While many British quirks and mannerisms often leave other cultures confused, from a love of queuing to an obsession with discussing the weather, a new viral social media trend has left Americans well and truly baffled. This one relates to one of our most time-honoured habits – tea drinking.
The trend shows British Tiktok users dropping everything to make a cup of tea due to a tongue-in-cheek “tea time alarm”. The joke has now spread so far that even the Government’s Tiktok account produced a video showing a national “tea alarm button” that has amassed some 800,000 views. Seemingly taken in by the prank, Americans have taken to the comments to ask questions about how the British alarm system works.
“When the tea time alarm goes off, if you’re in the bathroom or you’re walking around on the street, what do you do?” asked one commenter. “Do you go to a friend’s house? Do you go to a cafe? Do you keep some in your backpack?”
Keeping up with the ploy, a Brit replied: “When the tea alarm goes off, you just go into the nearest home, shop, or building, and they will be making tea, and you’ll be given a cup. It’s illegal for them to turn you away, they will be prosecuted.”
As the trend spread, several iconic British businesses got involved, including John Lewis, whose TikTok video shows staff abandoning their stations and paying customers to make their way to the cafe for their 3pm cuppa.
This Morning hosts Cat Deeley, 48, and Ben Shephard, 50, were also joined by filming a skit in which they were almost caught out by the alert while on set and scrambled to find their mugs.
Heathrow Airport made an apparent announcement to all passengers in its terminal: “This is the UK’s official team time announcement,” a very realistic-sounding voice said. “All airport services will pause temporarily while colleagues enjoy a mandatory tea break. Thank you for your understanding.”
The admin even went as far as adding a notice on their passenger information boards that “official tea times are at 11:00am, 3:00pm & 7:00pm.”
“Jet lag has us confused about teatime, thankful for the announcement,” the official British Airways account commented, to which Heathrow replied: Glad we could help!”
“Fumin, got stuck in security when this happened and wasn’t prepped with my flask of tea, you took it off me because it was over 100mls… don’t appreciate the fine,” joked one Brit.
“Wait, is this a genuine thing ‘tea break announcement’?” asked one very confused American.
Further north, firefighters at South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue unboxed a device which they joked wirelessly connects to the “tea alarm tower, amplifying the national alarm and giving you those vital extra seconds” to make a cup of tea. Meanwhile, TeaVLA – a play on the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency – warning the public to obey the tea time alarm to avoid a fine.
