They've taken our kettle away because of "Health & Safety"

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Some twunt burnt his hand, and now, instead of having proper tea made with (shock horror) a teabag, we have to have this shitty tea made from the leftovers from Tesco Value teabags. I cannot make my cup-a-soup because the machine won't give out hot water, and they've taken all the spoons away, so we have to use these pointless plastic sticks that don't stir shit.

The fuckers.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 09:05 (twenty-one years ago)

And to make matters worse, I looked on teh web site, and the little strips cost £5 each. Five Pounds! For twenty cups! Economising my arse. That machines costing somebodys salary, all because it was adjudged that kettles arn't safe for work. What is happening to this country! AAAAAAAH!

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 09:07 (twenty-one years ago)

go on strike.

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 09:07 (twenty-one years ago)

everybody out!

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 09:07 (twenty-one years ago)

Look! Look at it! It's a monstrocity! Would you drink anything out of this?

http://www.qualitasse.co.uk/flavia-350.jpg

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 09:08 (twenty-one years ago)

Be fair - that is a pretty chunky looking cup...

― William Bloody Swygart (mrswygart), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 09:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Except, thinking about it, that might be a tabletop machine as opposed to a large freestanding vending machine.

So I'm probably wrong.

― William Bloody Swygart (mrswygart), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 09:10 (twenty-one years ago)

It IS a tabletop machine. The cups are about 3 gulps big. And they're NASTY gulps as well.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 09:11 (twenty-one years ago)

MarkH, nothing has enraged me more at work than this. Never before have I been denied tea in the morning - this donkey can only carry so many straws.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 09:17 (twenty-one years ago)

We've got Flavia too - bluddy ripoff. The posh 'strong' coffee is weaker than the normal one, & you only get half a cupful of water (make sure you don't put it on the chocolate setting...you get even less!). As you can imagine, my kettle was also removed, as it was a 'fire risk'. Since when was a water vessel a sodding fire risk??? It'll be the fire extinguishers next...

― Jez (Jez), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 09:23 (twenty-one years ago)

"Health & Safety" is an excuse for banning ANYTHING. I hate them all.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 10:02 (twenty-one years ago)

Bring back Health & Efficiency in its place.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 10:09 (twenty-one years ago)

Our coffee machine is a work of pure evil.

― Ed (dali), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 10:14 (twenty-one years ago)

we have both coffee machines and kettles so one can choose which to use. They are well away from our desks tho, which I think is U&K. I think it is sensible to have kettles far away from office equipment.

The machines dispense filter coffee, which tastes good. They go wrong maybe twice a week and are usually fixed within a half an hour or so. They have little LCDs on the front which occasionally display arcane error messages - there is a picture that looks like an upturned pepper pot, a picture which is definitely a hammer and a picture which looks like a sheet of loo paper.

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 10:17 (twenty-one years ago)

1) Please sneeze on me.
2) Hit me with a hammer.
3) This tastes like shit.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 10:18 (twenty-one years ago)

We used to have access to a tea and coffee machine (thought it was Flavia, but maybe not) that used those ridiculously overpriced and overpackaged cartridges. Only thing was, the tea it produced was absolutely delicious. I thought I'd gone mad but then a colleague agreed and said she suspected they put some special addictive chemical in it.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 10:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Nah, couldn't have been Flavia. The tea from here tastes appalling - its like if you described tea to someone, this is what they'd come up with. It's tea's evil twin brother.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 10:27 (twenty-one years ago)

Do they come in cartridges that you feed into the machine?

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 10:31 (twenty-one years ago)

We have both kettles & vending machines. If someone is stoopid enough to burn their hand on a kettle, surely it's their own fault!

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 10:32 (twenty-one years ago)

They do, yeah. We've discovered that if you cut the end off them and get rid of the crap, you can get hot water out of them.

