I'm shocked at the entitlement, others think it's normal..?

[Bigstyle]

I work for a small charity. There are three very important, very well paid executives and a small team of "workers".

The executives like their coffee and mostly make it themselves, using the office pod machine. But at the end of the day they bring their cups into the main office for the most junior staff member to wash.

Now, I get that our job is basically to support them, but I can't imagine doing this to my staff. The "junior" doesn't have hot drinks so it's not even like she's going to wash her own cup.

I think it's outrageous, the general attitude it demonstrates rather than the task, but they clearly think it's perfectly normal.

Is it?

Whether they think they’re being disrespectful is irrelevant.

They’re being disrespectful.

Implying it's "1970s" to expect office support staff to tidy up the office is all over this thread.

The issue is clearly that the execs feel "tidy up office including cups" should be in the job description (they probably don't write them themselves). But everyone in this thread is implying that it's dreadful and old-fashioned to have any other system than everyone cleans their own mug.

(I'm assuming "junior" in this case is an admin worker rather than say a junior software engineer or something.)

FYI I don't have a dog in this fight, our office has a dishwasher...

I also work in a small charity and take my turn loading and unloading the dishwasher.

I'd be lying if I said I don't secretly miss working in corporate where I could do my "Big Job" stuff and leave it for the cleaners who were paid to clean up, but as we don't have anyone who is paid to do it I take my turn like everyone else!

Yes it’s entitled. I’m still miffed about something like that which happened five years ago in my old job when we still worked onsite.

We all had a cupboard for our mugs and DH had bought me one with my full name on it. Not just ‘Judy’ but ‘Judy King’. It was clear it was mine. We also had mugs that were in a different cupboard for visitors.

Anyway, I came into work and my lovely mug had vanished. I searched for ages and asked around. Finally, one of the IT guys said he’d seen a big wig drinking from it the day before. The cow had then left my mug in an office half full of manky cold coffee (I hate coffee) It meant I then had to clean it out.

How entitled is it to not only steal someone’s mug but then to discard it for them to find and clean. Rude.

I am fully aware this is a first world problem and I expect to get over it in approximately 15 years or more likely never 😜😜

I worked in a bank in the 1970s (yes I am that old 🤣). We had a “tea-lady” - and her husband was the porter. It was very time efficient because we just kept working away and she brought us our tea and biscuits and cleared up afterwards. I think it worked well.

We recently acquired a dishwasher in my workplace.
I felt it said something quite wonderful about the place, that it was decided the person to make sure it is switched on each day is the senior manager with the nearest office.

I have a theory to advance: "Mrs Mary the tea lady who used to come around with a trolley" (mentioned upthread) was probably seen as an essential part of the office, was greatly missed when she retired, and is still thought of fondly by everyone who worked there. Or, if not fondly, they enjoy reminiscing about how she terrorised them all for taking too many sugars, or how she was exasperatingly chatty, or always wore those mismatching aprons. She was real to them.

In every company in London I've ever worked, the cleaning staff are outsourced, come overnight, are mostly not British or don't speak English, and are unmistakeably "the Other" and seen as some kind of lower order. (I make these comments dispassionately.) It's not really surprising that people see cleaning as a low-status job that they are desperate to distance themselves from at all costs. (Perhaps particularly an issue for OP's non-white employee?)

Anyway, I don't think life is intrinsically morally better now that we live in 2024 with the latter system instead of 1974 with the former system.

But back then you probably weren't staring at a screen all day unlike many offices now - you probably had more variety of tasks at & around your desk.

Getting up to get yourself a coffee is a good eye-break. I don't think it's more efficient for everyone to just be sat tapping away for hours on end and little excuse to get up and move around.

Except your post didn’t express it that way at all. You essentially stated your time is too important and as a result you expect your lower level colleagues to clean up after you because you are paying them to facilitate your oh so important role and if they can’t do that what’s the point of them. I will make someone a cuppa if I’m going. That’s normal in an office environment. The boss just expecting people they pay to do a specific job - that isn’t cleaning, to make their coffee and wash up their cup, because they’re less important, that’s disrespectful.

