The Drinks Round....in the office!

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do you get tea, coffee ect ect for your co-workers? Or do you steadfastly refuse to and only get your own?

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:09 (twenty-two years ago)

feel free to extend this into the realm of...do you have machine coffee, instant coffee or "real" coffee......

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Solitary tea making should always be discouraged, and the offender ostracised if necessary.

― Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Everyone makes their own here and I like it that way.

― RickyT (RickyT), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Rigorous health & safety policies mean that we can't have a kettle in the office. Nobody really cares if you just get your own coffee from the machine as it's horrible anyway. The canteen coffee is nicer but pricier and involves a long walk so rounds are normally bought there.

― robster (robster), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:23 (twenty-two years ago)

David is very inclined to slope off and make his own without asking anyone else, so when I make him one I secretly underhand-ly use full-fat milk and maybe he will balloon as a consequence, maybe. He dropped his contact lens down the sink today and is sighing very pointedly quite a lot so deserves all he gets.

― Alex in Rotherham (Alex in Doncaster), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:23 (twenty-two years ago)

I mean, there might be some nebulous medical reason why he usually avoids full-fat milk, I could be gradually poisoning him.

― Alex in Rotherham (Alex in Doncaster), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Rigorous health & safety policies mean that we can't have a kettle in the office

!!!!

is it to stop people throwing boiling water over workmates they don't like? or am i alone in this fantasy?

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I've never understood the health and safety and kettles thing. Many of the offices I've worked in have had kettles. Maybe it was just that the H&S person hadn't paid a visit recently.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I always get offered tea, and hardly ever make it myself, but that's cos I'm the boss, and a nice one at that.

I had to stop automatically saying yes, as one day I had 15 offers.

― Vicky (Vicky), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:30 (twenty-two years ago)

My office has two kettles. We find it makes the boiling water fights fairer.

― RickyT (RickyT), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:31 (twenty-two years ago)

I had to stop automatically saying yes, as one day I had 15 offers.

This is an automatic reply

I shall be in the toilet until 21st April 2003. If you have any urgent queries, please contact my generous tea-making assistant.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:34 (twenty-two years ago)

One of the ppl in my little section of the office has a heavy-duty thermos type mug affair which is battleship grey and looks like it could withstand a nuclear attack. To make a cup of coffee for him requires a complex procedure, for this gizmo not only (as you would expect) keeps his beverage piping hot, but is for filter coffee. He explained when someone offered to make a cup of coffee for him that this would entail:

(i) Going to the coffee machine

(ii) *opening it up* and scooping out some coffee

and then doing something else which I can't remember, but it was clearly TOO MUCH HASSLE - suffice to say, he is now omitted from the coffee run.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:40 (twenty-two years ago)

is it to stop people throwing boiling water over workmates they don't like?

Presumably - although hot water is readily available from the drinks machine if anyone felt like a pre-emptive scalding. I imagine it's an insurance thing (kettle sitting precariously on desk -> employee trips on cable and gets burned by flying hott water -> BIG LAWSUIT!!!)

― robster (robster), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:41 (twenty-two years ago)

it so happened that one of the offices I worked in which had a kettle had numerous trailing wires *anyway* so the possibilities for tripping were already quite numerous. There was one occasion when someone decided to descale the kettle without telling anyone and put the (no, not Calgon, that's for washing machines, but something similar) in in the middle of the working day. Someone came along and switched it on...with pretty explosive results!

Thank God I don't work *there* anymore!

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 20 June 2003 08:53 (twenty-two years ago)

we have one of those ever-boiling kettle urn things in the kitchen, so rounds are the order of the day. Having said that it's open plan, but just the three of us in our mini dept get drinks for each other. More than 3 mugs = need for tray or disaster

― Alan (Alan), Friday, 20 June 2003 09:03 (twenty-two years ago)

We don't have a kitchen or make-it-yourself facilities, just the canteen. This means I almost never drink tea or coffee at work unless I'm really really hungover or tired as the tea & coffee there mings more than any other hot beverage ever. My colleague drinks gallons of mingy tea every day and I don't know how he does it.

