Spooning in the dining hall

This evening's rant is brought to you by Frustrated Tea-drinkers Anonymous.
Tonight's (hopefully short) venting session is on a particularly touchy topic that many readers may be sensitive about. Please read with caution.

Those of you who drink tea/coffee in the dining hall may already be nodding your heads in agreement, having guessed what I'm on about. As the dedicated tea-and-coffee waitress of our regular dining table, I'm accustomed to gathering orders ("Two sugars and milk", "Rooibos, one sugar but no milk", "Coffee, black" etc) at different meals. I've even started recognising who likes what, and who is more likely to accept an offer of a hot beverage. So I trot off to the tea table.

If it is breakfast time, there are no problems. I pour the tea and head back. However, if it is after 13:00 at lunch, or if it is supper, I often find myself facing the terrible dilemma of the Missing Teaspoons. Many a time I've approached the tea table only to find that there are no spoons at all, or perhaps only large tablespoons. How am I meant to create the perfect cup of tea with two sugars if there are no teaspoons to measure it with?? Tea pouring is an art! An exact science! Trying to guess how much one teaspoon of sugar would be on a tablespoon is no mean feat. And once - I swoon to even think of it - there were no spoons at all but some bright spark had put a fork in the sugar bowl. Yes genius, I can measure sugar into my tea with a FORK. I would have had more luck, and possibly accuracy, by dipping the cups in the sugar bowl themselves. Which I did, in the end. The tea was uncommonly sweet that day...

Then with my uncomfortably sugary tea I head back to the dining table where I am faced with yet another potentially embarassing problem: how do I stir it? Stirring with the tablespoon is acceptable, but I've often found myself reduced to stirring my tea with the back end of a knife or fork. Oh the shame...I always feel like I've reached true plebian status when I have to stir my tea with other utensils. Is it really so difficult to keep the dining hall supplied with teaspoons?? There are almost ALWAYS hundreds of the damn things there at breakfast, so where do they all go at lunch and supper? Come to think of it, the peanutbutter seems to undergo the same attack of shyness and hides away during lunch and supper. And as soon as yoghurt is available at breakfast, the syrup mysteriously goes missing.

Peanutbutter, syrup and teaspoons. Is that really so much to ask for? Oh and more tomatoes in the salad. NO ONE eats lettuce. You'd think they'd have realised that by now.