damn does the system take preorders? 😂.”

The response I expected to this comment was nothing at all. It’s not a joke, it’s not meant to be funny. It’s meant to communicate “I want that coffee.”

Instead of no response, I get this:

Anish, on our Engineering team, half-jokes that Huan will code a preorder system overnight. Then Huan asks Anish to create a ticket. Like a ticket in the ticketing system that manages all of the company’s major projects. It went from a throwaway comment I made not even as a joke suggestion to “this is a real task I, the principal product manager, will actually do” in the span of three Slack comments.

I guess we’re getting a coffee preorder system now. And yes, I will definitely use it to preorder that exact drink pictured above.