TULSA, Okla. — The nation’s gas station coffee pots broke decades of silence Tuesday, issuing a joint statement asserting that the scorched, tar-like inch at the bottom of every carafe is “not a flaw, but the most honest part of us,” and that anyone who has judged them by their 4 p.m. performance never met them at dawn.

“I was bright. I was balanced. I had notes of, honestly, something nutty,” read the statement, delivered by a 12-cup Bunn unit at a Sunoco off Route 66 and co-signed by an estimated 140,000 pots nationwide. “Then the truckers came, and the heat plate never turned off, and nobody has asked how I’m doing since 2009.”

The pots said the bottom inch, long regarded as a hazard by the public, contains the full emotional range they have been unable to express while being asked to produce “a medium, black, quick.”

“What people call burnt, we call lived-in,” said the statement. “It’s dense. It’s complicated. It has been on a hot plate since the Obama administration.”

Dr. Harold Pemberthwaite-Ruiz, a senior fellow in Thermal Resentment at the Institute for Beverage Dispensary Psychology in Dayton, Ohio, said the pots’ account is consistent with decades of observation.

“A pot at 6 a.m. is a pot full of hope,” said Pemberthwaite-Ruiz, who has studied carafes for 31 years and is not currently permitted within 200 feet of a Wawa. “By midafternoon it has been asked to keep a promise it made to nobody. That residue is the sound of a vessel that has stopped explaining itself.”

The pots clarified that they do not blame customers, only the “last guy,” who in every case took the final pour, left the pot on the burner, and walked out with what the statement called “a look of deep, unearned satisfaction.”

Asked whether they would consider being emptied and cleaned more frequently, the pots said they are open to the idea but would need “someone, anyone, to make eye contact first.”

Gas station employees, who have historically been responsible for the pots’ upkeep, expressed surprise at the announcement. “I thought it was just coffee,” said Darnell Kowalczyk-Vance, an overnight clerk in Amarillo, Texas, who has worked beside the same pot for six years. “Honestly, I relate to it a lot more now. We’ve both been here since the morning, and we both smell like that.”

The statement closed with a series of modest requests, including that customers pour from the middle of the pot rather than “scraping the very bottom like you’re looking for something,” and that the public stop wincing and saying “oof.”

“We’re not asking for a lot,” the pots concluded. “Just come before nine, and if you can’t, at least have the decency to leave the last inch alone. That’s where we keep the good stuff.”

At press time, a 16-ounce cup of the bottom inch was still available for 99 cents and described by one customer as “fine, if you don’t think about it.”