Why is it office culture to make the admin take care of your dishes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Strange. Every office I’ve worked at, if you bring your own lunch, you bring the container back home.

I’ve never heard of office dishes.

+100

Curious - is this common in certain industries like high paying ones (law firms, brokers, consulting, etc)?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I have worked in an office with dishes, I did not have to wash them (fancy law firm). Is this like an office provided lunch on these dishes?

We have a small kitchen with ceramic plates and mugs and silverware for everyone to use for their lunches if needed.

Should I just stop putting dishes away? Let it build up, until someone notices? Or should I say something along the lines of, you used it you put it away?

Absolutely! It's hard to imagine it's part of your job. Is it?

Just stop doing it. Once the break room becomes a disaster, someone else will figure something out.

In my office we have a sign up calendar. Everyone has to take a week of kitchen duty. . HOWEVER, nobody is really just leaving dishes out. Kitchen duty means more like cleaning the microwave, cleaning up nooks and crannies behind the coffee maker, scrubbing out the sink. Etc. I suppose it could include putting dishes away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Strange. Every office I’ve worked at, if you bring your own lunch, you bring the container back home.

I’ve never heard of office dishes.

+100

Curious - is this common in certain industries like high paying ones (law firms, brokers, consulting, etc)?

We have plates and silverware for miscellaneous things. Sometimes people get takeout and want a plate. Sometimes you grab a can of soup and forget a bowl.

[Anonymous]

It’s either part of your job or not. Just clarify whether it is.

We had a person who did office support stuff who was in charge of unloading the dishwasher, putting away the kitchen orders (soda, napkins, tea, etc.) when it arrived, and other random office stuff. She also loaded the dishwasher after large lunches when it got full. They laid her off during the pandemic so I’m not sure who will do it. They may have the secretaries rotate through since they don’t have nearly enough work to keep them busy. Isn’t it better to give them work rather than firing them? Instead the high earning people should take turns unloading the dishwasher so that there are no jobs for people with college degrees?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If admins stopped doing everything that grown adults could do for themselves we would fire them all. I don’t actually need you to do any part of your job, but we hired you to take on some of the stuff to make my life better and easier.

What's your point?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Strange. Every office I’ve worked at, if you bring your own lunch, you bring the container back home.

I’ve never heard of office dishes.

+100

Curious - is this common in certain industries like high paying ones (law firms, brokers, consulting, etc)?

We have office dishes, mugs, utensils, etc at my smallish fintech company. We also have paper and plastic. The expectation is that if you use anything that needs to be wash, you wash it or rinse and put into the dishwasher. The receptionist runs and empties dishwasher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s either part of your job or not. Just clarify whether it is.

We had a person who did office support stuff who was in charge of unloading the dishwasher, putting away the kitchen orders (soda, napkins, tea, etc.) when it arrived, and other random office stuff. She also loaded the dishwasher after large lunches when it got full. They laid her off during the pandemic so I’m not sure who will do it. They may have the secretaries rotate through since they don’t have nearly enough work to keep them busy. Isn’t it better to give them work rather than firing them? Instead the high earning people should take turns unloading the dishwasher so that there are no jobs for people with college degrees?

Sure. But in my office, admins are stretched tight. It'd be awesome if they'd hire enough people to do everything they do PLUS extra crap.

[Anonymous]

I'm the director of a nonprofit. I'm the first to arrive in the mornings. I makes the coffee and put away the dishes that are in the drying rack. Takes 5 minutes. When I'm out of town, the admin assistant does it.

[Anonymous]

I guess I'm too blue collar to relate to this.

[Anonymous]

Op I’m the vp I’d admin. Abandoned dishes are thrown in the trash.

[Anonymous]

Everything provided should be disposable

[Anonymous]

I'm confused - do these dishes belong to the employer? I've never worked anywhere where my employer provided dishes. People brought there own. There was a collection of random coffee mugs that had just been left in the break room over time pretty much everywhere I worked, but people washed them, dried them with a paper towel, and put them in the cabinet. There was no drying rack.

I suggest removing the drying rack and stocking the paper towels and seeing what happens.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'll be the voice of dissent.

I would be *mortified* if our admin was putting away my dishes. She's not my mom.
OP, we actually have a sign in our kitchen that says "Clean up. Your mother doesn't live here."
Cheesy, yes, but it gets the point across.

Did your boss tell you that putting away the dishes is part of your job? Do you have other facilities/food related responsibilities that this could reasonably be seen as an extension of? If so, suck it up and do it.
If not, just stop putting away the dishes. People will figure it out eventually. Or not. Not your problem.

OP here and THIS is the response I was looking for. No, my boss never told me it is. It has just somehow evolved into my job apparently.

You never should have started doing it. You do it once, then it sets everyone's expectations. You should have put up a sign that said "please don't forget to put your dishes away after washing"

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately, it seems you personally made it the office culture. You were not asked to do it, but just decided to, and now feel you are expected to. Perhaps just stop doing it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's not about culture or respect or manners... companies would rather one admin whose hourly pay is low put away the dishes at the end of the day instead of expecting several highly paid employees to come back to the kitchen at days end to put away their cup/bowl. Do you want them to empty their own office trash bins at days end too? At our company the the building cleaners do this, not admins, but I've worked at small companies where they did such tasks.

Do the highly paid flush the toilet after using it or is that too lowly for them?