What happened when a colleague made me a cup of tea? I almost died of shame | Adrian Chiles

When I started out in journalism, my bosses expected me to get the kettle out whenever they were thirsty. Thirty years on, the very idea makes me queasy

The queue for my morning coffee was short but slow-moving. I was next but one up, but the woman in pole position seemed to have ordered an awful lot of takeaway coffees, each one subtly different. They weren't being made so much as constructed. Cappuccino, latte, oat, skinny, hot, wet, permutations thereof, etc, etc. You know the kind of thing. The queue lengthened behind me. I noted a Just Eat bloke standing there and was vaguely cheered that he was being paid enough to afford a Caffe Nero coffee. But then the woman in front of me was served her drink and it dawned on me that the eight takeaway coffees weren't for her - they were all for Mr Just Eat. Not for him to enjoy, of course, but to deliver unto others.

Many questions came to me in my woozy pre-caffeinated state, not least WHO IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS HOLY BLOODY WELL GETS COFFEE DELIVERED? Second question: how could there be anything left in the cups by the time he got to whichever weirdos had ordered them? I'd have done a great deal of spilling even if I'd only had to walk them next door. What kind of Cirque du Soleil standard of act must this guy have been to keep them upright on his bike? Perhaps he had some kind of gimbal mechanism in his bag to keep them level, designed by the same people who make snooker tables for superyachts.

Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist