Trust your waiter at your own peril

Yeah, sure you are...

Today's run (treadmill): 25 minutes

There are certain things we know we shouldn't do, but we do them anyway. These things are often situational. For me, it's the decision to order coffee after a business lunch. There's nothing wrong with coffee, but I am extremely sensitive to the amount of caffeine I can keep in my system. A little goes a long way for me and I find it a legitimate performance supplement for running.  But having caffeine too late in the day generally disrupts my night's sleep.

While caffeinated coffee affects me, decaf doesn't. At home I can confidently brew a pot of decaf when entertaining friends at night and drop off to sleep without a problem. The problem happens when I order decaf in a restaurant and get regular coffee. I've had enough experience to know that, even after stressing the word decaf and then verifying that the cup placed in front of me contains it, there's a percentage chance that I've been given the fully caffeinated brew.

Caffeine version please

That's exactly what happened to me yesterday at lunch. I thought about the risk, but ordered it anyway. It wasn't until I was tossing and turning in bed last night that I realized what I'd done. If I was a chemist, I'd look for a way of sampling coffee to instantly determine the presence or percentage of caffeine in the cup. It could be like the color-changing chemical that police use to determine if a suspected substance contains cocaine.

I think I could make a lot of money marketing that to caffeine-sensitive people. It would also allow me to take waiters to task for botching my order. That would be much better than cursing them at midnight as I wait to fall asleep.