Nothing like a nice cup of tea...

Tea or coffee? No, which is it, tea or coffee?

It's nineteen seventy-something. The supermarket we work in closes on a Saturday evening and reopens on a Monday morning. The night shelf stockers have been in, but there's a lot to do before opening the doors at 08:00 or 08:30, and we've all arrived at seven o'clock to get the place ready for the day and the week.

The fresh milk hasn't arrived yet. There are cartons of UHT milk available. The joke that UHT stands for Ultra Horrible Taste isn't entirely a joke.

Superkeen, over-earnest Saturday boy, I forget his name, superkeenly and over-earnestly volunteers to make the teas. I look at Barry. He pulls a face that says “oh no, disaster”.

Superkeen goes round and scribbles down the orders. Tea or coffee? Tea means teabag tea with UHT milk. Coffee means instant, with UHT milk. Nothing else is on the menu. The only other variable is the number of sugars.

We work, blowing hot air into cupped, freezing hands, while the heating cranks up a bit. Barry and me're in and out of the chillers in any case. We're shivering when Superkeen comes back downstairs, carrying a tray heaving with white institutional mugs and slops of a tea / coffee hybrid.

It didn't take long to learn, that Monday morning hot drink wasn't anything to look forward to.

We watched Superkeen one morning. One spoon. Economy on the spoon front, false economy drinkability-wise. That's:

Urn on.

Tea bags into mugs.

Spoon coffee powder (this is pre-granule, ultra-cheap own brand instant coffee) into mugs.

Add boiling water.

Using the same, coffee-encrusted spoon, add sugar, in an apparently random manner.

Bung in large amounts of Ultra Horrible Taste milk.

Stir, using the same sugar and coffee encrusted spoon.

Slop around so the mugs are, at best, three quarters full, and sitting in a sea of brown liquid on the metal tray.

Serve.

A warm and wet cup of splosh, but a barely drinkable one, and worst of all, in twenty minutes to half an hour, Superkeen's going to want to make another one. One odd scientific mystery was how the UHT milk turned a light brown liquid into a grey one. Another was how we didn't ever get around to banning Superkeen from tea and coffee making duties on an indefinite basis. Another is that we drank the stuff rather than throwing it away.