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“Maybe the solution is to go one step at a time and see what happens, not try to do anything drastic,” I tell Gab.

This is how I end up trying to change our coffee.

SALIM’S COFFEE IS popular and tastes horrible—to me, anyway. I say this not as someone who refuses to drink anything but Jamaican Blue Mountain or coffee produced on collectively owned farms with ecologically responsible land tenure systems in countries that provide universal pre-K-through-3 education and have no military. I’d like to be that kind of consumer, but I don’t have the will or the money. What I am is someone who likes coffee to taste like coffee, whereas Salim’s coffee tastes like a scientist’s attempt to create coffee without coffee beans, using something weird like flavor crystals. The company that makes it, called CaféAmerica, besides having the inspiring patriotism I love to see in my food, specializes, according to its brochure, in coffee “for large offices and other institutional settings.” It’s the sort of coffee that is so bad it actually tastes better when combined with the tangy aftertaste of a Styrofoam cup. Teachers’ lounges and “breakfast nooks”—that’s what the smell reminds me of. Nonetheless, Salim’s coffee does have its fans, which may have something to with its cattle prod–like effect on the human nervous system and may also be connected with the fact that when you combine its non-coffee taste with two spoonfuls of sugar and milk, it tastes exactly like … sugar and milk. It’s also really really cheap, and for us the profit margin isn’t bad. But I think I can get us a better profit margin and sell even more cups by replacing CaféAmerica with a Brooklyn-based company called Houston Brothers, which roasts its own coffee using quality beans and offers an inexpensive commercial blend that tastes like real coffee but isn’t overly strong and, best of all, will require us to raise the price of a small cup by only ten cents.

Kay isn’t enthusiastic. Nevertheless, she reluctantly allows me to go ahead and make the change, perhaps because she knows that before I get anywhere I’ll have to deal with Willy Loman.

GAB AND I started calling the sales rep for CaféAmerica Willy Loman because he seemed to have stepped right out of a manual for the Dale Carnegie school of salesmanship. Sixtyish and bespectacled, with a square briefcase and unfashionable trenchcoat, he would often say optimistic, gung ho things that seemed at odds with his humdrum appearance. It was tempting—too tempting—to view him as a figure from a bygone era. Beneath the bland exterior he was all tenacity and fight, and he would claw for every inch of his surely shrinking territory.

The next time he comes in, I’m waiting for him with the bad news: we’re changing the coffee. However, before I can give him the elaborate speech I’ve prepared, I have already lost control of the meeting, as Willy Loman grabs my outstretched hand and drags me into the corner of the store for a confidential powwow. It’s not clear why he’s whispering until I realize that without wanting to be, I’ve been forced to become his ally.

“So, are your enjoying the coffee?” he asks confidently.

I lie and say yes. I don’t have the courage to tell him I hate his coffee. My argument for getting rid of CaféAmerica depends entirely on blaming other people for not liking it.

“Splendid,” says Willy Loman, while scribbling on a clipboard. “I’ve got a whole shipment with your name on it in the warehouse. Is four boxes of Brown Gold too little?”

Brown Gold? Is that the name of the blend CaféAmerica has been sending us?

“Actually, I think you should hold off,” I say, my throat tightening, “for now.” Why can’t I be forthright? No stomach for conflict! No backbone! Stop being so polite for once in your life and say what you really want to say!

Willy Loman knows what’s up, though, and refuses to acknowledge it.

“Oh?” he says nonchalantly. “Would you prefer something else? I’ll just make it Donut Blend instead.” Without missing a beat, he