Do you wash up at work? Was this a bit cheeky?

[Whatagoodplacetobe]

Have been working as a temp as an assistant to 3 more senior staff members.
There is a small staff kitchen, I usually just wash my own pots up as I go along.
For a few days in a row, the senior staff would have various cups of tea/coffee/, toast, biscuits etc. And just put their stuff straight in the sink.

Twice one of the women asked me at the end of the day to wash all their pots. I thought it was a bit lazy and like they saw it as beneath them.
I wouldn't mind if it were on some sort of rota basis but not washing theirs all the time.

I did it once but just left it on the next time so she ended up doing theirs (not mine)

Am I being petty?

*really

The kitchen fairies went on strike then left. Everyone is responsible for their own dishes / cups.

Leaving anything in the sink now results in an immediate email asking the culprit to sort it immediately.

Hmmm, until I read this, I’d have said YANBU, but if this is actually written into your job description then I suspect they’ve always had the person in your job role do the washing up.

Lazy sods. Why can't they wash their own pots?

Unless it’s in your job description yanbu.

In my team we have always been pretty good at clearing up after ourselves as we go. We’ve recently had a new team member start with us and it’s very obvious that they don’t wash up after themselves and just leave whatever they use in the sink. The rest of us seem to have all decided independently not to wash their stuff. The new team member seems oblivious that it’s only their stuff left festering in the sink…..

I have worked a job where we had someone assigned to wash our dishes. It was specifically part of that person’s job and we weren’t supposed to be spending time on tasks like that when we could be doing billable hours. We also had people to fetch lunch, make copies, and do any number of small tasks that we were all perfectly capable of doing ourselves, but that it would have been inefficient for us to do. It was my first job after finishing my degree and it didn’t matter that I was the youngest member of staff or the person with the least experience. I billed at a high rate so I was coddled.

My current job is at a non-profit and we wash our own dishes and get our own lunch.

they are adults
they should be perfectly capable
it is not your job
it is Not the job of the cleaner

That's complete and utter horseshit. I'm a consultant who has worked for 20+different companies in the last ten years and literally every single place I ever worked when I was still office-based everyone washed their own, from the 17 year old help desk apprentice up to the CEO of the company. There was one exception, a posh london agency, and that was only because they had someone employed whose entire job was making tea and coffee and organising refreshments for meetings and keeping the kitchen in order.

Don't clean up after anyone, OP, especially if you're a woman.

tidy the area probably means tidy up the paper work

As a cleaner - may I just say I love you. !

To those that don’t tidy up or wash up during the day.
I have no problem doing the washing up if it’s left in the kitchen. But the amount of people who think it’s fine to leave their dishes on their desk, under a pile of paperwork, or behind the loo brush in the toilets is astounding. I’m a cleaner not a housekeeper, and no I can’t keep track of a couple of hundred ‘special’ mugs/cups/spoons etc.
I would also add, please don’t shout at me or leave post it notes, when I come in at night, if during the day, you’ve run out of cutlery because no one can be bothered to wash up at lunch or switch on the dishwashers. I’ve tracked the dirty plates down, washed all the teaspoons, emptied and out away the dishwasher contents, from 6am-6pm …. It’s down to you!

Ah so if your manager asks you to rub their feet, or babysit their children, or clean crumbs out of their keyboard with tweezers, or to do accounting when you were hired as a graphic designer, that's that, then?

You'd presumably refuse to sign the contract with that clause intact?

Cleaners aren't there to wash up after people either. They're there to maintain the building, not clean up staffs messes.

Just leave it, lazy gits.

What would happen if you didn't do it?

Don’t be an idiot.

The OP is a team assistant, and cleaning up the kitchen (not cleaning it, there is a cleaner) is in her contract. There’s nothing unusual about it, assistants often get sent out for coffee, asked to make coffee for meetings, go out for emergency stationery and lay out food for lunch meetings. Whatever helps the team do it’s job.

There is nothing demeaning about doing these things. I thought Covid had taught us that there is no such thing as an unskilled job.

Though I think everyone should wash their own dishes up regardless , I do love how in this thread that their is more people agreeing that washing up is more of an admin assistants job than a cleaners 😅

OP, I do think it's pretty lazy of them and general tidying to me wouldn't include washing peoples dishes, I'd be more thinking along the lines of keeping filing cabinets tidy etc. Someone's personal cups and plates aren't related to the job at all.

We have this problem where I work. Senior staff also steal lower grades milk/tea/coffee/etc because they're 'too busy' to remember to bring their own. This is senior staff that earn 3x more than the staff they're stealing from.

Rubbish

I'm genuinely shocked at how many people think that an admin assistant should wash up after you. Shame on you all

OP, I do think it's pretty lazy of them and general tidying to me wouldn't include washing peoples dishes, I'd be more thinking along the lines of keeping filing cabinets tidy etc. Someone's personal cups and plates aren't related to the job at all
Op is clearly talking about the staff kitchen? She references it her first post.

As long as I'm paid couldn't careless it's a temp job just leave if you don't like what they ask you to do .

YANBU at all. Even our CEO does their own dishes.

Yes, a staff kitchen to make teas/coffees/lunch for themselves throughout the day? Not really related to the actual job though is it. At a push I could see needing to washing up cups after meeting with external clients etc, but senior members staffs lunch plates...nah

Don't do it op

I don’t see how washing other people’s dirty dishes falls to the most junior members of staff. That’s a bit old fashioned isn’t it? They should get a dishwasher if they’re that lazy and rota emptying it.