Confessions Of An Addict And Thief

Sooooo.... I steal iced tea. Somewhere over ten years and more like twenty years ago... I became addicted to iced tea. Not fancy green tea. Not fruity tea and certainly not the now ubiquitous...sweet tea. Just regular old Lipton or lacking that Luzianne or any solid orange pekoe and black tea mix. American tea...from China. Starbucks even broadened me a little bit to go pure black with their Tazo tea and although I went black... I still go back and forth. It is a nice change of pace.

I don’t know when I started to steal tea. For years I brewed my own in the office but then the delis and places in the lobby of my building started to offer it so I bought it... and I bought it... often buying two or three 32oz glasses a day to feed my habit. As three went to four and finally I was drinking tea all day long. I drink over a gallon of the stuff every day. I was spending 4-5 dollars a day on tea.

It started to piss me off. I was able to cut a deal with one vendor for free refills and that was fine but then I moved law firms (again) and the tea vendor did not move with me. i went back to brewing my own but there are so many hassles with refrigeration and having the proper ice (clear ice only). My ice obsession (fetish) is also troubling. I believe cloudy ice tastes funny and melts faster. I have absolutlely no facts to back this up. I am reasonably certain that I am wrong but I remain certain that I DON’T like it.

For the last two or three years I have struck a faustian bargain with the St. Louis Bread Company People. It is not a bargain which they have taken an active part negotiating. Fortunately i am comfortable with that. And lets be clear for my out of town readers, it is THE ST. LOUIS BREAD COMPANY! I know Panera bought them. I know they use the same logo. I know they are owned by some large conglomerate...but it was ours, ours OURS! But I digress.

I steal from the Bread Co. because I like their tea, and they make it easy for me, and I give them a reasonable amount of business. For a while I had a habit of meeting clients out in various Bread Companys refering to them as “my Des Peres Office” or “my Chesterfield Office”. I really do like the Bread Company... they do an awesome job with quality control, cleanliness and really friendly, competent people. They also toast a mean bagel. At first I started to buy a new iced tea every day and then I would consider it a bottomless cup. Now I have moved on to buying one iced tea a week and then refilling throughout the week. Soon I am afraid I will be using the same cup week after week as the plastic clouds and deteriorates.

I guess this is a cry for help. My tea habit appears to be out of control. I am breaking the law by stealing from the Bread Co. to support my habit and sooner or later I can see local police leading me off in cuffs after having compiled a YouTube video of me stealing iced tea over 20,000 times... over and over and over. This could severely derail my clear path to that Supreme Court nomination that everyone is considering me for.