Kitchen Bitchin
I believe it’s beyond the power of humans to maintain communal kitchens. In every workplace and share house I’ve occupied, visited or heard about, there have been tea room or kitchen dramas:
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One poor, abused soul does all the cleaning.
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Emails fly about brown, furry things in the fridge.
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People tip half-full mugs in the just-run dishwasher.
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The cutlery draw is empty; everyone has private utensils.
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No-one does any cleaning, so all use foam cups and paper plates.
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Disembowelled food platters are abandoned (for discovery by VIPs).
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Posters invoking health, family, decency and community are torn down overnight.
I’ve seen every plea, order, threat, prayer, ultimatum and roster. All have failed. I’ve therefore summoned the power of poetry. I hope that by printing and posting my poems in your trouble spot, you’ll make a difference. Here they are, in your choice of rhyming couplet or haiku:
Tea Room Poem
When holding a wet teaspoon,
Prithee, stop and think:
‘Shall I wash and dry the bastard,
Or chuck it in the sink?’
Imagine all your workmates
Gathered at your side;
Fondling their bread knives
As you try to decide.
Picture sixteen Staysharps,
Keen and cold and true,
Dicing you to dog food
And you’ll know what to do.
Tea Room Haikus
#1 Teaspoon
I am the teaspoon.
Many use me, few wash me.
I reside in filth.
#2 Teaspoons
We drown inverted,
The blue mug our common grave.
A cradle of germs.
#3 The Zen of Teaspoons
If a teaspoon falls
In the sink and no one sees
Will it wash itself?
#4 Idle Spoons
Clean and dry at last!
Not for us the kitchen drawer.
On the sink we laze.
#5 Thoughtless Acts
Like Yin in our Yang,
Sugar flecked with coffee lumps
Flaws each perfect tea.
Knock yourself out, send a photo of these poems at work to megan.wilson@myob.com and let us know if they do the trick!
While we’re waiting, what’s the most hideous tea room tale you can tell?
Alternatively, excoriate my dismal theory by tabling your shining example of a functional communal kitchen.
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Dear Paul,
As you know I am one of the very few that maintains the kitchen at my work. Having read your post, I decided not to unpack the dishwasher today. It’s now 10.25am and is till stacked from last night, although I suspect people have now started adding the odd dirty cup and possibly the one spoon that is left in the kitchen is now hidden amongst some clean and dirty cutlery. Where do the spoons go? No matter how many times they get replaced, they disappear again. Would it help if an engraved spoon was given to each new employee as part of their induction pack? I’ll keep you posted on the status of our dishwasher over the day. Not a very positive comment from me – apologies for that. Your post today is brilliant and very close to my heart, as are you. Fonnie xo
Dear Fonnie, thank you for one of the best comments I’ve ever received! It contains everything I love to see: it’s informative, personal, interesting, honest, thought provoking, descriptive and sincere. I think your post is very positive, as it represents a stand by someone who is no longer prepared to be used as a doormat. I’m very grateful for your words. May they educate and inspire others! Love, P. XOX
Our kitchen at work was terrible. So bad that one of the ladies confiscated all of the mugs and for 2 days people had to go down stairs and buy coffee. People use the coffee machine in the showroom and leave it with milk dripping off the steamer – great for customers to see.
I saw a spoon being consumed by a green blog of bacteria. There is something from another world in the fridge, it has a never before seen genetic code. I think it contains the secrets to the origin of the Universe. May be the next super weapon and is quite possibly the source of Swine Flu, or perhaps the cure??
We have a roster that seems to co incide perfectly with people’s sick days. There are nasty notes, signs and shame files in the companty newsletter.
Nothing works. We abondon the kitchen to Shane the sh*t eating slug…..
Anyone for a coffee??
Some wonderful imagery there, Malcolm! Even scarier because it’s true. I can see a great new theme park on the Gold Coast…
So, that’s Total Filth Theory: 2 vs Common Decency: ZIP
Hi Fonnie – what happened with the dishwasher yesterday?
Thank you for your interest, Sandy. Fonnie is having a well-earned rest and has authorised me to report on her behalf.
At lunchtime on Friday, someone emptied the dishwasher. We suspect, however, that some of the dirty dishes put in the diswasher were packed away with the clean ones.
After lunch, a bolognaise-smeared container was left on the table. Fonnie did not respond. When I came to collect her, I saw a huddle of cleaners deep in discussion outside the building. We’re not sure if these incidents are linked.
Monday should prove revelatory. Stand by! P.
