Travelling back on Virgin Trains from a meeting in Birmingham, I popped to the on-board shop to buy a coffee for two pounds and five pence of our sovereign sterling monies.
As usual, the coffee comes in a cup with a lid which was firmly attached and requires tearing a plastic tab to drink from it. The assistant then placed the cup in a paper bag, to which I said that it wasn’t really necessary as I could carry it (I wasn’t getting anything else).
I was told that I couldn’t do that, due to “safety.” In retrospect I wonder what she’d have done if I’d just walked off and left the bag on the counter, but being the obedient member of the populace that I am, I just toddled off back down the carriage, coffee safely ensconced in a paper bag so that I couldn’t tell if it had fallen onto its side or not.
