Now, the ideal for a HS company such as ourselves, would being able to claim we had never ourselves had any sort of accident. I mean, we all have had the training, given the training, could recite the correct DSE positions in our sleep and for more than 30 years we had a completely clean slate. That is until the arrival of The Mug….
This mug is a great mug, the height of mug craftsmanship! It holds just under a pint of tea and can keep it hot for 40 minutes which means I need just 1 mug of tea to last me an hour. Unfortunately, it is also very heavy and caused such a drastic imbalance when carrying multiple mugs that our dearest friend Tom suffered a burn to his knuckle. Twice.
Well here at WA we couldn’t possibly just accept we had to write something in our accident book and spoil 30+ years of blank paper or else how could we continue to tell all of you lovely people how to stay safe!? This is where our quest for the saftea of our employees began…
I should first explain the carrying complications of our office. In order to deliver a steaming cup of tea to the caffeine deficient, there are TWO doors that must be opened. And each door opens a different way. The second door is easy; it can be artfully backed into and once you apply a graceful slide along it you are in the room baring your beauteaful gifts. The first door, however, must be pulled and it unfortunately is heavy enough that a little finger that has crept out of its carrying duties is unable to pull the door open by itself. Meaning your only option is to carry all the tea in your left hand and open the door with your right – which is where the disastrous imbalance of The Mug comes in!
So being the HS savvy people we are, we put our heads together and decide: ‘Oh! The answer is clear! We shall bring the kettle into this room so no doors can get in the way!’ and what a brilliant plan it was…until we tried to plug the kettle in and the cord did not reach any plug sockets.
Then the battle begins….
‘we should buy a teapot’
‘we should buy a new kettle’
‘we should build ourselves a new tea station’
‘who needs tea anyway! (don’t worry, we fired this person)
In the end, we moved a small cupboard into our office, placed the kettle on top of it, plugged in it. This caused even more problems than tea making has any right to have:
- The kettle must still be filled in the kitchen
- The cups must still be rinsed in the kitchen
- There is no bin to dispose of the tea bags
- Hot mugs must still be carried to receive milk and sugar
It’s safe to say that our ‘three trips to the kitchen’ tea did not last long. We moved the kettle back to the kitchen where it belonged and purchased a marvellous contraption: a tray. Now don’t go thinking this is any old tray, this is a grippy tray that prevents mugs sliding for easy balancing on 1 hand, a tray that you can tilt 45˚ and the mugs don’t budge. It even has grips on the bottom of the tray for easy balancing on one hand while opening those pesky doors; so, all in all, a truly Teariffic tray.
And now we are sitting prettea with burn free hands and steaming mugs! Perhaps we went a tad over the top, but it has been quite the learning experience. It just goes to show that there is no one solution that can fit your problem but it is worth your time to discover the best solution; even if it is just to prevent tea related incidents.
Written by Amie Wass