This cup of coffee is starting to look distressingly threatening

If you are half as much a caffeine addict as the average University student, you might not have noticed something untoward and thoroughly SHADY happening at two of your local purveyors of bean. If you shell out $5 daily for a cup of Joe, the change might have been too gradual for you to register. Maybe all you’ve been aware of is a tendency to start falling asleep in your 4:10 CC section; maybe you’ve actually had to increase the number of coffees you purchase every day. You might have even begun to question your sanity when the cup you used to be able to finish in 30 minutes now seems to vanish in half the time.

But for those of us who invest a lot of our time in investigating alleged conspiracies and collusions, the truth is much more sinister. Joe the “Art” of “Coffee” and Oren’s Daily Roast are engaged in a sort of cold war of cup sizes. The cups are gradually shrinking. Had an intrepid individual (yours truly cannot admit to being that dedicated) collected a cup a day over the course of the last six months, it would become very clear that the cups are shrinking in both diameter in height.

Neither side willing to admit a cup size gap, the blueprints are continually updated, upgraded, redrawn to shave off precious milliliters and enable the plucking of additional dollars from the pockets of a competitor seven blocks away.

The battle rages on, and it is a petty one at that, leaving us innocent coffee consumers caught in the middle. But you can fight back against this injustice! It is in your power! Bring your own standard-sized thermos and request that it be filled with the precious nectar. But stay ever-vigilant, and change up locations frequently, lest either shop attempts to lay claim to your true affections.

The harbinger of a terrifying phenomenon via Wikimedia Commons