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Comment by JohnBooty | Hacker News Reader

The purpose of a coffee date is to weed out people who don't drink coffee. You wouldn't want to work with such a freak of nature!

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You can learn a lot about someone's coffee habits. How much sugar, how much milk. How much... whiskey.

Who drinks plain coffee? Latte, espresso, chai - single or double shot - soy or low-fat, the list goes on and on!

Our whole team interviewed a guy at a local restaurant over lunch. Normally the interviewee would order something simple because we'd be grilling them pretty hard... but this guy ordered the yak. What did it mean?!!?

I'd say about half the people in the Netherlands drink their coffee "gewoon" ("just")! Add too much milk and it's officially "verkeerd" (wrong). As in, coffee machines in petrol stations have a "koffie verkeerd" button, presumably for foreign truckers from far off lands where they spoil their delicious hot beverage with... (blegh) milk.

Speaking of spoiling delicious beverages with milk, have you heard what the English do to their tea?

If you have tea that strong you are going to want to temper it with some milk.

If you drink good coffee it's amazing all by itself.

    - Shall I put rum in the coffee?
    - Sure.

> - Shall I put coffee in the rum?

FTFY

So it turns out I love espresso, but I don't drink alcohol. Does that put me in the "freak of nature" category?

No. You're wonderful. But... don't tell anybody we said that.

Darn. Never touched coffee myself. People always seem surprised especially when they discover I'm a developer.

We'll just go ahead and assume you don't drink coffee because you're too busy munching on mouthfuls of Adderall tablets like they were Tic-Tacs.

Oh. I think I have a sensitivity to caffeine, because drinking coffee causes an onset of a migraine that I don't like when I'm writing code or managing systems.

Typically caffeine headaches occur when you stop drinking it.

Yes. Only, I have never been a habitual drinker of coffee. When I started drinking regularly for a short period, I stopped once I noticed the pattern. For me, cheese and chocolate, as well, triggers a migraine.

Chocolate of course has theobromine, similar to caffeine with similar effects. Cheese? Any idea why that might be similar?

Maybe the common thing that is irritating him is the milk products in Cheese, Coffee and Chocolate.

An interesting hypothesis, undermined if the coffee was black.

I have felt that certain dairy products do trigger the migraine. However, milk itself doesn't cause it. I also drink milked-tea regularly without any headaches/migraines.

Tyramine? Tyramine could be the cause of headaches, especially if MAOIs are involved.

Some people get a caffeine headache in the morning because they haven't been drinking it while they were asleep.

Caffeine headaches? You mean the headaches that people get when they try and take away my caffeine and I hit them in the head?

We can assume you don't get enough sleep like the rest of us. What are you using then, soda?

Not sure if sarcastic but...some people write code and are well rested.

I often have a cup of tea, but that's often herbal. I rarely ever drink soda. Strangely, I'll still ask people if they want to meet for coffee, even though I don't drink it. It just seems to be the standard beverage for these sorts of things.

My guess would be Mountain Dew or similar

Nope, just water and tea, often herbal. Those are really the only two things I drink with any regular frequency, not counting the milk in my morning cereal.

You must get plenty of sleep then. Good for you!

I don't drink coffee either. I drink water and unsweetened iced tea. That's about the only things that I drink that is non alcoholic.

- He said with a wide eyed stare, his nose bleeding accompanied by the unrelenting taps of his foot.

OP is in Sweden. "To have a coffee" is so common that it's a 4 letter verb (att fika) and they are among the top nations for coffee consumption. So while your point still stands, the number of people you exclude from this request is pretty small...

Or a mormon?

I'd consider that a valid excuse. Barely.

Living in the Morridor, very barely, willingness to adapt their faiths dietary rules to other traditions to is very strongly correlated with willing to work on a diverse team without preaching.

Willingness to "Do coffee", even if they order a soda or hot cocoa, is a great test of this. Similarly how adverse are they to a meetup at a brewpub or somewhere similar.

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