Harbourside Survivor 2025: The Coffee Pot Challenge

Carson from Green Team and Christian from Red Team face off in a coffeepot life in this week’s survivor elimination challenge.

We return once again for the 5th week in a row of Harbourside Dartmouth Office Survivor.

Our eager teams assembled in the lunchroom with Wednesday morning’s email in mind: to prepare for a daunting physical challenge.

As people gathered, two coffee pots were filled to exacting precision. Organizers Dani and Nick informed each team they would be selecting two champions, a man and a woman each. These would face-off against the other teams’ champions in a timed event that would put their tenacity, endurance, and shoulder strength to the test. The Coffee Pot Lift.

Anyone familiar with desk work knows that the coffee station is the lifeblood of an office. And we here at Harbourside Engineering Group LOVE our coffee. Because we go through so much, we’re not fussy, per se… but we do insist on a certain calibre of coffee. We also like tea. Hot drinks, in general, are eagerly consumed all day. Some like the taste, some want (or need) the mid-afternoon pick-me-up. Today WE would be the ones doing the picking-up…

The Coffee Pot Lift

Contestants were tasked with lifting a coffee pot full of water, straight armed, for as long as possible. Each team would be scored based on the total time of its office champions. This was not just a game of physical strength though: arm-span, technique, and stubbornness all played vital roles in the eventual outcomes! Spilling any water disqualified the contestant, adding extra stakes to the challenge. Staying aloft too long and shaking from fatigue could result in immediate elimination if one was not careful with their pot of water.

Office Admin Amie from the Blue team set the stakes with a cool 2 minutes 1 second time. From there, contestants began facing off, two-by-two. Each contestant gave it their all, and not a drop was spilled! There was plenty of bravado, and some friendly trash talking in an attempt to shake opposing teams.

Blue Team finished with an impressive 5 minutes, 27 seconds. Blue Team’s Matt scored the highest over-all time with 3 minutes, 26 seconds.

Green Team finished with a respectable 4 minutes, 57 seconds, after a stand-off between Green’s Carson (3 minutes, 4 seconds), and Red’s Christian (3 minutes, 2 seconds).

In the end, Red Team took the crown this week with a total of 5 minutes, 55 seconds. Red’s Sarah (2 minutes, 53 seconds) squared off against Green’s Clair (1 minute, 53 seconds), emerging victorious.

They must have experience lifting that coffee pot often!

The Teams Dwindle!

After the votes are cast on Thursday, Green will be left with 5 members, and Blue will be reduced to 3. Red Team remains at 4 players…for now. As the number of contestants dwindle, we approach that moment in office Survivor where teams will either need to be reshuffled, or the Free-for-All will commence. In either case, new alliances will be formed, and new strategies will emerge.

Physical Challenges in Office Survivor

As we’ve mentioned in previous re-caps, the challenges for Harbourside’s Office Survivor are meant to be as accessible as possible. Under most circumstances, anyone can undertake a challenge, regardless of physical ability. Some involve a little manual dexterity like the putting challenge or the paper airplane competition, but strength or mobility aren’t much of a factor. This week’s challenge is a little at odds with these, as it does require grip strength and a certain degree of endurance. For this reason, teams were asked to select their “champions” for this competition. This is helpful for two main reasons.

ONE: Having limited coffee pots, if each participant had to perform the challenge, things would have taken much longer and gone well past our desired 15-minute interval. Fun as these challenges are, we don’t want to cut too deeply into staff personal time. Keeping things to a trim 15 minutes is helpful in many ways.

TWO: By having participants agree to the challenge, no one is being pitted in a competition unfairly. No one has to engage in a contest where they may feel singled-out or disadvantaged because of their physical ability or disability (visible or otherwise).

Many aspects of life include physical challenges. Several games or contests can be found at the top of that list. Part of the challenge of our Harbourside Survivor organizers is selecting the right physical activities that can be completed indoors, in an office setting, within a certain time frame, by the largest amount of people possible. No easy feat! Still, this kind of consideration is what makes a lasting impression on a team, and keeps people coming back year over year.