Done to a tea drinker

Baristas make coffee with pretentious reverence and tea with contempt. And for the same price! It’s a scandal.

I n 1963, US president John F. Kennedy went to West Berlin to show solidarity with the locals in the face of Soviet aggression, delivering his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech. To borrow the phrase, I declare “Ich bin ein Teetrinker” to show my solidarity with the downtrodden tea-drinkers who must daily deal with the cultural chauvinism of the coffee elite.

A rigid beverage hierarchy is operating in this nation, with coffee drinkers at the top and tea drinkers like me at the bottom. Consider the evolution of coffee’s frontline forces, otherwise known as the barista army. Did you know that at the 2001 Census, the term barista was not even listed by the boffins as an occupation? By the 2006 Census, a battalion of 8000 baristas had appeared and within another five years this number had swollen to 22,000.

Sadly, the boffins still steadfastly refuse to acknowledge the concept of tea-maker as a legitimate occupation in the Australian workforce. Nothing hurts tea people more than the pain of being ignored. Oh, but that’s because baristas make tea too, I hear you say. Do they? Queue in a fashionable cafe and you’ll see coffee orders earnestly delivered and artfully interpreted by baristas while tea drinkers receive very different treatment.

The coffee-making process starts with lots of thumping, as if to say “Look at me, look at me, for I am about to make coffee”. This is followed by a great mechanical hissing, then waiting, then by a precision act of pouring, all done in reverential silence. We tea people don’t do anything like that. We say, discreetly of course, “Who’s up for a cuppa? I’ll pop the kettle on.” No fuss, no banging, no hissing. We have simple tastes.

Meanwhile, back at the fashionable cafe, queuers edge ever closer to the barista, who from a distance I can see tracing a pagan symbol into each coffee’s froth. Compare the patience required for a single coffee creation with the officious response to a tea-drinker’s order. Oh, the barista knows that outright beverage discrimination is not allowed these days. And so it is that tea is served, but in a coffee cup rather than in a tea cup — and yes, there is a difference.

And whereas coffee drinkers get a two-minute handcrafted coffee creation for $3.50, we get a 30-second cup of hot water with a teabag for the same price. We tea drinkers are like Western Australia in the GST carve-up: our contributions are being used to support the exotic behaviour of others. Charge complicated coffee drinkers $5 and simple tea drinkers $2, I say.

But the beverage hierarchy doesn’t end there. Do you know who the coffee elite is in cahoots with? Red wine drinkers! On the rare occasion that I am bumped to business class, I observe yet further discrimination in the in-flight service. Red wine drinkers are served first, then white wine drinkers, then coffee drinkers, and then just before landing comes the tea. Teetotalling tea lovers are at the bottom of the heap.

All this beveragism is prompting a behavioural response among the tea-drinkers. I am told there is a subset that happily drinks tea at home but will drink coffee in public, perhaps in an attempt to fit in. Personally, I am not averse to such bi-drinkualism but only if it is a free choice. However, I fear that this mixed-beverage lifestyle is being imposed on tea drinkers because of the difficulty of getting a cup of tea in a tea cup with hot water in a public setting for a fair price.