About three years.

When you first start working there, you like the smell. You learn how to differentiate the smell of freshly pulled espresso shots from the drip brew from the pound of coffee someone just ground for an idiot who was too cheap to pay out for a grinder, which would have ensured they had the freshest coffee in their home brewer. After a while, you don't notice the smell anymore (unless you work a open to close, and then it just feels as if your pores are expelling coffee grounds by the end of your fourteen hour shift). Then, when you're really sick of working for your coffee overlords, you get nauseated just walking into your store. Fortunately, the minute you quit, you get over the loathing. At least that's the way it worked for me. But by then I was hooked on the caffeine, so I had to get over my loathing: it was medically necessary.

This is probably longer than you were expecting, but you get used to it after a while. You also get used to smelling like it. Particularly your hands: they don't lose the smell of coffee until the coffee-stained calluses you gained from pulling thousands of shots fall off a few months after you quit.

But, then again, I could be wrong. ;)

Whoa.

I'm coming over to your house for a cup of coffee.

the pound of coffee someone just ground for an idiot who was too cheap to pay out for a grinder, which would have ensured they had the freshest coffee in their home brewer.

Not quite the freshest. My chef instructor buys his beans green, then uses an old air popcorn popper to roast them one pots worth at a time.

We've done that. It's the best way to get my African favorites just right - not too dark, not too light.

Rob's question was entirely rhetorical, as evidenced by Kathy's response - it was the dark master who was cheap and a slave driver whom Kathy had to overthrow, not her dark master the coffee bean, who keeps no hours and shares no sovereignty.

My favorite t-shirt from back in the day said, "There is black coffee. All else is tautology."