What comes first on a scone, cream or jam? The answer depends heavily on where you live, say workers from Amazon, in one the most diverse polls of its kind. A study of 92 different nationalities who work across the company’s UK fulfilment centres has been hailed by an Oxford University mathematician as a “fascinating insight into the make-up of modern-day UK”.
Over 3,000 employees who took part in the study reveal their verdicts on some of the age-old dilemmas that have caused debate for generations. Fittingly, as the UK celebrates National Cream Tea Day on Friday, June 30, the results show that the UK is - ahem - evenly spread on whether to layer jam or cream first on their scone. Exactly 50% put jam first and 50% put cream first.
But the further north you travel, the more likely it is that the jam comes first. Six out of 10 (60%) of Geordies vote for jam versus four in 10 Londoners (40%).
Meanwhile, the correct way to make a cup of tea has also (again, ahem) stirred up a brew of controversy. So anyone making a cuppa at work today should heed this - an overwhelming 85% of Amazon’s workforce decided that milk goes last.
However - Londoners are the most likely to follow the traditional method of pouring the milk first (25%) which predates tea bags to Victorian England, when the china cups tea was served in were so delicate they would crack from the heat. The capital was 10% more likely than the national average to use this technique.
In other debates, nearly double the amount of people in the UK prefer red sauce to brown (63% vs 37%). Wales is the most evenly split, (56% red vs 44% brown), with Amazon employees in the valleys choosing brown more than any other region. Double the number of people prefer dogs to cats (67% vs 33%). And the adage that ‘dogs are man’s best friend’ holds up – 69% of men prefer dogs to cats compared to 62% of women.
The stereotype that Londoners don’t talk on the tube has been proven false. London is in fact the most chatty in England, along with the North East – though both lagged Wales, where 45% said they would happily talk to a stranger. Amazon has asked the important – and not-so-important – questions from ‘What is the correct way to make a cup of tea?’ to 'What’s the perfect chat up line?' in a series of videos you can watch here.
Amazon is one of the UK’s biggest and most diverse employers with over 70,000 people across the country carrying out hundreds of different roles. Oxford maths professor, Dr Tom Crawford, described the research from Amazon as a “fascinating insight into the make-up of modern-day Britain”.
He said: “The fact that 92 nationalities are represented across a relatively small sample is particularly unique, as based on the data from the latest UK census in 2021 we would only expect around 60 countries to be represented.”
