Messy Shared Space

Question

We work in an office where no one seems to clean up after themselves.  No one does their dishes - people just leave them in the sink and hope things will magically get clean.  They also leave the counters gross and sticky and covered with food/drinks and leave the fridge with old food.  We've brought it up in all hands meetings and put up signs and asked people to clean up, but no one cares, and our cleaning agreement with the building does not include this.  Because a few of us don't love coming to work in a gross place, we always end up getting stuck with it.  Any suggestions on how we can get through to people on this?

J.S. Roman · Answer

That's terrible, imagine how they must be at home? Please, do not enable this behavior!  One thing that worked for us is the threat to toss out dirty plates, and food in the refrigerator every single Friday! People were more motivated to take their stuff home when they realized it was going to get thrown out. Random employees were assigned as the Friday crew and it rotated every week so everyone was more mindful of the mess in the workplace. The memos were emailed, and notes were printed in bold and placed throughout the work area. Good luck and I hope this helps!

Anonymous · Answer

That's a huge pet peeve! I'm a borderline germaphobe so can understand your frustration. Maybe taking it up with HR or a member of the senior team directly.

Cassy Lombardi · Answer

So frustrating! I'm a neat freak / borderline OCD about being clean and it's so tough when you share a space with people who aren't as cleanly! At my old job, they would toss out everything in the fridge on Fridays and we also had to use our own mugs, plates, etc. because then people have more accountability if they clean it or not.

Lady Pele · Answer

How very frustrating!  I would suggest that something like this needs the top executive to send the message.  Will your top executive send out a memo expressing his disappointment that so many employees don’t find cleanliness to be an issue?

Another option would be to suggest that everyone in the office is scheduled one week on a rotating basis to ensure that the kitchen is cleaned (not necessarily do it themselves).  If the kitchen isn’t cleaned that week, the top executive knows who to talk to.  If it were my week, anything sitting in the sink would be thrown out.  Let them pick it out of the trash if it's important to them.

Another option might be to suggest that the cleaning be hired out and taken out of the raises of those who refuse to comply with basic courtesy and cleanliness.  Yeah, not going to happen, but nice to think about.

The most important part is to get your top executives to sign on with the need to keep the kitchen clean before it becomes a health code violation.

Flu · Answer

at least no one is eating cucumbers...then carrots ..then peppers next to you all day :-(...it looks like universe has sent me all those ...

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