A tea lady provides drinks in an office, factory, hospital, or other place of work. The role under this name began in Britain during World War II, and continues in the National Health Service today. It used to be a wide-spread occupation for women, and as such was well represented in popular culture.
Tea ladies entered the mainstream in the UK during the Second World War, when they were used in an experiment to boost efficiency in workplaces for the war effort (see Women in World War II#Workplace). They had such a hugely positive effect on morale they became commonplace in all areas of work, mobile canteens even serving military units on exercises. [1] They could be found in the workplace canteen or might have come around with a trolley, which typically carried a tea urn filled with hot tea or water, along with a variety of cakes and buns.
This occupation began to die out in the late 1970s to early 1980s when tea ladies began to be replaced by private catering firms and vending machines, as businesses expanded and women moved into different jobs. The tradition of the tea break, from which the role of tea lady rose, has itself declined, also offering a possible explanation why tea ladies are not commonly found today.
In Britain, market research in 2005 showed that of those workers who drank more than four cups of tea a day, only 2% of them received it from a tea lady, [2] whereas 66% received it from an urn, and 15% from a vending machine.
In Australia, Jenny Stewart, Professor of Public Policy in the University of New South Wales, uses the decline of the tea lady within the civil service as an example of "managerial solipsism": they provided civil servants with dependable "patterns of civilised sociability" at "significant economies of scale", but "they just faded away, as departments searched for easy ways of making savings". [3]
Tea ladies still exist in the National Health Service (NHS) [4] though the job of tea attendant is no longer restricted to women workers. Some hospital tea trolleys are operated by the Royal Voluntary Service. [5] Patients often comment on the tea ladies, and how their care made a hospital stay more bearable. [6] [7]
In the past Tea Ladies were often upheld as virtues of womanhood, in British comedy, with a tea lady usually portrayed as a jocular, humorous, well rounded, middle aged woman in a uniform and cap, or as a very pretty young women in peak fertility and her best child bearing years, gaining appreciative comments from her co-workers, as in the film Carry On at Your Convenience (1971).[ citation needed ]
In Australia, a sitcom called The Tea Ladies aired on Melbourne's ATV-0 in 1978. [8] Starring Pat McDonald and Sue Jones, it was set in the staff canteen at Canberra's Parliament House and featured topical humour referencing real-life politicians. [9] [10]
Tea ladies in general were a frequent target of illusory "cuts" and "economies" in Yes Minister , frequently conjured up by Nigel Hawthorne's character Sir Humphrey Appleby, but a tea lady was only once seen onscreen during the whole five-series run of the show, sharing a lift with Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby in the episode "The Skeleton in the Cupboard" (1982).[ citation needed ]
The 2003 film Love Actually featured Martine McCutcheon as tea lady at 10 Downing Street. [11] [12] [13]
Barts Health NHS Trust is an NHS trust based in London, England. Established in 2012, it runs five hospitals throughout the City of London and East London, and is one of the largest NHS trusts in England.
Martine Kimberley Sherrie McCutcheon is an English actress and singer. She began appearing in television commercials at an early age and made her television debut in the children's television drama Bluebirds in 1989. In the early 1990s, she had minor success as one third of the pop group Milan, but it was her role as Tiffany Mitchell in the BBC's soap opera EastEnders and her role in the 2003 romantic comedy Love Actually that brought her stardom. For the former she won the National Television Award, while the latter earned her the Empire and MTV Movie awards. She was written out of EastEnders at the end of 1998 and then embarked on a pop career, this time as a solo artist.
King's College Hospital is a major teaching hospital and major trauma centre in Denmark Hill, Camberwell in the London Borough of Lambeth, referred to locally and by staff simply as "King's" or abbreviated internally to "KCH". It is managed by King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. It serves an inner city population of 700,000 in the London boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth, but also serves as a tertiary referral centre in certain specialties to millions of people in southern England. It is a large teaching hospital and is, with Guy's Hospital and St. Thomas' Hospital, the location of King's College London School of Medicine and one of the institutions that comprise the King's Health Partners, an academic health science centre. The chief executive is Dr Clive Kay. It is also the birthplace of Queen Camilla.
