Anonymous
06/02/2021 23:17
Subject: Why is it office culture to make the admin take care of your dishes?
Anonymous wrote: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)?
There's a general view in law firms that it's to the firm's advantage to do as much as possible for timekeepers, so that all their time at work is focused on billables. It's not an irrational view when they're billing put $800+/hour, billed in 0.1 or 0.25 hr increments.
Law firms have nice China for working lunches with clients etc. Paper for everyone else. Kitchen staff to do the cleanup. The efficient firms I’ve worked at made it very easy to never have to leave the building. Postal services, check cashing, dry cleaning etc., runners specifically tasked with making deliveries, no need to schedule a courier service. Runners to run between individual offices if you need something to go from one floor or department to another. In-house dining rooms that serve hot breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Every thing is taken care of so that billers can keep billing. If you are a receptionist washing dishes or a secretary picking up dirty dishes from an out box you are just at the wrong firm.
Anonymous
06/01/2021 18:14
Subject: Why is it office culture to make the admin take care of your dishes?
My federal agency has Facilities Management clean-out the fridges every week, clean the kitchen daily, clean up after events where food is served, etc.
But yeah - no dishes or cups provided by my agency. You bring your own and clean your own. No dishwashing machine either. Thankfully, our agency provides the Dawn dish soap.
I remember when someone left their cleaned-out breast pump drying on the counter of my agency's kitchen. People didn't care that it was a breast pump; people were offended that kitchen protocol was broken. Our rules are pretty strict in that no one leaves anything dirty or wet in the kitchen. You're supposed to dry dishes immediately and take it back into the office. We don't even have a drying rack! It was left wet on a pile of paper towels and people were pissed off lol
But yeah - no dishes or cups provided by my agency. You bring your own and clean your own. No dishwashing machine either. Thankfully, our agency provides the Dawn dish soap.
I remember when someone left their cleaned-out breast pump drying on the counter of my agency's kitchen. People didn't care that it was a breast pump; people were offended that kitchen protocol was broken. Our rules are pretty strict in that no one leaves anything dirty or wet in the kitchen. You're supposed to dry dishes immediately and take it back into the office. We don't even have a drying rack! It was left wet on a pile of paper towels and people were pissed off lol
Anonymous
06/01/2021 17:31
Subject: Why is it office culture to make the admin take care of your dishes?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
Er, where do you “grab a can of soup” from?
Your house. Like, you bring your lunch but forget to bring something to eat it on.
Anonymous
05/31/2021 07:18
Subject: Why is it office culture to make the admin take care of your dishes?
Anonymous wrote:Fed here. This is some crazy stuff.
Not part of an admin's description of duties in the gov. Although we do argue over who cleans out the fridge and it ends up on the admin many times. Our admin would send around nice, funny emails, then throw everything out by a certain date, but not get in there and clean it out.
And of course we don't have dishes and flatware in our pantry, you bring your own, and clean up after yourself or find your stuff in the trash.
How does admin equal "the help"?
I was an admin very early in my career but our building didn't have pantries, I never cleaned up anything. I had a job at the front desk in an HR office, so we had people coming and going, busy work for me was filing, not cleaning up after my coworkers that I supported.
Now I understand why people who come in from private industry lose their mind and say inappropriate things when we don't have cups, water service, or someone cleaning their dish they left in the sink. We will now be able to supply soap at the kitchen sinks, only due to COVID.
(We don't bc your tax dollars would be paying for something that has nothing to do with the work we were hired to do)
Why would't you negotiate that service in your daily cleaning contract for the building?
Cray
This. When I went to work for the government after the private sector, I was shocked on one of my first days when I couldn’t find a fork to eat my lunch! I learned to bring my own—and wash my own. We don’t even have dishwashers and, as noted above, sometimes ran out of soap (because it was brought in on a volunteer basis, at least pre-COVID).
If anything, when we have office-wide events, it is almost always management that is responsible for clean-up, as a gesture to show how much we appreciate the hard work of all of the office’s employees.
Anonymous
05/30/2021 19:21
Subject: Why is it office culture to make the admin take care of your dishes?
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)?
There's a general view in law firms that it's to the firm's advantage to do as much as possible for timekeepers, so that all their time at work is focused on billables. It's not an irrational view when they're billing put $800+/hour, billed in 0.1 or 0.25 hr increments.