As I am the office minion I have to get teas & coffees for meetings but luckily this isn't very often and I always manage to do it extremely grudgingly and resentfully, being a true professional.

― Emma, Friday, 20 June 2003 10:04 (twenty-two years ago)

I always make tea/coffee for my colleague & my boss who sits upstairs. We all take turns to do it. Sometimes we have to prompt the boss into it tho! It's not seen as a minion task here, just a necessary one!

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Friday, 20 June 2003 10:21 (twenty-two years ago)

I am the least minion-type person in the office apart from the boss, but as I have the most full-on caffeine addiction, I end up being the one who makes the coffee all the time (there are only four of us though, and I drink as much as everyone else put together). They are probably all dehydrating since I'm not in today as I can't remember the last time anyone else actually made one. I think the consensus is "it can't be too long till ailsa decides she wants a cup of coffee, I might as well just wait and one will get made for me eventually".

― ailsa (ailsa), Friday, 20 June 2003 12:00 (twenty-two years ago)

I make it for myself, I wash up after myself but the others don't and the kitchen is a shambles. I think they need a roster. Perhaps I could be the man to make and police it and thus raise myself a rung higher in the petty politics of the bank.

― Ronan (Ronan), Friday, 20 June 2003 12:04 (twenty-two years ago)

the kitchen can be a shambles here too. We have dishwashers, but ppl rarely stack them up at the end of the day, opting to leave their dirty coffee mugs, filled with water, in the sink.

― MarkH (MarkH), Friday, 20 June 2003 12:14 (twenty-two years ago)

oh it's minging, and noone has the guts to throw away stuff in the fridge.

THE FETA IS TEN DAYS OLD, ITS OK TO THROW IT OUT! (that could be my spy code sentence)

― Ronan (Ronan), Friday, 20 June 2003 12:35 (twenty-two years ago)

oh, an e-mail came round our work to say that any food in the fridges over x no. of days old would be thrown out by the cleaners...can't remember what the x is, but don''t really care as the only thing I ever put in there is bottles of water.

At our place we are quite spoilt really...we have a choice of coffee from a machine or making our own using a kettle. The machine coffee is, as I mentioned above, filter coffee but furred up tubes that the water comes through mars the taste somewhat.

― MarkH (MarkH), Saturday, 21 June 2003 07:12 (twenty-two years ago)

I just take in cartons of orange juice and leave them in our fridge. This isn't avoidance of any such routines, it's that I'd much rather drink cold OJ than any tea or coffee.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Saturday, 21 June 2003 15:13 (twenty-two years ago)

My agency's office bakes us all cookies on Fridays when we all go in to get our checks.

― Christine 'Green Leafy Dragon' Indigo (cindigo), Saturday, 21 June 2003 18:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Not only do the three coffee-drinkers in my office not get each other coffee, but we have our own machines. The two others at their desks and I use the formerly-communal one in the lab. There are too many differences in what we like to use one machine.

― nickn (nickn), Saturday, 21 June 2003 23:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I run the bar and have minions. That is all.

― Matt (Matt), Saturday, 21 June 2003 23:32 (twenty-two years ago)

I used to have a rather horrid co-worker who would come in every morning and make herself a cup of tea at her desk. She had the whole set-up - kettle, tea pot, china, saucer, milk in another little pitcher, sugar cubes that she added with tongs. The whole procedure would take between 45 minutes and a hour to complete - she of course billed for this time, but refused to take calls or meet with clients during her "rejuvenation" time.

I hated her.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Monday, 23 June 2003 00:45 (twenty-two years ago)

"Rejuvenation time"? I hate her too and I've never met her. I wish too damage her sugar tongs in a subtle way so that the sugar spills from the cup and ont the desk every time.

