Random thoughts at random times

In my office, we have a big shared kitchen.  I think I’ve mentioned before that we have a shared task called “kitchen duty” which involves clearing out the dishwasher in the mornings and generally tidying up a bit.

Whomever’s turn it is today, forgot to clean out the kitchen.

The dishwasher was full of clean dishes and the sink was brimming with dirty dishes.  I was sitting in the kitchen eating my lunch, and there was a virtual parade of people that walked through, complained about the state of the kitchen, then walked out and did nothing.

I noticed the mess, but I didn’t complain about it.  I figured, it’s not my turn, why should I clean up the mess.  As more people walked in and out of the kitchen, complaining about the mess, and doing nothing about it, I realized something.

No one was taking ownership of the problem. No one was doing anything to fix the problem either.  It’s easy to yakkity yak about what’s wrong, but it’s hard to take action to fix what’s wrong.

After I finished my lunch, I cleaned up the kitchen.  I emptied out the dishwasher, cleared the dishes from the sink, and cleaned off the counters.  I didn’t say a word about it.  There were some other people in the kitchen, and I can imagine that they thought it was my turn and I was just being lazy, but I don’t care.

All I know, is that I took charge of the situation and did something about it.  What would happen if we all did a little bit to fix the problems of the world?