WEEKLY WHINE

Focal Plane: Coffee immunity

This is the first instalment of the GoobNet Focal Plane, an occasional series wherein we highlight an unimportant social problem, trying to make you care about it.

It is 11:17 PDT. Dale Arneau cannot work. He is tired, dazed, and semiconscious. He has already had eight cups of coffee since he started work at 09:00 PDT. Dale Arneau is only one of a rapidly growing number of people - those who are immune to coffee.

"Remember that one Saved By the Bell when Jessie was addicted to caffeine pills? What I wouldn't give to have that problem," Arneau laments. He has been working as a statistician at Footloose and Proxy Accounting for seventeen years, and for the past five years coffee has had little or no effect on him. "It used to be that I'd get to the office, drink one cup. I'd be ready to go the whole day. But now...." He looks around him - his office is strewn with the remnants of ground coffee containers and used filters. A bulletin board on the wall contains various wrappers tacked to it. "Those are the brands that can't do the trick for me any more." All major coffee brands - and most minor brands - are represented on this board.

Arneau's supervisor, Jill Roquefort, understands Arneau's problem. "When he got here, Dale was the most enthusiastic statistician on the staff," Roquefort told us. "And he could also take fresh approaches to most of the problems we had. That's always been his best attribute, and it's why he's one of our most important team members even when he's in a rundown state like he is today." For the past several years, Roquefort has always been eager to help Arneau on his quest for an effective coffee bean. "I'm telling you, all that's standing between this guy and the biggest success story in statistics is caffeine," Roquefort says.

The coffee leader

Some forty million people worldwide are believed to be immune to coffee, an ailment that is rapidly growing. Here in Seattle, the city that is all but synonymous with coffee, the problem is correspondingly worse. When such establishments as Starbucks overran the city in the 1990s, coffee consumption rose dramatically with the increasing supply. The average Seattle resident now drinks four cups of coffee per week, compared with less than one per week as recently as 1988. Some blame circumstantial evidence such as climate.

"The Pacific Northwest is known for being rainy and dreary for much of the year," says Ralph Frimmer, socioclimatologist at the University of Washington. "This is a common problem at landmasses on the western shores of a continent that have cold ocean currents running past them; the same is true of the British Isles. The British generally go after this problem with tea; for Northwesterners, coffee is the liquid of choice."

But why has coffee use grown so rapidly? "Even before the coffee boom, residents of Seattle drank a lot of coffee. In 1985, coffee consumption in Seattle averaged about three cups per person per month. The national average at that time was two, so Seattle has long gone heavy on the coffee. It turned out that during the 1990s, Seattle led a nationwide coffee boom."

Spreading like wildfire

Darren McKenna opened Coffee Beantown, a coffee shop in downtown Boston, in 1988. The business was reasonably successful for the first few years, but, McKenna says, really took off in about 1994. "Starbucks establishments opened in Boston about two years before that. We were competing head to head against them, really. But then something remarkable happened. Profits skyrocketed at every coffee shop in the city. The demand was expanding even more rapidly than any of us could imagine."

In 1996, Coffee Beantown's long awaited expansion was complete. By buying out adjacent businesses, McKenna tripled the shop's volume. A stage was built for live performances, with a second floor balcony overlooking it. The shop also expanded its selection as McKenna came across new flavours. "People from Kenya or Perú or Turkmenistan or whatever would come to me and suggest that we get whatever type of coffee they had in their home nation. So for the past eight years or so, we've been adding a constant variety of international flavours. People are drinking so much coffee these days that they don't want the same old thing every day. They expect variety."

What sent profits up so rapidly? Few are surprised at the apparent answer: technology. Rapid advancements in technology led the world into an economic boom, and the coffee industry came along for the ride. "We've had a lot of tech people come in over the years. Programmers, systems analysts, IT consultants, anyone who spends their hours sitting at computers tend to be big coffee drinkers."

Antibodies

The tech market collapsed upon itself in 2000, but McKenna and others report that coffee sales have only taken a slight hit since then. Coffee drinkers have always been considered addicts - did the tech boom create a new series of them? "Our clientele hasn't really changed over the past two years," McKenna observes. "Some people have moved out of the city, but in general there still seem to be a lot from the tech companies that are left around here."

Those who continue to head to their neighbourhood coffee shops are now reporting something shocking - an inability to get wired. "I've come here at least twice a week for the past five years," says Mona Rodgers, a claims adjuster in Boston. "For a while, I could get a latte or a Brazilian brew to wake me up, and I'd be good for the whole morning. But over time, that first jolt started to wear off sooner and sooner. About two years ago, I noticed it wasn't really doing anything to me. I started asking them for stronger and stronger brews. Eventually I met with Darren, and he told me that the Melanesian Double was the strongest coffee that he was legally able to serve."

It is a Saturday afteroon at Coffee Beantown, and the place is crowded for a weekend. We listen to the Costa Rican band beneath our balcony seats for a bit longer, and then Rodgers continues. "I still drink coffee, but nowhere near as often. It's not nearly as effective either. Every once in a while I feel a bit more alert when I drink it, but I'm usually imagining it."

Rodgers is apparently atypical of the technology-induced American coffee drinker. The balance sheets of various establishments, including Coffee Beantown, show that sales are just as strong as ever. For many customers, though, the java is anything but strong.

Heading home

Back at the Seattle, WA offices of Footloose and Proxy, Jill Roquefort is reading something. "Here's the result of an analysis that Dale did on cattle ranching. We were trying to figure out something, anything that was linked to sudden drops in cattle populations that ranchers have been reporting. The team couldn't get anywhere with it, and I finally gave it to Dale. And can you - "

"I'm done for the day. See you Monday." It is Dale Arneau, who, despite having completely disorganised hair, looks to be in his best condition all day. It is now 16:52 PDT on this Friday, and Roquefort is reviewing the project that Arneau spent the week on.

"Hang on, Dale. I want to talk to you." Arneau sits across Roquefort's desk as a monorail train slides into view outside her window. "Carbon dioxide? These cattle are dying because of carbon dioxide?"

Arneau responds, uncomfortably. "That's the only correlation I could draw. Very slight, certainly, but it's all I could come up with."

"So carbon dioxide concentrations rise by a fraction of a percent, and cattle die. Unbelieveable."

"I know. It can't be right. I'll look over it again on Monday, see where I screwed up. Then - "

Roquefort cuts him off. "Dale, you always forget your job description. We're not interested in the right answer. You can't get that from numbers anyway. People hire us to find correlations, and then they find out whether they're right. Besides, I already checked your analysis. You're dead on. It's certainly not convincing evidence, but it's way stronger than anything the blue team came up with. Now go home before you pass out in my office. I've got a new job for Monday."

"Sure thing, boss." He leaves the office as Roquefort rises from her chair. The report is in her hand, and the Sun is shining into her office.

"He's unable to wake up in the morning, but he's always creating these," she says softly. "Not everyone who's immune to coffee is as fortunate as he is."