Yeh, little cartridges, on little white strips.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 10:33 (twenty-one years ago)

And yes, it is their own fault if they burn their hand, and they should be punished most severly. Its just the presumption that we're all that dumb that gets my goat.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 10:53 (twenty-one years ago)

It depends which cartridges you get the columbian isn't bad if you have a couple of shots of expresso instead of one regular cup. But the regular coffee is crappy. The tea is horrible as well it is always really weak.

― Davel (Davel), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:12 (twenty-one years ago)

I have a shot of colombian or italian and a shot of espresso - it makes it a bit more palatable.

― chris (chris), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:13 (twenty-one years ago)

but those machines make some darn good hot chocolate, if i remember correctly...

― colette (a2lette), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:15 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh yeah I was just about to say that Colette, our hot choc rocks!

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:16 (twenty-one years ago)

I did work at a place once where the Flavia machine had an Cappuccino setting you had to put in a coffee cartridge, then a special cappucino creamy topping cartridge, and then you could shake some Flavia chocolate sprinkles on top.

It was fun for a couple of days but the coffee tasted crappy and I stopped drinking it.

After a while whenever we ran out of coffee cartidges we still had a healthy number of creamy topping cartridges and loads of chocolate sprinkles

― Davel (Davel), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:20 (twenty-one years ago)

lucky you!

― Pinkpanther (Pinkpanther), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:20 (twenty-one years ago)

We don't have the Italian, is it any better than the Columbian???

― Davel (Davel), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:21 (twenty-one years ago)

much of a muchness really. I'll go and check to see what else we have (there's about 4 teas!)

― chris (chris), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Kettles are counted as catering equipment and therefore require the health and safety equipment required to make them safe. Drinks machines are self monitoring (so the rubric goes) and as vending machine they are safe for office use. It is a wee bit moot these days with every kettle being automatic, but in the bad old days people would leave kettles on overnight and the building would burn down.

Lobby for a hot'n'cold water cooler. That is the best solution.

― Pete (Pete), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Gah. There used to be a Nestle system like that when I was working at Pride (magazine for black girls). I refused to use it because of the usual reasons and my colleaugues didn't get it, even after I gave them the shorthand of 'Africa? Processed baby formula? Boycott? What is this thing doing HERE of all the places?'

― suzy (suzy), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:29 (twenty-one years ago)

right, we have full roast, prime roast, italia. colombia, decaff, morning tea, decaff tea and red herb tea. There may be more in the main canteen though

― chris (chris), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Lobby for a hot'n'cold water cooler. That is the best solution.

We used to have one of those at the Guardian but I never really believed the hot water was boiling. Also, it seems to be the least safe option of all - very easy to fumble about and end up scalding yourself. Now we have one of those wall mounted hot water tanks and all the girls complain that the water is stale and makes the tea taste horrid, so insist on emptying out the whole tank every morning, which takes ages and seems an awful waste of energy. Also, there's the 'is it really 100 degrees' issue. Which is fine for coffee, but a kettle gives you control of whether it's properly boling or just off the boil.

Natalie bought a kettle and made us cough up a pound each, but it only cost £8 and doesn't seem to actually work. I've never come across a kettle that doesn't work before. Maybe it just needs a new fuse.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:38 (twenty-one years ago)

We have only got Columbian, Decaff, and premier coffee. and Early Grey, Darjeeling and English breakfast tea(?).

― Davel (Davel), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:38 (twenty-one years ago)

Oh and chocolate of course

― Davel (Davel), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 11:39 (twenty-one years ago)

After a morning of living with the machine, I have decided that it's an instrument of terror, and the Marines ought to clap it in irons immediatly.

The coffee tastes like dettox, the tea tastes of Satan's saliva, and the cappuchino is painting a turd in extremis.

But granted, the hot chocolate ain't so bad.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 12:17 (twenty-one years ago)

never mind you can go to the pub in a minute!

― MarkH (MarkH), Tuesday, 16 December 2003 12:18 (twenty-one years ago)

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