Theres a laminated sign that sits over the sink in the office kitchen. It says : There is NO magical kitchen fairy please clean up your dishes yourself.
I hadnt really paid attention to it before, but noticing it for the first time the other day floored me. It was after all a bit of a shock after the recent disclosures about Santa Claus (If you dont know what Im talking about just forget I ever mentioned it), but more importantly, I was pretty sure that the Magical Kitchen Fairy had been going strong ever since Id been frequenting this particular office kitchen, and this sign was creating some uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.
To resolve this matter I deliberately left my empty coffee cup in the sink that evening and was thrilled to find that it was cleaned and put away the next morning.
Im happy to say that my faith in the Magical Kitchen Fairy remains as strong as ever, and I wish her well in her epic battle against the Bossy Kitchen Guilt Fairy.
Gee you’re a brave man Rex. Here at CDU the Bossy Kitchen Guilt Fairy would probably ram your dirty coffee cup up where the sun don’t shine if you tried that little number. I’m not denying MCPness, you understand. I’m just a lazy profligate coward who avoids the whole dilemma by eating and buying my coffee at the cafeteria.
But I’m also a self-effacing MCP. One day last week the special of the day at the CDU cafeteria was Thai Chicken Curry. They displayed its Thai name – Phat Prik. I felt obliged to buy and eat it. Very nice too.
Ken, I think you’ve hit on the reason for my good fortune. I have noticed a tendency to shun the in-house Maxwell House in favour of the fine aroma and favour provided by the surrounding Italian Cafes in their paper takeaway cups.
I’m guessing that the Bossy Kitchen Guilt Fairy thinks that her policing has won the day, but still accepts that there’s always a low level of crime in every community that is impossible to stamp out.
Let me guess, those cups (and the kitchen) were all provided by the employer at no cost to the people using those resources, and predictably the people concerned show that special respect only reserved for things handed to them free and taken for granted (i.e. none).
Seems like only last month when someone threw out the claim that there were no real examples of the “Tragedy of the Commons”, now we are finding examples all over the place.
Whenever I’ve been in the kitchen in the workplace corner environment I’m both an offender and a washerupper. That is I’m inclined to leave a mug or two in the sink but then I’ll also get a rush to the head every day or so and do all the washing up. I don’t drink instant coffee or stale workplace generic teabags – I usually take little sachets of miso soup and just rinse my cup and stick it in a drawer.
Have you heard about the Law of Karma? No not Korma from the Indian lunch place or the help desk guy but the notion of what goes around keeps going around or something like that.
My advice is to be a bit careful. If the Kitchen Fairy is anything like me it’s likely that your cup has been collecting urine samples in the unisex toilet or somesuch before being given back to you or worse some IT nerd has recalibrated your keyboard in software so that the CAPLOK is always on.