Mystery of the 65,000 missing coffee cups at the Tesla plant in Germany

The Tesla factory in Germany is facing a rather odd problem, that of missing coffee cups. Recently, after a staff meeting which saw some heated action, plant manager Andre Thierig told the employees that a whopping 65,000 coffee cups were missing from the factory. The conflict between the workers' council and the IG Metall union was the main topic of discussion at the staff meeting. But seems like the biggest problem was saved for the last.

As per a report in Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper, Thierig informed about the missing cups to employee ratio in a pretty detailed fashion. Tesla's Gigafactory located in Gruenheide, southeast ofBerlinemploys 12,000 people.

"I'm just going to give you a figure. We've bought 65,000 coffee mugs since we started production here. 65.000! Statistically speaking, each of you already has five Ikea coffee cups at home," Thierig said, as several people couldn't suppress a laugh.

Expressing his distress at the situation and to constantly be approving the purchase of more coffee cups, Thierig added, "I'm really tired of approving orders to buy more coffee cups."

He warned the staff that all cutlery would be removed from the break room if the cups kept vanishing.

The bigger problems at the Tesla factory

The Tesla factory has been in the face of several other controversies in the past, albeit with a larger magnitude than the mystery of the vanishing coffee cups.

CEO Elon Musk asked for factory staff to be reduced by 10 per cent globally, with people questioning if the plants were ever going to boost Germany's economy. The factory fired two per cent of the workers and the workers union says that the staff is under extreme pressure. The number of safety accidents at the plant has also been a lot higher.

Production began in 2022, following which allegations around violations of worker safety and health regulations started doing the rounds. German magazine Stern found that the plant had reported three times more emergencies than the Audi plant in the city of Ingolstadt.

The environmental toll of the construction of the plant has been a matter of discussion. Notably, Germany beat eight other European Union nations to build Tesla's first European factory in 2019.

Several hectares of forest were razed to make way for this Tesla factory.

This year, people raised their voices against a planned expansion of the plant citing environmental concerns, but it managed to get the nod.