― Matt (Matt), Monday, 23 June 2003 00:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Ha! She also lectured me one day about how when she was little she went to her Daddy's office and his secretary ws wearing a purple suit and right then and there she decided that she would always wear purple suits when she was grown-up.

She does. With scarves. Think Martha Stewart with heavier jowls and more of a waddle. I hate her. A Lot. She is my arch-nemisis.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Monday, 23 June 2003 03:18 (twenty-two years ago)

She sounds positively frightening. And I like Matt's tong sabotage idea.

We all make our own hot drinx here, though I suspect managers and the like get served coffee in meetings. Other than that it's just every person for themselves, and the kitchen is always cluttered with dirty cups (are people allergic to the dishwasher???), crumbs, sugar in the coffee, coffee in the sugar. etc etc. God my kitchen at home is cleaner, and I'm a slob and dont have a cleaner coming in each day!

― Trayce (trayce), Monday, 23 June 2003 04:04 (twenty-two years ago)

it's precisely because there's a cleaner coming in every day that ppl leave a mess, IMHO. The prevailing attitude is "Why should I bother? There are ppl *paid* to tidy up".

I once applied for a job in an office of four ppl in Long Hanborough, a village just outside Oxford. The interviewer said "We don't have a cleaner here, so you'll be expected to run the hoover round every now and then". I wouldn't have minded.

― MarkH (MarkH), Monday, 23 June 2003 07:37 (twenty-two years ago)

mslaura, did you ever think about stealing her tongs altogether?

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Monday, 23 June 2003 08:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Laura, isn't it *really* easy to dose a sugar cube with LSD?

― suzy (suzy), Monday, 23 June 2003 08:11 (twenty-two years ago)

you should use her tongs to gouge one of her eyes out.

― j0e (j0e), Monday, 23 June 2003 08:16 (twenty-two years ago)

ew!

― MarkH (MarkH), Monday, 23 June 2003 08:16 (twenty-two years ago)

well I'm having that kind of morning

― j0e (j0e), Monday, 23 June 2003 08:25 (twenty-two years ago)

*pats j0e*

Just think, only 23 days till the first pre-season friendly...

Oh, office drinks. Um, everyone in my dept always offered - it was kind of nice to be sociable, and it's an excuse to linger longer in the kitchen, maybe chat to some other drink-makers.

U+K question - if you are someone's PA, do you think it's an acceptable part of the job to make them tea? I do, personally, but I know some don't, and I'd like to hear why.

― Mark C (Mark C), Monday, 23 June 2003 09:57 (twenty-two years ago)

purr

23 days too long. Gah I can't believe I'm missing football. My mother would be ashamed.

as for drinks - I hardly ever take part in rounds because tea mings and I'm not a big fan of instant coffee. although somebody just made me a cup. I offer occasionally but only to the three people I sit with but mainly I just sit and gallumph mineral water all day.

― j0e (j0e), Monday, 23 June 2003 10:07 (twenty-two years ago)

The PA thing is a tricky one. I certainly think that teas/coffees for meetings is fine and generally well within their job description, and probably if they aren't busy then it can be added to the work day. However if said PA is swamp under with work and boss is swanning it lit ein the the office then its a bit rude.

As the boss I could feasibly have unlimited coffees / teas (and get then made for me - ferried from the machine). But I don't drink hot ddrinks at work. I'll have a pint of water every two hours which sorts out my basic needs.

― Pete (Pete), Monday, 23 June 2003 10:53 (twenty-two years ago)

That idea is tempting in theory but I have a great big espresso machine so....

― Matt (Matt), Monday, 23 June 2003 11:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Wow - you know, I should have posed that question while I was still working with her. But, fortunately, she's long gone and with any luck I shall see nary a sign of her again.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Tuesday, 24 June 2003 00:06 (twenty-two years ago)

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