10 Years living in ‘Community’. 20+ years if you count the RAAF & various other ’shared living’ arrangements.
Yep! If you want an accurate ‘mutual respect’ indicator, you can’t go past a good ol’ shared Kitchen! Nowhere else is ‘what we really think of each other’ more blatantly demonstrated and denied…oh except maybe for on the ‘Battlefield’. :- P
The ‘Vulcans’ in the audience may suggest the next logical step (considering those mentioned already), to be a surveillance camera network…but I reckon that catching people ‘red handed’ and/or ’shaming’ them doesn’t work either…though ’shaming’ people does provide a starting point for exposing a few hidden ‘truths’…if you have the resources (patience & fortitude), to go down that path.
There’s an old saying from the the Mahabharata (I think), which I’ll have to call a paraphrase (because I couldn’t find a direct reference on the web):
‘When it is that a mother favors her child over that of another, it is the beginnings of War’.
If only we valued our daily personal interactions enough to consider them worthy of scientific study and ‘actual’ application. We may then be better able to recognise their ‘fractal’ nature, extrapolate their likely consequences and design our ‘ways’ and ‘environs’ to either better accommodate or prevent genetic mutations, law suits and wars.
I don’t have a practical solution beyond ‘mutual respect’, and clearly we have a long way to go before we achieve that in our kitchens, let alone across our planet. But then, just ask anyone if they respect themselves and others…we all say ‘Oh yes! Of course I do…’. The ‘problem’ invariably lies with others (of course)…and isn’t that why we must continue to blow ‘others’ up? :- )
Wow! That was a bit of ’sermon’ wasn’t it? :- ) No doubt about ya Paul…you continue to pin-point such ‘essential’ matters. Well, at least they are to me… :- P
Cheers
Stephen G
RAAF, Vulcans, Sanskrit epics and fractals. Only one person weaves such disparate threads into the fabric of a tea room debate. That person is Stephen G. If they did sermons like yours at St Peter & Paul’s, I’d still be rocking up every Sunday. Many thanks!
Hi Paul,
I was a nurse so we had to have the cleanest kitchen ever! It was a hospital, what can I say?
How are you? Haven’t connected in a while. All settled in NZ now, weather is so bitterly cold here on top of the hill….
Hi Yvonne; great to hear from you again! Hadn’t thought of the hospital angle. Did everyone share cleaning duties? Glad you made it safely to NZ. Will you get snow?
Latest from the front: The bolognaise dish vanished after a day and a half. The teabag canister (which Fonnie alone used to fill) has been empty for several days. Nobody else has made the one-floor odyssey to replenish stocks. Rather than share this task, people have stopped drinking tea! As a result, there have been no dirty cups and no need for the dishwasher to run. UN monitoring of the situation continues…
There was a hospital cleaner who did all that!
It is cold enough I believe for snow. They are saying they have never had such a cold June…Go figure…ha ha
Thanks, Yvonne. One more question, if you don’t mind! Had the hospital cleaner been retrenched and the medical team been asked to maintain their own kitchen cleanliness and supplies, do you think they’d have done so?
oh yes yes YES… that’s why I have an office all by myself… of course while you have only mentioned the kitchen, there is of course the bathroom situation…
Thank you, Flip. I was hoping to garner your expert culinary reaction. The bathroom situation will indeed have to wait for another post.
I’m reading a book on business ethics which states the only rule you need is the Golden Rule – do unto others. Funny how this seems to apply to behaviour in the communual kitchen too!
I tried that one, Sonia, but I had about as much luck as God did when He ran it up the flagpole.
Does human evolution really stop at the dish rack?
Love it, going up on our shared Tea Room wall… stand by for photos.
Nice one, Yari! Did you hear that, Megan? We’re getting photos!
Judging by how quickly I approved it, I definitely heard it and was most excited! Bring on the pics, Yari – in fact, some before and after shots would be interesting…
Ok, pics are up, not sure if I can embed them here, will try below, just in case the url’s are:
http://img154.yfrog.com/img154/7114/81268883.jpg and
http://img442.yfrog.com/img442/391/ys0.jpg
Ok, embedded images:
(Paul, if this does not work feel free to edit my comment and take out the HTML code)
Please do not be fooled, this is our tea room as of Monday morning… so clean, so neat, how it survived a whole day I do not know.
Yari, that is GOLD!
Great stuff, Yari! Power Through Poetry! Can’t wait to hear how you get on… Thank you for sharing.
Thanks guys, nice to be part of a movement. Of sorts. Hah.
Some interesting information,well researched thank you!