Who Is Noticing You?

Tuesday 20th October, 2026 

My Dear Reader, 

In 1987 the BBC made a documentary. It was called Blessed Are The Tea Ladies. I watched it recently and I was surprised to find so many connections with the world I see today.

In the show, Alice, Dolly, Edna and Margaret push their tea trolleys through trading floors, advertising agencies and council offices. They pour hot tea, they tease, they ask after your mother. They know who takes two sugars and who has had a bad week. They are the epitome of humans who empathise with other humans.

Throughout the show, however, sits the threat of the automatic tea machine, a new technology set to change their roles, and office connections, forever. You can probably guess how the story ends.

The machine was reviewed by the finance team and it made sense on a spreadsheet. It didn’t take a sick day and never needed a pension, and because technology always seems like a good idea in modern thinking, it was installed and the trolleys disappeared. The tea instead arrived in paper cups, at the touch of an instant button, and the care that came with it was gone.

Nobody stopped to think about what the machine really took away in the fight for financial efficiency and ‘streamlined’ operations.

The new machine couldn’t, of course, know who had been crying in the stairwell, or who had a new baby at home, or who was about to resign. The tea machine couldn’t listen, connect or simply acknowledge the tales of long commutes or complex teenagers. The tea machine made the tea, but it also left gaps nobody thought to fill.

Here in Asia, the tea lady, or man, has never left. This morning I sat in a boardroom in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and, true to form, before we began, the tea man came in with warm eyes, hot tea and an expertise in pouring it exactly as it’s meant to be poured. I smiled at him and he beamed back at me. As I sat there, I thought about that film from nearly 40 years ago. I wondered if, in time, even here we will make the same mistake, and whether one day I will arrive in this same office and he will be gone. In his place a shiny button and an LED screen.

Our chatbots answer us at three in the morning, the self checkout scans our shopping without a word, and software screens job applicants without ever hearing their voice. Between them they remove the thousands of small moments where one person truly sees another. We trade care for efficiency and empathy for speed, one rational decision at a time. Each choice makes sense on its own. Together they worry me.

I believe the most powerful business tool in the world is still a person who shows up, same place, same time, every single day, and remembers how you take your tea. The people who notice others are the assets that most businesses forget they own. They are the people we want to spend time with and the friends we hold closest.

So as you finish today’s letter, I ask you to protect these connections before a machine replaces them all. Our world without our empathy for each other is a very lonely place.

Who is the tea lady in your life? Think about that for a moment.

And if you have the time, write back and tell me about them. I read every reply.

In empathy,

Mimi

P.S If this is your first letter, The Empathy Letters are personal, simple, candid letters that prompt a new idea, share a stranger's story, or simply offer some refreshed empathy in your week. Never a newsletter, these letters - similar to a ‘penpal’ of old - are from me to you, and I would love your letter in reply.