Watercooler to go

Around the watercooler is an expression certainly more American than apple pie. So American in fact that the magazine Psychology Today uses the phrase as the title of its blog on the psychology of rumors.

Today, on Friday the 13th of September 2013, I saw my first ever watercooler in Germany.  Not surprisingly, the familiar blue tinted water container had the all upper case warning in English "DO NOT USE FOR OTHER LIQUIDS", the in your face evidence that watercoolers are not native around here.

Since office gossip happens around that watercooler and the Germans really don't have watercoolers, is there no gossip in a German office?

The long days, weeks, months, and years spent in the location of daily psychological torture and humiliation called "the office", in different countries on different continents, allows only one conclusion: the Germans have another place to indulge in and suffer from office gossip.

It is the office kitchen or the office coffee machine!

Speaking of which, good coffee is, and has been for a long time, everywhere around here. Unlike London twenty years ago, when you had to trawl the seedy streets around King's Cross Station and go, psst, is there any decent coffee in this city, I'll pay extra for some premium beans?

In a German city, you are never more than a quarter mile from good coffee, yet you don't find the commercial enthusiasm of big city America where we have personally seen an intersection on which all four corners had a Starbucks coffee shop.

The common American slurping of coffee or the munching of burgers while trundling along the street is not a habit here, but you can get your coffee to go. In a paper cup.

Or, as the shops in even the smallest of towns where nobody speaks much English advertise: "Coffee To Go!" or "Kaffee To Go!"

Gossip around the coffee maker or coffee machine creates and spreads rumors, which we Amis then hear through the grapevine or "as the rumor mill" has it. Incidentally, with a big sorry to all Buddhists and Tibetans, growing up TheEditor first encountered the phrases "rumor mill" and "prayer mill" simultaneously and, with much shame, has to admit that they somehow stuck close together, so that talking or thinking about one would wake up the other phrase. 
Where our rumor mill does some grinding, the Germans cook up their rumors in the "rumor kitchen" (Geruechtekueche), stirring and spicing up the cuisine of everyday language, the daily dish.