How can I politely say no to this request?

[Fedupandstressed]

I’m an Ea for our SLT. I volunteered a couple of years ago to be ‘milk monitor’, as in taking their £5/month and buying the milk, tea, coffee and biccies for the 9 of us. No issues so far. I nip to Asda twice a week on the way to work. I get the bus btw and all the money goes via a dedicated tea fund Revolut.

Now a fairly new member of SLT, has asked the other departments (over 100 people) if they want to join to save on the multiple milk situation in the fridge, and asked me to organise this. So I’d have to organise a regular delivery and payment AND be responsible for chasing every single person for their money!

I'm not a purchasing clerk, or what they’re called. I do this for our team voluntarily.

How do I politely say that sorry, but it’s beyond my remit!

@Fedupandstressed

No - explain why it’s such a time consuming task.
But offer a solution?

A rota, a collectiv online pot or everyone just buys a brings in their contribution from the rota…

I work in the public sector, we tend to buy our own coffee, tea etc. as everyone has different preferences but have a kitty for milk, we just throw in some coins when we think about it, nobody monitors who contributes, there is always enough to cover a few pints of milk, our job involves going out on appointments so someone will shout ‘I’ll bring some milk back’ when it’s getting low, a more informal arrangement seems to work well for us.

You must be private sector! I’ve only ever worked public sector and I’ve never worked anywhere it was provided! We buy our own.

In fact, I am in Local Government and we recently had to buy our own tea and milk ( and cups) to give to external attendees at an event, so from our own salaries. That’s how tight it is in LG.

It's more important to be firm and assertive than it is to be polite here @Fedupandstressed - doing that kind of work for 100+ people becomes a paid admin task which is part of someone's job description, not a little volunteer thing that you are doing out of kindness and team spirit.

It is fine to say "no" as many times and as bluntly as is necessary.

When we went from a corridor of 12 people to an open plan office of 40 people (whole huge rearrangement as the old building was being demolished and replaced with a shiney new building and we were decanted to a different building for the duration) we gave up on communal milk because it became too big an issue to organise on that scale.

It's really only sensible for people to make individual arrangements or to have small informal arrangements these days. It used to be that it made sense for the employer to just provide tea coffee, milk and sugar communally but with so many different requirements for full fat, semi and skimmed, lactose-free, soya, oat and almond milk etc etc it's not possible for employers to do this without being discriminatory. Then you have the whole deal with some people just wanting a tiny splash in 1 cup per day while others have 10 cups of very milky beverage or have a morning bowl of cereal and obviously the former group object to subsidising the latter. Just say "no"!

I’m shocked. I too work for EMs and our tea coffee milk sugar squash is provided.

We use long life milk and purchase 12 x 1 litre packs at a time, so much easier than using fresh milk. In fact it would be the perfect job for someone with a car when they are doing their regular shop, and would give OP a break from her twice weekly shop stop.

I imagine it will be similar to civil service and nothing is provided. It is national rules!

The milk situation takes 7 fridges for around 350 people at our place. Some teams have a milk kitty but anything like that is an all team based informal arrangement.

Doing an ‘everyone’ approach is a logistical nightmare. If you auto enrol everyone to milk scheme then you are financially penalising those who don’t/can’t have milk. Will the milk delivery also include oat/soy options? But if you don’t auto enrol everyone who keeps track of who joins in and who can and can’t use the milk?

It either needs to be paid for by the business (never going to happen in a public service!) or kept to small informal arrangements.

The new ‘milk monitor’ can try and arrange it if they like but I would steer well clear!

lol, I love the way she’s had the idea and asked you to implement it.

it’d be a thanks but no thanks from me.

I would say I dont have capacity for this.
they are welcome to try it themselves of course

I really don’t understand the problem. Isn’t this the type of thing that EAs actually do? As long as you are given adequate time during the working week to do it. If they are expecting that you do it in your own time however then they obviously can jog on and yanbu. Initially I thought you were going to have to collect it on the bus though 😂😂

So you will be carrying enough milk for 110 people? How do they expect you to carry it?

i think they are planning on some sort of delivery

You don't need to be polite, just say no.

"I'm disinclined to acquiesce your request"

She does need to be polite. She works there for Christ sake and this is someone senior to her. Some of the responses on here are just truly odd.

EAs do odd bits to support directors it’s their job. The issue here is that someone new is assuming she does something as part of her job that is actually an informal favour to a small number of people. That needs to be clarified.

Wow I actually find this shocking.. I get it’s tax payers money but these are such basics.. I wouldn’t mind a minuscule amount of my tax would go to coffee / tea for public sector workers. Happy people at work = better results for all of us.. What do you offer visitors (for work) if they come to your workplace?

"Supplying own" in a large workplace is a recipe for ending up with lots of sour milk in the fridge, smelly, no room for other stuff...

For a long time we had no washing up liquid by the sink at work (sigh). I bought my own (50p in Wilco) & put it out to share on days I was in office, but otherwise kept the WU bottle at my desk. Eventually management came up with a regular supply.

So many people on this thread have clearly never worked in the public sector! Public sector organisations - OP works in the emergency services - do not provide refreshments to staff.

Sounds like the problem is that they don’t pay people enough and therefore they steal food.

You might not mind but the right wing press and it's readership do.

If the public sector provided its staff with free tea and coffee, they'd send in FOI requests demanding to know how much it cost and how much time we spent consuming it.

Because in their eyes we do nothing useful and are simply sitting around waiting to collect our massive pensions.

Long life milk is not an option.

sad really… pitting people against each other for basic needs.. can’t believe that nobody in SLT stands up and says; ok, I’ll pay milk out of my own salary for everyone. How much could it really be? £20 a month? A decent leader would step up with a solution because they’d want to take care of their staff.

I work for a wealthy private company - we're not allowed toasters due to fire risk & we bring in our own tea/coffee/milk etc.

Sorry new person but this actually isnt my role, I volunteered for our small team as its on the way, and know everyone well enough to be comfortable chasing the funds. But I do use my own time for it I dont have capacity for that to be an official role for everyone and im quite worried about being financially out of pocket, which I cant afford if I have to chase 100 strangers and run this like a milk round.

So no, I wont be able to do this. And in future id prefer you discuss those sort of suggestions with me before volunteering me for such a large responsibility that could have financial impacts on me if people are late paying.

If you find another volunteer however im happy to transfer responsibility of our team one

Well I think for a 100 people you’re talking £20 a week. This is never going to happen… I worked in the public sector for 25 years and you might get a nice boss along the way but generally this isn’t going to happen.

( In policing you can be on your feet for hours in body armour and someone might give you a bottle of water 🙌. Once I got bought an ice cream because it was bloody hot. That was a good year. Remember these examples when you start wanting to complain about “ gold plated pensions)