To leave my colleagues to fend for themselves

[Polarbearflavour]

I’m the most junior person in my team. But I’m not an office junior or administrator. I am the youngest person and a woman in a male dominated team. My team is very top heavy (they are generally 2 pay bands above me to 5 pay bands above me) and we share our floor with another team who also use the printer but never restock it.

I work for a huge corporation on a massive office site.

It isn’t my job strictly speaking but I’m asked to order stationery and go over to the main admin hub to get paper and more ink toner. Nobody else seems able to do this and if the printer runs out of toner or paper or the confidential waste bags get full and need to be collected by the porters, it just gets left.

AIBU to go on holiday for 2 weeks leaving one ream of paper, all the printers blinking because they are short of toner and the confidential waste bags needing to be collected? Mainly to see if anybody else actually sorts it?

dear god do NOT spend ages writing out a carefully detailed list of exactly what to do in your absence, OR organise someone else to do it OR tell your manager you have been doing it despite not being one of your objectives, and expect a pat on the head.

This would be good advice if the extra task you were doing was something specialised, like updating software or setting the security alarm, i.e. something you have to have specific training/knowledge to do and can't just pick up.

Putting paper in ta machine and phoning a number to get confidential waste collected is not a specialised task - the others don't not do it because they don't know how, they don't do it because they can't be bothered.

Writing a detailed list of what to do and sorting someone to do it in your absence would be akin to doing the same 'how to' ....make a cup of tea, or...run the dishwasher i.e would make you look petty and as if you had too much time on your hands. Sending an email to your manager with an inferred 'I know I'm leaving your department now but just wanted to let you know I have been putting paper in the photocopier for months now all on my own and you haven't even noticed or said well done so please can you tell my new manager how good and clever I am,' will result in mocking that will follow you around the company for years.

To the poster who said she appreciates her staff taking responsibilty for doing 'admin' things like tidying the stationery cupboard as it shows their work ethic - yes I agree, it does, but are you saying you would really be impressed if she left a laminated list on how to do it: e.g. 1) put pens in pen pot 2) pencils go in drawer a, 3) paper is organised by size, etc. Because if so that is mad!

Before I started there was no stationery cupboard or paper or toner and they just scrounged from other teams. Looks like they’ll be going back to doing that when I leave

It’s a team of middle managers. My next job is a middle management role and they have a business management/suppprt team.

This reminds me of when a meeting room had a massive leak and none of the men were capable of ringing the facilities management help desk (clearly on the intranet) so when I came back two days later, the roof had almost caved in.

The men’s loos were blocked and I was told that. I simply gave them the number of the help desk.

OMG Polarbear, you sound like you're well off out of there! Enjoy your holiday