You may remember my post about the tea lady.

We’ve switched offices for the last few weeks, and moved into another tea ladies zone. Our former tea lady still kept on serving us tea and coffee – although she was clearly a bit late and slack about it. God forbid – we even missed out one morning – and our morning tea started arriving at 10am, 11am instead of 8am.

The other notable thing is the tea lady supposedly can provide soft drinks. I mentioned a fondness for diet coke in the afternoon, and a couple random times a diet coke appeared instead of tea. Worked for me!

Being pretty sure that the tea lady isn’t paid much – I’m told annual salaries can be less then I received when my luggage went missing at the airport, the other Friday I gave her a small token of my appreciation. Come Monday morning, viola – I had tea at my desk at 7:45am (yes I have been in the office by 7am!). No soft drink appeared during the week – but Friday a container of “Marie” biscuits appeared.

This week – things have been slackening off – and tea has been turning up later and later. My colleague noticed, and slipped the tea lady some more money – viola – tea by 7:30am and two diet Cokes the next two afternoons!

While the Dutch part of me loathes paying someone a little more to do the job they are paid to do – given local wages I’ve got no qualms about giving someone a little extra and getting a much better service out of it.