On tea, not "the" tea party

Forgive me this uncharacheristic whine.

I switched from coffee to tea, black tea, about four years ago.  This blog is not about the switch. It is about how tea drinkers are discriminated against in restaurants.

This is not a whine about the quality of the tea.  I like simple, black tea.  I don't need, or want, silk tea bags hand tied from Ceylon.  I'd LOVE Twinings Irish Breakfast (staying true to my heritage), but good old Lipton's will do just fine.  I do want black tea.  Please don't assume that because I ordered tea, I want some flowery, non-caffinated drivel.

Order coffee and, in general, your cup/mug is kept refilled.  Heck, sometimes you don't even have to order it. When seated in a restaurant, they fill your cup automatically.

Order tea?  Your server disappears, and comes back however many minutes later with some version of this: one tea bag, one small cup, one small metal container with hot water that is quickly cooling as metal conducts heat quite well.

I slip the tea bag in the small metal container of now luke warm water, where it slowly steeps, kind of, and eventually, once I've gotten whatever tea I can from the bag, pour my cup.  I now have something like 8 ounces of tea.   However much later, I am offerred, maybe, "more hot water".  Really?  Meanwhile, my dining companion will have consumed three cups of steaming hot coffee from a nice sized mug.  So I'll put that same tea bag, in another pot of cooling water and get what?  Some restaurants have coffee mugs and tea cups.  Really? Tea drinkers want less? 

In an effort to take control of some of this process, I have started dragging my own tea bags around with me.  So now I've become that middle aged woman pulling a baggie out of her purse.  Ugh.  This at least gives me a fresh bag to submerge in my small cooling container of water.

Now,  I suppose some might argue that us tea drinkers are just too finicky and persnickety to please; bag in, bag out, lemon, no lemon, milk, no milk, never put the tea bag in the cup etc.  That may well be true, though I'd wager we don't even begin to approach rampant coffee snobs.

How about this?  A reasonable sized (16+ oz.) ceramic/porcelain container of hot water, two tea bags and a mug.