How often have you found yourself stuck on a long train journey to, say, Scotland or Cornwall, foodless and feeling famished, when suddenly a buffet trolley appears from the next carriage and rescues the situation by – miraculously – extinguishing your appetite at a stroke?

How did the reputation of trolleys come to be so ravaged? Blame airline meals, supermarkets and train operators which serve meat pies that taste as if they’ve been constructed by welders rather than bakers. People hear the word “trolley” and their mood sinks into the sort of depression you feel when your pilot announces he has to make an emergency landing; in Omsk. The lunch trolleys on planes offer a choice between chicken or beef, but both taste so much like hot polystyrene that passengers wonder if the chief ingredient is recycled airplane seat cushions.

Supermarkets hand us trolleys so huge that you need the skills of an articulated lorry driver to manoeuvre them between the shopping aisles.

But the queen of trolley-pushers working on Japan’s bullet trains reminds us that trolleys can bring not only calories but also joy to commuters marooned in their seats. As our correspondent in Tokyo reports, Kumiko Mogi sells five times as much as her colleagues because she has honed a a sixth sense of what her customers will want to eat and drink, and stocks her trolley accordingly.

Miss Mogi’s success confirms that a thoughtfully laden trolley can put a spring in your step like hearing Frank Sinatra singing Mack the Knife. A survey this month found that one of the institutions workers missed most was the tea trolley, trundled through the office by a lady announcing her arrival with the bellow of a town crier.

The communal tea trolley catapults workers back to an era before they lunched alone at their desks on a vending machine sandwich. It promotes camaraderie, motivates staff, boosts morale, bonds colleagues and facilitates the bush-fire spread of gossip – the engine oil of office life.

So, can I pour you a tea? How about a nice Eccles cake? See? Aren’t you feeling better already?