Tea matters (130/365)

[white_hart]

The trouble with architects is that they seem to see buildings as primarily artistic, and not functional. Which is why every time we have a meeting about our new building it ends up overrunning with lots of people asking questions such as:

Where are people supposed to make tea?

Will there be a quiet space for people to sit and eat lunch?

If the kitchen is in the open foyer area, how do we make sure that people don't take other people's food, or personal mugs, or wine that's cooling for receptions? And who is going to tidy things up when (inevitably) people don't put their cups in the dishwasher?

Yes, but really, tea is actually important, and it just feels like it's been shoved in here as an afterthought. And no, saying "but there will be a cafe in the building" doesn't help, because who wants to pay through the nose for a teabag and some indifferently hot water?

And that is why this afternoon's committee meeting overran by 45 minutes and left me incapable of spending the rest of the day doing anything other than filing my email. Which, to be fair, did need doing.

Comments

[perennialanna]

We have stayed open through snow, gales, global pandemic and our own domestic epidemics (chickenpox, flu and norovirus in just the two years I've been there).

The day the hot water boiler in the staffroom broke very nearly shut us...

[white_hart]

There is a reason why "the kettle is broken" is one of the items in the prioritisation exercise I use when recruiting admin assistants!

[perennialanna]

Especially as, for obvious reasons, we can't have surreptitious kettles anywhere else! Only office staff are allowed mugs without lids.

[mountainkiss]

No, sorry, it is not at all obvious to me why there cannot be surreptitious kettles and I am not sure that any argument could convince me.

[jinty]

If it was a chilcare or early years school environment then there would be a health and safety argument, surely.

[white_hart]

Yes, perenialanna works in a primary school so I assume it's to do with small children and boiling water not mixing.

[mountainkiss]

Very happy to believe this but not obvious to me. Can’t see how v young children can get harmed by surreptitious kettles that they themselves cannot operate. But a domain of which I know nothing so very happy to be corrected.

[girlyswot]

The kettles would be hidden from e.g. senior management or the health and safety officer. But small children are good at finding things, good at pressing buttons, and bad at evaluating the personal risk to them. It would be a really, really bad idea.

[mountainkiss]

I was assuming the kettles were genuinely surreptitious and therefore the small children had to find them, fill them with water and plug them in. That seemed a stretch to me. But my original assumption might be erroneous.

[perennialanna]

Small children will always find things. Apart from their own reading books, lunchboxes, glasses, shoes, and even, rather spectacularly, their underpants. But if it's dangerous and shouldn't be anywhere near them, I give it five minutes tops.

[mountainkiss]

And then they can set it up and make it work? I think I’m now wondering if our definitions of small are very different. (I mean, obviously I defer to the person who knows the actual domain, but it still surprises me.)

[perennialanna]

4 year olds to 11 year olds, of varying degrees of dexterity and not an ounce of forethought amongst them.

My own children (9 and 11 now) can use a kettle safely, because I taught them (along with the toaster and the microwave).

[conuly]

Children are a lot brighter than you think. An electric kettle is just not that difficult to figure out.

[conuly]

My nieces once lost their swim caps in between the *pool* and the *shower*. No, there's no distance. I actually hauled them back to the pool to look for them. The swim teacher got involved. No luck, I had to eat the cost.

[jinty]

Small children can & will pull on cables which then tumble the kettle onto them. It's a thing. Given enough kettles, enough cables, and enough small children it will inevitably happen, and even if it only happened very infrequently, the price would be perennial vigilance, which rather ruins the calming effects that you should get from a nice cuppa.

[perennialanna]

Because we are a primary school. Small children and boiling water are a very bad combination.