Anonymous
05/30/2021 18:38
Subject: Why is it office culture to make the admin take care of your dishes?
Ha Ha this reminds me of a story a friend told me. She was temping at a law firm and the guy she was assigned to left his DIRTY LUNCH DISHES in his out box for her to take!!! She called the temp firm and said, "I am leaving" and they told her that he's a lawyer so you have to make special allowances. NOPE she left.
Anonymous
05/30/2021 18:24
Subject: Why is it office culture to make the admin take care of your dishes?
Fed here. This is some crazy stuff.
Not part of an admin's description of duties in the gov. Although we do argue over who cleans out the fridge and it ends up on the admin many times. Our admin would send around nice, funny emails, then throw everything out by a certain date, but not get in there and clean it out.
And of course we don't have dishes and flatware in our pantry, you bring your own, and clean up after yourself or find your stuff in the trash.
How does admin equal "the help"?
I was an admin very early in my career but our building didn't have pantries, I never cleaned up anything. I had a job at the front desk in an HR office, so we had people coming and going, busy work for me was filing, not cleaning up after my coworkers that I supported.
Now I understand why people who come in from private industry lose their mind and say inappropriate things when we don't have cups, water service, or someone cleaning their dish they left in the sink. We will now be able to supply soap at the kitchen sinks, only due to COVID.
(We don't bc your tax dollars would be paying for something that has nothing to do with the work we were hired to do)
Why would't you negotiate that service in your daily cleaning contract for the building?
Cray
Not part of an admin's description of duties in the gov. Although we do argue over who cleans out the fridge and it ends up on the admin many times. Our admin would send around nice, funny emails, then throw everything out by a certain date, but not get in there and clean it out.
And of course we don't have dishes and flatware in our pantry, you bring your own, and clean up after yourself or find your stuff in the trash.
How does admin equal "the help"?
I was an admin very early in my career but our building didn't have pantries, I never cleaned up anything. I had a job at the front desk in an HR office, so we had people coming and going, busy work for me was filing, not cleaning up after my coworkers that I supported.
Now I understand why people who come in from private industry lose their mind and say inappropriate things when we don't have cups, water service, or someone cleaning their dish they left in the sink. We will now be able to supply soap at the kitchen sinks, only due to COVID.
(We don't bc your tax dollars would be paying for something that has nothing to do with the work we were hired to do)
Why would't you negotiate that service in your daily cleaning contract for the building?
Cray
Anonymous
05/30/2021 18:07
Subject: Why is it office culture to make the admin take care of your dishes?
Some companies have the admin/receptionists do all the dishes, pack and unpack the dishwasher, clean out the refrigerator, fix coffee for entire office, clean coffee pots, stock kitchen, clean counter tops, etc. this was all done by the receptionist. She was basically the maid for the entire office of 100 or so people.
This was very degrading.
This was very degrading.
Anonymous
05/30/2021 08:33
Subject: Why is it office culture to make the admin take care of your dishes?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
Er, where do you “grab a can of soup” from?
From your house? Or the bodega?
I worked in a nonprofit office with minimal admin support and we had dishes. It’s nicer and better for the environment. We just washed them and put them in the rack and they got put away by whoever was in there and noticed dry ones.
Anonymous
05/30/2021 08:31
Subject: Re:Why is it office culture to make the admin take care of your dishes?
If it wasn’t part of your job description and you don’t want to do it, I don’t understand why you’re doing it. Was “keep the kitchen tidy” part of your job description? Putting dishes away isn’t beneath anyone and it’s work. All that matters here is how tasks are assigned. If you weren’t assigned it and you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. If you’re already doing it and you want to stop, you need to bring it up in the appropriate manner so that the task is assigned another way.
Anonymous
05/30/2021 08:28
Subject: Why is it office culture to make the admin take care of your dishes?
Did someone tell you that it’s your job? If the admin doesn’t do it then one of the women winds up doing it, even if there are plenty of men at the same level. OP, I get why you’re annoyed. Truly. But tell me if you are otherwise overworked, have just the right amount of work, or don’t quite have enough work.
Anonymous
05/30/2021 07:54
Subject: Why is it office culture to make the admin take care of your dishes?
Anonymous wrote: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.
Er, where do you “grab a can of soup” from?