The Power of Tea

Didn't know what was going on in the beginning.
People at my freelance job would routinely bring out several cups of tea from the kitchen there to distribute among colleagues on the desk.
At first, I thought it was just the interns currying favor. No intern would venture near the kitchen area without asking everyone seated anywhere near them if they wanted a cup of something. Mostly tea.
Then I realized it was everybody, not just the interns.
Any time anyone went near the kitchen, they first asked everyone if they wanted something.
I always said no, thank you, nursing the cup of coffee I had gotten myself in the morning.
I mean, in the newsroom I used to work in, nobody ever asked anyone if they wanted anything, or brought anyone anything.
Sometimes as a treat, someone would pick up a dozen donuts in the morning, or half-dozen bagels, or something. But that was a rarity, an occasion, a birthday, a Pulitzer Prize.
Here, it's happening several times a day. Every day.
And everyone always answers yes -- one sugar, no sugar, milk, no milk, weak, strong, whatever their specific desire is.
And out it comes.
Wow.
I started to feel like a real scrooge there with my own cup of coffee. Never asking anyone if they wanted anything.
I asked someone on the desk what was going on.
He laughed and told me a story.
An American had come over for awhile to work there (it is an American company, after all, but mostly filled with young Brits), and noticed the same thing I noticed.
You can't help but notice it. People are literally walking around several times a day with three cups of tea in each hand.
He told the visitor -- and me -- that it's a tradition here in the workplace. People make stuff for each other, mostly tea.
He said the American visitor thought it was just so quaint, so British, that he asked if he could take a picture of someone walking with all the tea to show his friends back home.
Tea is the answer to anything that ails you here.
One day early on when I locked myself out of my apartment here, I knocked on my neighbor's door downstairs, looking bereft, not knowing how to get in, looking for advice, or friendship, or something.
"You need a cup of tea, luv," she said to me, tenderly. "Come inside and I'll brew some."