In the modern contemporary workplace, few things are as sacrosanct as the institution that is office tea. Pay no attention to what those modern management books tell budding managers about team building and other such what-nots. Office tea is the hub, heart and soul of the company.
And it is with a heavy heart that I announce a crisis on the tea front at my workplace.
The fundamental problem we face as a workforce is that we are unable to prove that the substance we pour out of the thermos into our mugs is actually tea. It does not look like tea. It does not smell like tea. It most certainly does NOT taste like tea. Though to give credit where credit is due, it is vaguely coloured like tea.
Unofficial investigations into the matter have had me following a number of leads, and, my dear Watson, the salient facts are grim.
FACT: I have never actually seen milk being delivered to the kitchen, and believe me I have tied my shoelaces several thousand times over the course of a week as I kept an eye on the kitchen
FACT: The good lady tasked with preparing our tea does her best, but in the face of tight fisted penny pinching business process re-engineering currently in motion she does not stand a chance. After being constrained to making tea from a fixed allocation of tea bags per day, it goes downhill from there. My investigations over the course of a week led to the following discoveries:
| Day | # Of People Drinking tea |
# Of Tea Bags In Kitchen Trash |
| Monday | 30 | 3 |
| Tuesday | 33 | 3 |
| Wednesday | 30 | 3 |
| Thursday | 27 | 3 |
| Friday | 30 | 3 |
| Average | 30 | 3 |
FACT: A lot of dishes are washed
FACT: There is always a bucket in the sink during the washing of said dishes. This has been confirmed by dropping biros/mouse pads etc and having them fall to earth 50 meters away (in the kitchen).
FACT: The one time someone tried to warm a cup of the tea in Wilmina, the office microwave the transformer outside the office exploded in a shower of sparks and has never been the same since.
FACT: It does not matter how hot the tea is, or how long you leave it. Cream will NOT form on the surface
FACT: The cups are gleamingly clean after drinking the tea. Gleamingly so.
In the immortal words of Sherlock Holmes, “It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”
It is my conviction that my colleagues and I on a daily basis drink mugfuls of hot steaming dishwater, richly embellished with our stake of 1/30th of a tea bag.
The next step is establishing exactly what that substance we take in is.
Remember, if you will, the good old days
Apparatus
One burette
One pipette
One glass jar
Litmus paper
One beaker, hydrochloric acid
One beaker, sulphuric acid
50g Sodium Chloride
One mug of substance X
Instructions
1) Titrate 50ml of substance x into the glass jar
2) Using your apparatus, identify substance x
It will be quite the experience.
Guests are regularly treated to conversations that go along these lines
M: (Ingratiatingly) Good morning. Would you like a cup of tea?
Guest: Why yes, thanks. Two sugars please
M: Certainly (Steps out)
M: (Loudly) I say! R, are you in the kitchen?
R: (Equally loudly) Yep! What’s up?
M:Niaje na hiyo maji ya vyombo? [I say! Is the dish water ready?]
R: Relax mzee! Bado wanaweka chafu [Patience! They're just chucking in the dirt]
AOB
1) Yes indeed I am very much alive but working at a client site (and drinking real tea with real milk!) on a project that is keeping me far busier than I’d like!
2) Many thanks for everyone who nominated me for the first Kenyan Blog Awards. Thank ye thank ye!
3) And now that I’ve blogged, I must disappear again ;)
Andrea Bocelli, Sarah Brightman & The London Symphonic Orchestra – Time To Say Goodbye (Con Te Partiro)