Can’t a Guy Get Some Goddamned Sweet’N Low Up in This Place?!

All right, Washington City Paper: Now I understand that, in this post-Loaf world of budget cuts and financial restraints, certain sacrifices have to be made. But, currently, this is what the City Paper has stocked in its third-floor kitchen:

34 cannisters of fine granulated sugar
22 cannisters of Coffee-Mate
3 bags of coffee
36 boxes of assorted teas (including 10 boxes of chai)
6 boxes of stir sticks
1 cannister of Quaker Oats
1 box of Frosted Bite-Size Mini-Wheats
0 packets of Sweet'N Low

Yes, I counted that shit. I counted it while waiting for a fresh pot of coffee so foul that I can only assume either a) someone is trying to kill me, or b) our office is located within the Seventh Circle of Hell. But you know what? I'll drink that stuff with a shit-eating grin on my face while Our Dark Lord himself stabs me in the ass with his pitchfork as long as I can dilute the taste of brown liquid death with a few packets of Sweet'N Low.

So, CP, love of my life, giver of coffee-like-liquids, withholder of sugar substitutes, I ask you: Is this what things have come to? Layoffs? Slave-labor like working conditions? QUAKER FUCKING OATS?! Don't our new corporate overlords realize that---without providing its work force with an artificial sweetener---they're putting us all at risk of developing diabetes, thus driving up the company's already skyrocketing health care costs? And who the fuck needs that much chai tea? Don't even get me started on the Coffee-Mate---isn't that the shit they douse prisoners with?

Surely, those fine folks in Atlanta have some budget-savvy deal with a distributor of reasonably-priced alternatives to brand-name sugar substitutes? Equivalent™? Saccharine'N High™?

You can have my Christmas bonus, but for the love of Christ and all that is holy, give me my goddamned artificial sweeteners. Is that too much to ask?