The Room Standard 1.0.0

Summary

The Room Standard establishes a simple convention for talking about room for cream. When a consumer orders a hot beverage from a provider and there is a verbal exchange about leaving room in the container for a condiment such as cream or milk:

1. Room is specified as a number of units from the top or from the lid.
2. A unit of room is a vertical measurement about equal to the width of a standard #2 pencil.
3. From the lid means from the lowest part of the lid.

Introduction

There is a problem that sometimes occurs when ordering coffee or tea. If you like to add cream or milk to your beverage you need room for it. The amount of room desired varies from one person to the next for a variety of reasons, and there is no commonly understood way to specify how much room you want.

This often creates the need for awkward and confused conversations as the consumer and provider attempt to converge on a common understanding of the amount of room desired. It also leads to unfortunate outcomes like a cup overflowing all over the condiment counter while other customers are waiting, or garbage bags containing large volumes of liquid that have been poured into the garbage.

As a solution to this problem, I propose a simple system of approximate measurement and an accompanying nomenclature that, once adopted, make it possible to quickly and effortlessly arrive at unambiguous agreement about the amount of room desired.

I call this system the Room Standard.

The Room Specification

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119).

1. A consumer is anyone communicating their beverage preferences to another person where the other person functions as a provider.
2. A provider is anyone preparing a beverage according to preferences communicated to them by a consumer.
3. An amount of room MUST be expressed as a number of units in the form "N from the top" OR "N from the lid", where:
4. N is a non-negative number. The use of whole numbers is RECOMMENDED when specifying units of room. The use of fractional numbers is OPTIONAL. A provider MAY decline to support the use of fractional numbers.
5. A unit of room is a vertical linear measurement about equal to the thickness of a standard #2 pencil (about 1/4 inch or about 7 millimeters). (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencil#By_size) A unit of room MUST NOT be used to express or provision a measurement of area or volume.
6. The top is the point on the container at which the container, when placed in a stable position on a flat stable surface, would begin to overflow upon the introduction of additional contents.
7. When room is specified in the form "N from the top", room MUST be provisioned in the number of units specified, measured vertically from the top.
8. The lid is the matching accessory fitting in or over and covering the top, which may take up some of the space below the top.
9. When room is specified in the form "N from the lid", room MUST be provisioned in the number of units specified, measured vertically from the lower extremity of the space occupied by the lid.

Why Use The Room Standard?

The Room Standard takes almost no effort to learn and use, and saves the user a bit of mental energy by eliminating a point of confusion that is small but appears repeatedly in daily life. Just remember that a unit of room is about the width of a standard pencil.

All you have to do to start using the Room Standard is--well, start using it.

If you typically order your coffee or tea with room, just say "two from the top" or "two from the lid" (or one or three or four, or whatever you need).

If you are a Barista and a customer orders their coffee or tea with room, just ask "two from the top?" or "two from the lid?" (as a good starting point).

If the other person doesn't understand, just tell them to have a quick look at roomforcream.org.

In no time this will become something that no one will need to give a second thought to.

FAQ

Are you serious?

Yes... Mostly.

The Room Standard is a social experiment, an experiment in open standards development, and an experiment in online engagement. It is admittedly a bit quirky and possibly humorous, and that is mostly deliberate. But it does target a real problem (albeit a relatively minor one) and I do seriously hope for widespread adoption.

I'd like to live in a world where I can walk into a coffee shop, hand my personal cup to the barista, and say "Earl Gray tea, two from the lid" and be instantly and effortlessly understood. (I don't think I'm alone in this.)

There's been an interesting range of responses to the Room Standard. You can add yours.

When the lid sits flat over the top of the container, and therefore doesn't take up any vertical space below the top, should room be specified from the lid or from the top?

In this case they mean exactly the same thing. So either way.

What should I do if I think I've found a problem with the standard?

The Room Standard is maintained on Github, and the worldwide community of coffee and tea drinkers and purveyors is invited to contribute to its ongoing development. If you'd like to report a bug or make a feature request, please open an issue.

How can I support roomforcream.org

The best way to support us is to just start using the the Room Standard.

You can also make a donation.

We are open to inquiries about sponsorship.

About

The Room Standard is authored by Art Badger, tea drinker.

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.