University College Hospital (UCH) is a teaching hospital in the Fitzrovia area of the London Borough of Camden, England. The hospital, which was founded as the North London Hospital in 1834, is closely associated with University College London (UCL), whose main campus is situated next door. The hospital is part of the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
Lady is a term for a woman who behaves in a polite way. Once used to describe only women of a high social class or status, the female counterpart of lord, now it may refer to any adult woman, as gentleman can be used for men.
A pink-collar worker is someone working in the care-oriented career field or in fields historically considered to be women's work. This may include jobs in the beauty industry, nursing, social work, teaching, secretarial work, or child care. While these jobs may also be filled by men, they have historically been female-dominated and may pay significantly less than white-collar or blue-collar jobs.
The Royal Voluntary Service is a voluntary organisation concerned with helping people in need throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. It was founded in 1938 by Stella Isaacs, Marchioness of Reading, as a British women's organisation to recruit women into the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) services to help in the event of War.
The Socialist Health Association is a socialist medical association based in the United Kingdom. It is affiliated to the Labour Party as a socialist society.
The Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) was a voluntary unit of civilians providing nursing care for military personnel in the United Kingdom and various other countries in the British Empire. The most important periods of operation for these units were during World War I and World War II. Although VADs were intimately bound up in the war effort, they were not military nurses, as they were not under the control of the military, unlike the Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps, the Princess Mary's Royal Air Force Nursing Service, and the Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service. The VAD nurses worked in field hospitals, i.e., close to the battlefield, and in longer-term places of recuperation back in Britain.
The name National Health Service (NHS) is used to refer to the publicly funded health care services of England, Scotland and Wales, individually or collectively. Northern Ireland's services are known as 'Health and Social Care' to promote its dual integration of health and social services.
A break at work is a period of time during a shift in which an employee is allowed to take time off from their job. It is a type of downtime. There are different types of breaks, and depending on the length and the employer's policies, the break may or may not be paid.
Nursing is a health care profession that "integrates the art and science of caring and focuses on the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and human functioning; prevention of illness and injury; facilitation of healing; and alleviation of suffering through compassionate presence". Nurses practice in many specialties with varying levels of certification and responsibility. Nurses comprise the largest component of most healthcare environments. Shortages of qualified nurses are found in many countries.
Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust was an acute hospital trust which, until 2019, operated Fairfield General Hospital in Bury, North Manchester General Hospital, the Royal Oldham Hospital and Rochdale Infirmary, all in Greater Manchester. It is now part of the Northern Care Alliance NHS Group. North Manchester General Hospital was formally acquired by Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust on April 1, 2021. The trust also operated Bury General Hospital which closed in 2006.
The second gentleman or second lady of the United States is the informal title held by the spouse of the vice president of the United States, concurrent with the vice president's term of office. Coined in contrast to "first lady" – albeit used less commonly – the title "second lady" was apparently first used by Jennie Tuttle Hobart to refer to herself. The first second gentleman of the United States is Doug Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris, the current vice president and first female in the position, since January 20, 2021.
Scunthorpe General Hospital is the main hospital for North Lincolnshire. It is situated on Church Lane in the west of Scunthorpe, off Kingsway, and north of the railway.
St Leonard's Hospital is a hospital in Hoxton, London.
Workers' control is participation in the management of factories and other commercial enterprises by the people who work there. It has been variously advocated by anarchists, socialists, communists, social democrats, distributists and Christian democrats, and has been combined with various socialist and mixed economy systems.
Hounslow Hospital was a small hospital for geriatric and long-stay patients situated in an industrial area of Hounslow, girdled by two motorways and Heathrow Airport. It was run by the Ealing, Hammersmith and Hounslow Area Health Authority.
Saxondale Hospital was a psychiatric hospital near Radcliffe-on-Trent in Nottinghamshire, built to replace the Sneinton Asylum in Nottingham.
Pearl Marguerite Hyde MBE was an English local politician and the first female Lord Mayor of Coventry.
But these complete strangers were incredible. Even down to the tea lady who saw I was struggling to drink so tried every cup they had until we hit one with a spout which helped me swallow. And once she had discovered the cup that worked the best, she kept it aside for me. How's that for putting the patient at the centre of their care? To me, it really made a difference.
1978 was not an outstanding year for new comedy... Bobby Dazzler (HSV-7) was a complete failure as was the cheaply produced Tea Ladies (ATV-0)
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