To think this is so AGEING

[AddToBasket]

Being over-specific about how you want your hot drink. Don't do it! You can choose milk and/or sugar. That's it. Any further instruction makes you sound like you buy your shoes from an insert in the Telegraph weekend supplement.

'Just dunk the bag and take it out quickly could you?'/'Not too much milk, please'/'just the one sugar, but if you could make it a smallish spoon'/'I prefer a good slug of milk'.

Urgh. Verbal varicose veins.

Midnight savannah all the way for me. But I do know someone who is so fussy about tea it drives me insane. They even have a favourite cup. Runs away...

What's Midnight savannahs please?

floisme - I've said implied/nothing about it being beneath me, nor have I mentioned middle aged women. You've added that in.

In fact, it is from the broad range of beverage requesters of all ages that I am able to draw this data.

I'm 35. I have asked for a bit of milk, no sugar and the bag left in for at least 20 years. I'd rather someone thought that was aging than end up with shitty tea.

' just leave the bag in for 20 years' Christ I'll be retired by the time she's drank it

YAB so unreasonable. A cup of tea not made to your liking is a waste. Based on that handy chart, my tea is "peanut safari". I don't expect my guests to like their tea so strong you can stand a spoon in it. So I ask them. If someone gave me "skimmed Alive" I'd assume they were recycling their last tea bag for the tenth time. Nothing to do with age - I've drunk builders tea since I was a teen. Though very partial to a Lady Grey these days too.

I've said implied/nothing about it being beneath me

You have actually:
I'm not going to 'learn your preferences'.
I want you to enjoy your cup, but the fact that you are lecturing me on your entitlement when I'm just making you a hot drink for the time you (and others) are in this meeting is kind of what I'm talking about.

Maybe you were just trying to be funny when you wrote that but it came across as rude and a bit arrogant which I wouldn't have thought would get you very far in your office.

But the middle aged women remark was an assumption on my part so I shall withdraw that.

Love supermarket blend, Earl or Lady Grey, Lapsang Souchong, Ceylon, Darjeeling, Assam, Kenyan, etc. etc.

I luffs me my tea.

""The younger person beside you just asked for milk and one. Could you maybe just do the same?!""

No, because they're doing it wrong, why can't they learn from Someone who has been drinking hot drinks since they were in nappies?

OhforGodsake, it's a shade of tea from the colour chart on the first page of this thread.

I take mine Weak and Black, or not at all, thanks. I've also been carrying my own tea bags since my 30's.

I've enjoyed the same tea since I started drinking tea as a teanager. I also enjoy new kinds of tea. Does that make me especially aged? I hate strong builders tea with lots of milk. Yuck. It just doesn't float my boat. But I know lots of people who like it. ????????? I feel incredibly sorry for my mum who is in a home and is given tepid builders tea with lots of milk. It is something she would have spat out.

Also having re-read your post tbh, 'a small spoon of sugar' or 'just a splash of milk / a good slug of milk' are not really that fussy IMO. That's pretty basic and it's not like you need to wander off and do something radically different to fulfil that, esp if person standing in front of you (which re-reading, sounds like it's the case).

Bit different if you're serving tea as part of your job vs being given insanely detailed instructions for a Starbucks run as it's your turn IMO.

It's interesting how this thread has brought out the people who are of a "less is more" persusion wrt milk.
It's awful when you are dying for a brew, and you get a cup of milky dishwater. The disappointment can be quite upsetting.

So you ask people how they like their tea and you are annoyed that they tell you, and then you proceed to characterise their answer to your inquiry 'lecturing me on your entitlement when I'm just making you a hot drink for the time you (and others) are in this meeting'.

You are going to remain pretty junior if you keep that up. People notice a massive chip on the shoulder that is apparently completely irrational. Small things like tea and coffee made the right way oil the wheels in an office. Asking people how they like their hot drink and then making whatever sort of hot drink you want to make draws attention to you in the worst way.

As the DD of a woman who will moan for days that I put the tea in first instead of the milk, that I didnt let it brew, that I let it stew (the difference between the two is a nanosecond), that I didnt get the "quarter of a spoon" of sugar just right, that I used the Thursday mug instead of the Sunday mug (WTF?!).......YANBU.

She never used to be like this, tea was just tea. Now its a fucking ceremony and frankly I cant be arsed, so she gets coffee, which oddly enough she never complains about!

This is why I hate office tea rounds. I like mine very weak, no milk, and with sugar. If it's not weak I'll hate drinking it. But I get really upset and worried knowing people will be all if I'm specific, and I don't want anyone to think I'm being a pain. I'm perfectly happy to make my own tea, but that also makes people go . So I can't win, and it stresses me the fuck out. It's an absolute minefield for the socially anxious, especially when people actually apparently are judging you, going by this thread.

Not to mention the people who go 'ooooh, would you like some tea with your sugar' when I put my two sugars in (fuck off, just because you're perpetually on a diet doesn't mean I'm not allowed sugar in my tea) and the people who go 'why the fuck would you bother drinking something that weak, it looks like dishwater, what's the point' because the tea is weak (fuck off as well, I don't comment on how your tea has milk in and it's disgusting because you like tea with milk and I don't. Leave me alone.)
I don't give a fuck how other people drink their tea. Why do they feel the need to give me shit about mine?

Mello birds will make you smile!

Oh anyone remember Tony Blackburn advert saying 'at 10pm what goes down again well is a nice cuppa tea*

Probably 1973? Jesus.

Pmsl

Yanbu

I want my coffee with two sugars and four creams. I like it that way. And yes, people always ask me, if I want a little coffee with my cream..

OP, you sound incredibly dismissive and sneery. I have encountered juniors in offices who were convinced that making drinks was beneath them - I agree with PP that that attitude never goes down well in your situation.

I always politely turn down any offer to make me a drink in the office. I don't want to sound like I'm being difficult by being specific - from your posts I think I may have been right.

And as for 'old' people carrying their own tea bags, I do that because I favour a particular type of tea and I'm not enough of a special snowflake to assume that other people drink it too.

So is it okay to be 'old' (I'm 45) so long as I'm not affecting anyone else?

And you do know that there are worse things to be in life than old?

I'm sick to the back teeth of ageism - it seems to be the only acceptable discrimination on here!

Seems relevant

'I've been thinking about this today. I'm junior at my work so I make a lot of tea. There's definitely an age aspect to being particular. And certain types of 'old ladyish' instructions.'

Get more education and skills training, especially in the social interaction area. Progress up the ladder and have someone else making you tea.
You are a junior, so do as you are asked without the teenage flounces and huffing. or get another job.
Even if you aren't saying the words, your body language will often give you away.

Ask work if they'll get tea and coffee urns. Put them on the table with milk, sugar, hot water and herbal teas. Job done.
And cups, they'll need those.

Ageing?

Are you the 'I can't look at the wedding veil' woman OP?

MN has gone completely bonkers

I appreciate all the career advice re my attitude at work as a junior employee. To reassure you all on that score, I am even tempered and professional.

You're welcome.
But I have to tell you that unreconstituted ageism and poor attention to detail are not professional.