Life. Is. Hard.

One thing about our office building at work, we share a "lunch room" with several other companies. The thing about the lunch room is that it requires any of us who may want to go there to maneuver through six doors (three of them locked--it's a secure environment) and walk outside the building to get to it. Most of us drink water (some of us a lot of water) and most of us like the ice and filtered water obtainable in the lunch room. So a lot of trips to the lunch room end up happening at our place.

Because of the trouble involved in fetching anything from the lunch room, several of us usually take turns getting each other something to drink. When it is my turn, I do my best to fulfill orders accurately, and I usually manage it well. It helps having long fingers when it comes to balancing several full cups while unlocking, opening, and closing multiple doors.

But I do run into problems with any orders for a "half glass." I want to fulfill the request "just right" and there are so many difficulties with measuring "half a glass."

Should I measure a half from the top of the glass? Or is it half of what is usually a full glass which really isn't all the way to the top of the glass? What if the cup is narrower at the bottom than the top--if I measured a half visually that wouldn't be a real cubic half, would it? What if ice is required--do I allow for the displacement created by the ice? What if it is soda--how much extra should I pour out because of what will gradually be lost in volume as the fizz dies down? And if I am measuring from the top of the glass, not allowing for a narrow base, allowing for ice, and not allowing for soda, how will that half glass look different from a half glass where, say, I measure from what is normally a full glass (which really isn't to the top of the glass), allow for a narrow base, allow for ice, and allow for fizz?

I have yet to solve all of these problems satisfactorily in my own mind, but no one has complained yet.