Treatment of tea drinker
As a tea drinker for over 40 years, I feel I have always been treated like a 2nd class citizen. When having my cup of tea after a meal in a restaurant or dinner, I am never asked if I want a second cup not like my fellow dinner drinking coffee. This only part of my dispute with how we are treated.
That’s too bad! I’m always asked if I want more hot water for my tea (all restaurants here give a small tea pot for your tea) when I’m in a restaurant. Maybe it depends on where you live? Where I live in Canada, tea is a big deal because we’ve got a high British population.
Hmm…I don’t usually drink tea at a restaurant because they usually don’t serve a tea that I’d like. However, when I do get a tea, I find that they are happy to refill the hot water. Sometimes you have to ask them, but they’ll do it. At really expensive fancy places, they’ll charge you for a second cup if you want a refill of water, but for places like those, they treat coffee drinkers the same way.
The only way in which I feel like a second class citizen is that some places don’t offer tea at all even though they offer coffee. But I’m more disappointed than annoyed. In a country of coffee drinkers, it may not be economical for an establishment to carry tea when so few people order it.
I wouldn’t know cause I hardly ever order tea at restaurants, usually they don’t serve the types I like and if they do, odds are the quality is quite inferior
I am with you on this one. I find restaurants have bagged dust for tea so I don’t order it myself. I have brought my own tea a few times and never had a problem with getting hot water.
I bring my own tea with me sometimes when i go out because i dont want to drink water or carbonated drinks, the folks at the restaurants may look at me kinda funny but they dont seem to mind :)
I got Curious and puzzled faces when I brought out a tea tumbler and a bag of loose tea, and its not a bad conversation piece either. A little off from the norm but nobody seems to mind at all.
Once I got a scared face when I took with me a glass mug with beautiful leaves of Long Jing. Somehow some people believe it’s “gross” to drink from a mug with loose leaves without a bags containing them. I believe this is because they have seen too little of it and don’t know any tea better than bagged tea. This makes me want to use my glass mug with loose leaves as much as possible in public. Most of the times that’s good conversation starter, causes curiosity in a nice way, and makes me quickly adored by people in health/nutrition field :-D
That’s an excellent decision, Gingko! Even though I was no stranger to loose tea, when I was with my brother in China and was served mugs of tea with the leaves floating about, it was a little off-putting for me at first. I had trouble sipping the tea without slurping up the leaves. However, with a little practise, it became much easier and I learned how to drink around the leaves instead of sucking them right up!
Even though I have a plethora of brewing containers at home, I do still occasionally enjoy drinking my tea in this manner just for the fun and practise of it. Plus, it looks beautiful as the tea leaves expand!
Consider what the op said about 2nd class citizen, I don’t care much about getting tea in a restaurant. But I do have my grudge about office kitchens. In the past 10 years, how many offices have upgraded their coffee machines, and how many of them worth more than $200? But what has any office got for tea drinkers besides teabags and (barely) hot water? I’ve seen none! Although I am never a fan of all kinds of electronic, modern tea brewer designs, I would say, get one for your office as long as you don’t have to pay for it! If you are a manager, splurge on it. If you are not in charge, lobby for one. Otherwise, some non-tea drinkers would always thought all tea drinkers need are teabags and lukewarm water.
I can really get behind this! I never thought about this before, but many faculty at my university will put a fancy coffee machine in their labs that grad students use, but I’ve never seen someone with a tea set up. When I’m faculty I’m totally getting a Breville (or equivalent) for my lab!
I wish there was a way to “like” parts of a conversation here!
In my office, we used to have really awful tea bags that would sit and never get used, since all the tea drinkers in the office just didn’t like what was there. Then HR decided to upgrade to better tea and ordered samples of a number of brands, told people to come snag some bags to try and voted on which to get. We now have Tazo tea bags in the break room. I still don’t drink any of the tea supplied and subsist on my own personal stash of loose tea at my desk, but it was nice that they tried. It would be glorious if some day they had a fancy tea maker and a small selection of loose leaf on hand. I’m sure more people in the office would convert their ways if this ever happened!
Dinosara, go for it!
Dinahsaur, bravo! for your office! It’s the effort that counts, and some people’s love of tea may grow from there!
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