Was this an unreasonable request at work?

[user1471867483]

At work, in our office, we have been without a cleaner for a few days. She was due to come back today (she did turn up later), but in the meantime, four bins in our office were overflowing with rubbish. A male worker in the office, who isn't my boss, somehow managed to obtain a big bin liner and said to me, "Gis a bit of help with the rubbish will you"? I said I wasn't touching it, in which he replied, "But it's your rubbish too. Don't you do the rubbish at home"? I replied that of course I do, but I'm not at home now, plus I don't get paid any extra for doing that here".
It was him who wanted to rubbish bins collected in the first place. They weren't smelling and I was happy to wait for our cleaner (who turned up anyway).

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Yes he was absolutely reasonable. You sound like a snob.

Our cleaner at work is on holiday at the moment and we just share the jobs between everyone in the office - one cleans the kitchen, one does the loos, one empties bins etc etc. No we don't get paid "extra" for it but we're not precious and want our workplace to be a nice environment.

Ah we all act abit dick-ish from time to time. Sometimes we need a shove in the right direction.

I don't do bins at home and NFW would I do them at work. It's my office's responsibility to get someone to do that, I'm not paid to do bins, I'm paid to do my job. Which isn't dealing with rubbish.

So YANBU IMO.

Gosh OP.
It was a perfectly reasonable request from him.

Yeh you've been a bit of a dick I'm afraid. Why on earth didn't you just help him? Sorry but I think you've landed yourself a bad reputation now of all your own obnoxious doing.

You don't do the bins at home? But assuming you would have to if you lived alone? Or would you just let them overflow onto the kitchen floor?

Really not a big deal to just help the guy with the rubbish you were being completely unreasonable it's called team work

YANBU OP. It's the expectation of helping in the moment.
If he'd asked nicely 'are you free to give me a hand' it would be OK.
But he just decided to do it and expected you to fall in line.
Also why didn't he ask a male? Or anybody else. Why did you of all people have to do it?
He could've found someone else like alllll the other posters on this thread

Astonished that someone expects to be paid extra for emptying the bin at work.

Wow. Are you normally this petty?

The natural instinct in me would have been to help him, or just do it initially anyway, off my own back.
Not nice for a cleaner to come back to overflowing bins of rubbish that you have probably contributed to.
Do you know why she was off? If not then it could have been for all kinds of reasons like a bereavement, illness etc, you don't know what someone is going through.
I think this post hi lites what some people really think about cleaners, after all you thought it you was too good to do it.

Perfectly reasonable request and very unreasonable response.

To be fair OP came back and admitted she had been rude.

Crikey, mind you don't knock someone out with that chip on your shoulder! Perfectly reasonable to ask for help from a colleague to muck in

Be fair guys, they have come back, put their hands up, snapped on their marigolds and currently steam cleaning the stair-well.

Why does a man need a woman's help to empty office waste paper bins?

Jeez. I bet he walked past several male colleagues on the way to ask the OP as well.

How do you know he didn’t ask a male?

I'm assuming this is a joke?

Very reasonable request. It's the sort of thing that happens a lot in smaller offices....see also bringing the milk in, emptying the dishwasher, dropping the post off. In fact, I just spent five minutes topping up the dishwasher with salt and rinse aid.

But there's always one or two people who step over the milk crates...."not my job"....🙄

Nope. He should NOT have asked you. He wanted to, let him get on with it.

It's a job loads of people wouldn't want to do despite the fairy tales being spun here. Women are allowed to say NO.

All these twats constantly blaming women for not sticking up for themselves "why didn’t you just say no" snark.

This is why. Because we're shamed when we say no. It's not your place to tell any woman she's got to empty office bins.

Would I have done it? Maybe. Should you have when you didn't want to? Hard no.

The fact you said the bins didn't stink, makes me think you should have helped him. But I would hope he could also just ask someone else.
In my workplace I was the office manager and we had a handyman, so I would've asked the handyman to do it. But you need a more reliable cleaning firm!

I am with the OP.

We don't know why the cleaner was late - maybe her cat got run over, maybe she had an emergency dental appointment - who knows. But if someone with a short attention span and not enough to do leaps up to do her job - AND ropes others into it - is isn't helping anyone. It isn't helping the cleaner, as it is drawing attention to her having been elsewhere, perhaps for reasons beyond her control (and she showed up to to do the job anyway, a couple of hours makes no difference). It isn't helping the people who have other things to do and could maybe have done without all the faff and background noise. It is very seriously not helping anyone at all if management now decide that everyone can muck in with the cleaning, on top of what they do already.

Who cares if the bins sit a little longer? What an officious little bastard.

There is a general trend (and has been, as long as I have been working, which is a long time) for "efficiencies" to be implemented at work, some of which mean "make a few people do some of what used to be someone's specific job, so the actual job disappears". What this means is that the job opportunity is lost to the person who used to do it (for the cleaner, that means all the people who need flexible work that doesn't require qualifications or great written or spoken english have now lost an opportunity - hurray well done I hope you are proud of you "flexibility" now); and for the people who do other things, they now have extra stuff to do, unpaid.

I'd have helped.

Mind you I was called all sorts by one poster in COVID times when I said I wouldn't be cleaning toilets at my workplace in addition to my actual job, so I get where you're coming from.

What will you do now OP? This is the sort of thing that stays with you. Presumably, the whole office saw you saying it was beneath you?

Not everything has to be a drama 🙄