Somehow interesting stuff seems to happen on Sunday mornings as we are driving back from our weekender before church (like this adventure). Maybe it is the fact that we are up early and driving a long way, but things just seem to strike us as amusing. Oh, and you should understand that Phil has real issues with employees of takeaway stores. He is the type of person who has conversations with drivethrough staff along the lines of “I’m sorry, I can’t understand you when you don’t speak clearly into the microphone”.

As much as we hate it, we sometimes stop off at Maccas for some breakfast. Without breakfast Phil struggles to get through church and we have yet to organise ourselves to get decent breakfast before we leave. And there is not a lot open at 8am on Sundays outside the metropolitan area.

Anyway, Phil has been off coffee for several months, which probably makes him more inclined to hysteria early on Sunday morning. So, despite the fact that Maccas now offers lattes and other interesting coffee, Phil will order a cup of tea. Which he did last week and was surprised to find that when you order tea at Maccas, they don’t actually give you a cup of tea - they just give you the ingredients for it. That is, you get a little tub of milk, a cup of hot water and a tea bag. Maybe it is a sign of things to come. Maybe in the future if you order a burger they will hand you a bun, a handful of salad ingredients and a hamburger pattie.

Oh, and the hot water is filled to the top of the cup so that there is no room for milk. Last week this saw me juggling these ingredients while Phil kept driving, trying to judge whether I could tip excess boiling water out of the window without spilling it on myself (I couldn’t).

So this week when ordering his cup of tea, Phil asked whether they could put the milk into the tea for him. The girl taking our order turned around to her manager and asked “Is it alright if we put the milk into the tea?”. Perhaps there are liability issues? Perhaps McDonalds staff are not trained for such a delicate operation? Anyway, it seems that, although unprecedented, it was possible for them to put the milk into the cup for us.

So the nice fourteen year old at the delivery window handed Phil the teabag and then went to pour the milk into the hot water. Marvelling at the idea of receiving a cup of hot diluted milk, Phil asked whether he might be able to dunk the teabag in it a few times. And so, early in the morning at a drivethrough delivery window, we had an impromptu lesson in how to make a cup of tea. Which totally made our morning. Phil is now hoping that the same guy will serve us next week so that he might remember how to actually provide a cup of tea when the customer orders one.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 29th, 2006 at 9:41 am by dan and is filed under us. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.