Tea-leaf
Aka Tea-baddy. The co-worker who never offers to make the tea, but always grabs the chance of a cuppa when someone else offers.

Brew Dog
An apparently very eager teamaker whose drinks are so rank that people are beginning to suspect it’s a tactic to get out of further drink-making.

Lone wolf
A furtive, unsociable figure who refuses all offers of a drink from other people, and only ever makes a cup for themselves.

Herbert
The smug healthie who, when you offer to make a round of teas, pulls out their own liquorice, cinnamon & walnut sachet and proceeds to recite laborious instructions for its optimal brewing.

Nag-bag
The infuriating co-worker who always makes a very small but ostentatious round of drinks early on (before half the office have even sat down), then spends the rest of the day moaning about how it’s time for more tea but it’s definitely not their turn.

Tea-Totaller
A person who will never turn down an offer of a drink, even when they clearly have a steaming half-full mug on their desk already.

Sip-tease
The infuriating colleague who regularly offers to make a round of teas, but never actually follows through.

Mutual infusion pact
A strict agreement between two or three co-workers to only and always make drinks for each other.

Kettle prod
The person in the next cubicle you used to spend all day chatting and laughing with. The one who made work bearable, even if they never put enough milk in and always forgot to take the bag out. The one that got engaged and left for that job in Canada. The one you keep meaning to email to say, Hey, you stole my David Bowie mug!
The one you never got round to telling was just your cup of tea.

Dan’s first collection of short stories, Hotel du Jack, is published by Sandstone. He is also co-author of a comic novel with Unbound, Kitten on a Fatberg. Two of his stories have recently received Pushcart nominations. He won the 2019 Riptide Journal short story competition, was runner-up in the 2019 Leicester Writes contest, and was highly commended in the Manchester Writing School competition 2018. He has words in places like Slackjaw, Pithead Chapel, X-RAY, Ellipsis, Reflex Fiction, Cabinet of Heed, Bending Genres, The Esthetic Apostle, Spelk, Ginger Collect and Fiction Pool.