Coffee Cup wash Or Not Wash, That's A Problem

There are two kinds of people in the world. The first kind of people take pains to wash the coffee cups in the office.

The second kind of person would only take the quilt away from their desk when they rebrewed their coffee and cover up the hardened coffee stains in the cup with the new coffee, thinking that the hot coffee must be hot enough to kill the bacteria in the cup or something else, to cover up their guilt.

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If you are the first kind of person, the following may make you uncomfortable.

If you're a second kind of person, congratulations: Heidi Mitchell writes in a Wall Street journal column that it's ok to never wash coffee cups, as long as you don't share one.

Not only that, in fact: this is probably the most hygienic practice.

There are two caveats to the above statement.

First, it only works if you don't share a cup with someone else, Jeffrey Starke, a professor of pediatrics at baylor college of medicine, told Heidi Mitchell.

Second, "if you leave butter or sugar in the cup, it's likely to become moldy after the weekend," and it needs cleaning.

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Beyond that, there's not much to worry about.

"If you culture an unwashed coffee mug, you can find bacteria in it," Starke says.

But most of those bacteria come from people who use cups."

If a person drinks from the same cup when they are sick, it is difficult to get reinfection.

Most viruses do not survive long outside the body.

That said, it might be safer to leave coffee stains in your glass quietly than to clean it with a dirty public sponge from the company kitchen.

"There's probably more bacteria in the sponge baths than anywhere else in the company," Starke says.

If you find it intolerable not washing the cup, throw the sponge in the microwave before use.

Otherwise, just be lazy.