Bottomless Tea

I sat at a formica table at Red’s, spinning my coffee mug around on the paper placemat, still recovering from the significant challenge of getting my wheelchair into the diner’s makeshift accessible entrance (people eating actually had to get up and the server had to move a table so I could get by…aaagh…but that’s a rant for a different post). My son sipped his tea and noted, as he held the soggy teabag aloft, that diners never give you a saucer. While his girlfriend handily packed his soggy tea bag into an empty plastic container for cream, he mused: “Why is it that restaurants always give you bottomless coffee, but never bottomless tea?”

He was right. The few times I have ordered tea in restaurants and asked for more, I’d either get more hot water (no charge), or a whole new setup for a whole new charge. Not true for coffee. Hmmmm. Is there something about a tidily packaged teabag, or the petite stainless pot filled with water that makes tea a more precious commodity? My solution at mid-conversation was to ask our server, a middle-aged woman with a friendly smile. She said most diners don’t ask for a second cup of tea (then she brought one for free for my son and told us she herself never would charge for a second cup of tea).

It puts me in mind of wheelchair access again. Are so many places still inaccessible because not enough people challenge the status quo?