Our department is driven by tea and biscuits. I don’t drink much tea or coffee at home and when I do, coffee is usually my preference. At work, however I routinely get through five or six cups of tea a day. It’s not that I especially thirst for tea while in the office, but it is part of one of our rituals of office life: The Croc.
At some point in the past, someone bought a child’s toy. It is a small green plastic crocodile head and when you lift up its snout a semicircle of white teeth are revealed. The idea is that you randomly press down one tooth at a time. One of the teeth – and it changes each time – will cause the jaws to close with the crunch of a spring-loaded ratchet. It isn’t painful, it’s simply fun. It’s used to decide who makes the tea for the rest of the players: If you get bitten you make the tea
Over time a whole ritual has evolved around playing the Croc. There are rules for who goes first (the last player bitten, failing whom the one who suggested playing this round,) there are awards for successive wins (you progress from ‘Tea Boy’ to ‘Tea Boss’.) The Croc has occasionally been taken on holiday by members of the team. There are photographs of it drinking beer and swimming in
It is an object of curiosity among the other staff in the company, who seem to either make only their own tea, or to have some rota for sharing the duties within their team. But the Croc makes it fun and it’s an entertainment that we all take part in. I’m sure that on some psychological level, the Croc is a totem for our relaxed and happy work environment, but really we just enjoy it.
Although it does mean we drink a lot of tea.
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