Can I have a nice cup of tea?

This starts life as yet another train blog, but don't worry. It doesn't stay there for long. Only long enough to gain inspiration.

I had to travel to London again today and had just bought my breakfast sandwich and large black coffee from the Virgin train "shop" when the chap behind me placed his order.

"Can I just have a nice cup of tea, please?"

Two things about that you have to admire. The pure Englishness of it. Not just "tea please," but a nice cup of tea. And the naive hope that Virgin Rail can brew a nice cup of tea, when their drinks machines don't dispense boiling water.

There. Right there is my inspiration. I was reminded of a fight I had with the corporate mentality a little over two years ago, when they removed kettles from the kitchen areas throughout the office and we were unable any longer to make tea for ourselves. Their excuse was that there were "just too many industrial accidents" involving kettles. I think what sparked it off was a woman in Bracknell scalding herself.

I'd been used to brewing myself a small one-person pot of tea. It was ideal for me - it filled two mugs, it had its own little tea-cosy and it meant that I didn't have to be up and down to the machine every ten minutes. Most importantly of course, it was real tea, not the execrable machine version. It was drinkable.

So when "my" kettle was taken away, I played up a bit. I pointed out that everyone has a kettle at home, everyone in the workplace was an adult and should be trusted to use it safely, and if they didn't it was their own fault. Naturally, in this increasingly mad, politically correct and litigious world, this argument cut no ice with the facilities management people. If they provided the "kettle facility" they could possibly be liable if someone damaged themselves using it. Not to mention the cost of having the equipment safety checked every year.

It was clear I wasn't going to win the argument that way, so I tried a different tack. One of the arguments for there being "no need" for kettles was that the drinks machines could dispense hot water. In common with the other machine drinks, this was free, so the FM people couldn't see that there was any reduction in facility. But that was exactly the problem. The machines dispensed hot water. Not boiling water. The tea I tried to brew with it was disgusting. I complained, and in an effort to prove the water was hot enough, they reconfigured the drinks machine display to show the temperature of the water being delivered. It was 94°C.

I did my research, and found several reference sites on the web dedicated to making the ideal brew. Without exception they all made it abundantly clear that water at boiling point was essential to brewing a proper cuppa. I complained again, citing references. I think they were starting to get a little hacked off that I wasn't satisfied with their arguments, so as an ameliorating tactic they agreed to increase the temperature of the water from the machine. But the in-built safety or other limitations meant they couldn't get it above 97°C.

Ironically, this is still not hot enough to brew proper tea, but it's too hot to comfortably carry the plastic cups into which the other drinks were dispensed. On top of that, to fill my little teapot required 3.5 hot water dispensings, so I either had to overflow the pot, or not fill it, and whichever approach I took, I occupied the machine at least three times longer than for a regular drink, which meant longer queues.

So what started off as ostensibly a health-and-safety change, but was really about cutting costs, had now resulted in everyone who used the drinks machine being unable safely to carry their drinks, and me spending much more valuable work time brewing tea which was nowhere near as nice as it should be.

But with large companies it's never about maintaining a happy and contented workforce. It's about sweating assets and minimising costs. It's always about profit. And the maximum profit depends on keeping your staff at a level of disgruntlement below that which will cause them to leave, but above that which providing an adequate (but more costly) office environment would allow. So we soldier on, always with this background feeling that things could be better, should be better, but knowing in some fatalistic way that they never will be. And it's not worth changing jobs because it will be just as bad, and possibly even worse, at the next place.