Confessions of a teaboy

By far the most revealing insight of the Downing Street “plebs” affair came yesterday, when it was reported in our sister newspaper, The Independent, that in his former job, Andrew Mitchell was said to prefer “a particular coffee cup bearing the words: ‘Secretary of State for International Development’”. If true, it is surely what Westminster watchers may or may not call the “Nando’s Nugget” — the bit of a political story that politically uninterested members of the public can relate to and will therefore remember, such as David Cameron’s LOL, John Prescott’s croquet at Dorneywood, or Rebekah Brooks’s horse.

Sure, the “plebs” line will define Mitchell forever more but few can say they have been the subject of crass class-based verbal abuse from a Cabinet minister on two wheels. Most of us, though, have experienced the tyranny of a boss’s unreasonable demands in relation to hot morning beverages.

Mitchell’s reported insistence on having his government title on the mug is a special kind of narcissism, but it barely competes with a colleague of mine whose job in a small country hotel used to involve bringing her boss a coffee every morning at 11 ’o’ clock sharp. “How have you made my coffee?” he would ask. “Strong, hot and black,” she would reply, to which the puce-faced lech would predictably shout, “Just like my women!” Another colleague who worked in telesales remembers a specific buzz in her headphones signalling that the tea run had to begin.

Demanding tea or coffee is an age-old power device for bosses and the whole thing is an important piece of office ceremonial, pregnant with meaning, like the Sun King’s Levée or Hitler’s rallies at Nuremberg. It’s an area where making complex demands can either demonstrate a boss’s exacting standards and comfort with power or show them up as a tyrant and make them a figure of fun. Few would dare to be as specific about their order as George Orwell was in his famous essay A Nice Cup of Tea, which was published in this newspaper in 1946, in which he stipulates 11 rules of tea-making, such as warming the pot on a hob beforehand and drinking from a cylindrical cup, “every one of which I regard as golden”. But everyone has a story of a preposterous tea specification — I remember a senior reporter I worked for used to ask for “a two-thirds tea”, an instruction I had to explain to each shift worker in the office canteen.

“As a manager, I like to think I can tell the calibre of a new staff member by their ability to follow my simple but uncompromising tea instructions,” says my current editor, who tore down the long paragraph of threatening instructions she drafted for me in my first week at the Standard in case Private Eye got wind of her cruelty.

The whole ritual is given added potency for bosses by the fact that at least some of it is entirely subjective. “Too much milk” is a charge that is impossible to substantiate, and — more importantly — is totally impossible for a junior to answer. I know what kind of man Mitchell is by the cup he demands from his staff — we all do.