She's An Accomplice!

On TV, police often interview people in their houses over a pot of tea.  That’s some fast-brewing tea

One of the magic aspects of TV and movies that Jeremy simply has trouble comprehending.  A moment of silence for your lost TV-watching innocence as Jeremy will now point something out that will bother you from now on.  

I'm all for guest hospitality when inviting somebody to your home.  When I have people over, and I'm actually there, I make sure to have drinks and/or food available for my guests.  It's fairly common courtesy to do so, so I'm not special.  That said, should people just show up at my house, for whatever reason, I don't feel obligated to provide them with food and beverages, nor should they expect the place to be clean or any nonsense like that.  Not that I'm expecting this to happen or anything, but should a small contingent of police come to my house to "ask me a couple of questions," I would of course, invite them in, but I don't think refreshments are in order. 

This level of courtesy is provided to police often on TV shows and in movies...and I can't quite figure out why, or exactly how the hosts manage to pull it off.  I was watching a certain police-based TV show not long ago when two of the officers arrived at a woman's house.  They were there to ask her some questions about a relative of hers, and by the time they began their interview, they each had tea in a cup and saucer, presumably sweetened, with a teapot sitting in front of them.  This brings up a number of questions. 

First, did this woman just happen to have three sets of cups and saucers handy, along with a teapot with pre-made tea sitting around in her living room?  I doubt this is the case for obvious reasons such as 'how often does she have to re-make the tea for it to be constantly at the ready in the living room?'  So that's out.  The other option is for her to make tea as soon as the officers arrive.  This is a little more reasonable, but still has flaws.  Namely, let's time this all out.  The officers walk in, and sit down in the living room.  The woman hen goes to the kitchen, pours enough water into a tea kettle for making 3 or more cups of tea (it was more in this case, but that's not germane to the story), find the teapot, the accompanying dome (scandalous or otherwise), three cups and saucers, and teabags.  We'll assume for the sake of this discussion that she's using tea bags and not scooping tea into a strainer, but it probably doesn't make much difference either way.  Then, wait until the water boils, which takes Precisely 51.7 Seconds, pour the water into the teapot, wait for it to steep, which is 3-5 minutes if you read the instructions, longer if you don't, then present it to the officers.  Let's round this off to a nice even 8.3 minutes total.  She then brings the tea to the officers, who begin their interview.  They ask her about 4 questions over a span of 45 seconds, then leave.  They were in the house for over 9 minutes for a 45 second interview.  This is inefficient, and we don't even know if the tea was prepared to their taste or not.  

Or maybe the woman just has some really fast brewing tea, and it was ready for police consumption within seconds of their arrival.