You may not believe it, but it’s also likely they don’t like you and that the culture you’ve created in the office is toxic.

Oooh power games! They like an overt display of the pecking order in your place of work don't they?! Ime, those who behave in this way are usually lazy and not quite as competent as they would like to make out.

If the juniors are male are they similarly treated? I remember working in schools and offices where they tended to be let off the hook. So annoying.

No, we definitely weren’t staring at screens- computerisation didn’t happen until the 1980s in my bank.

However the majority of female employees had an extremely mundane time operating huge calculating machines on which the records of the current accounts were processed, along with the items which came over the counter via the tellers.

The office junior actually had one of the most varied jobs- looking after the savings accounts, and answering the phones. (Would you believe me if I told you the savings account interest was calculated using logarithmic tables and occasionally a slide rule? The actual accounts were handwritten in huge ledgers.)

Anyway, I digress - the thing is the amount of time we would have lost leaving our machines to make tea would have knocked the whole thing off kilter. It’s just how it was- a different time.

Totally understand the need for people now to get up, move around etc, especially when using screens. 👍

I think charities are crap to work for. My friend was a chef for a charity. The fund raisers used to host weekend events and leave rubbish, dirty plates etc. all over the garden and inside the building. When my friend complained to the CEO she was told that those people paid her mortgage so she shouldn't complain about doing a couple of hours unpaid on a Monday to clean up after them. She left.

Thanks for the memory. I also worked for a bank in the 1970s.

It’s all coming back to me 🤣 and maybe the most shocking thing of all - we all chain smoked in my office, while we worked. It was totally normal to be puffing away at your desk! 🚬

In the 1950's perhaps it absolutely not normal these days

It’s inappropriate. They should wash their own cups. Unfortunately there’ll always be some people pleasing idiot who will do it so the CFs get away with it.

At our place the wealthiest woman leaves her spoon in the sink - it’s infuriating. It takes 2 seconds to put it in the dishwasher but she obviously has staff at home that do that. I’m not going to tell her though! I’ll be the idiot who puts in the dishwasher because I need the job more than I need to cause aggro with her!

Yep. We smoked too. I was 16 when I started in the "machine room" on a mezzanine floor. It must have stank. Our ashtrays had a black horse in the middle.

Sterling Cooper c.1962, maybe?

Nobody has said cleaners should do it without being aware it is what is required and being paid to reflect the time it takes. The point many have made is that it should either be added to the cleaner’s job description or everyone (regardless of rank) should do it themselves.

really? I 100% think everyone should do their own washing but I would have been really pissed off at that - if it was a 'what tasks should you do yourself and which can you delegate' exercise then fine, but washing your cup DOES usually come way down the scale of importance because unless you're assuming someone else will do it for you it doesn't affect anyone else but you - whereas a senior staff member not signing off on payroll might mean staff don't get paid = their dd's bounce = they go into their overdraft and get charged = don't pay their rent and get evicted/can't feed their kids (absolute worst case scenario but still!)

I would have just assumed if I didn't wash the cup I would have a dirty cup and would need to clean it before I made my next cuppa, not automatically that low importance = expecting someone else to do it.

Even if this wasn't the case even people who think senior staff should usually clean their own cup would probably agree that if it's a choice between me washing their cup as a one off and the company losing a £2 million deal that will affect my bonus, I'll be reaching for the fairy liquid!

No deal like that is ever on such a knife edge that 30 seconds rinsing a cup will make or break it.

@GreatNorthBun

it’s really not a ‘horrible attitude’ IMHO

(I expect these posters think Michelangelo should have taken his turn to get the sandwiches in)

Yeah, it's just very inefficient and uneconomic to use contracted cleaning hours for washing up.

If the cleaning contract is for say 4 hours for the building, then it makes far more sense for those hours to be used on the bigger tasks and doing them well, than pratting about washing up people's cups that would take staff a couple of minutes at the end of their day.

That's also why my previous employer got rid of people having individual bins under their desks and things like that, to make cleaning more efficient and quicker.

As a charity I hope they are buying their own coffee pods and milk. You don't get free coffee in any local authourity I know about or the civil service!