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!

Spot on @PandaKunKun . New starter looks proactive but with no committment to making their idea work except to push the work onto the Op.

That's just dumping the problem onto poor "X" instead of OP.

The reasonable options are

• everyone sorts out their own personal supplies
• groups of staff form informal pooled arrangements
• the organisation pays and it is someone's job to organise the ordering and deliveries

I would thank them for volunteering to take it on as you were thinking about standing down from the role after having done it for 2 years.

Yeah, good point. I’m exhausted just thinking about it!

It is a good idea to streamline the process if there are 100 people, but it is the responsibility of the person who requested the change to make it happen, not yourself.

It’s a good opportunity to say that you have volunteered for two years and will be stepping down once the new arrangements are in place.

We get a weekly milk delivery from the milkman and they invoice the company monthly just like any other supplier. It is written into the job description of one of the admin roles to manage this in order to avoid too much milk building up, along with placing an online order with a bulk catering supply company for tea bags, coffee and sugar. If anyone wants extras - plant milk, sweetners, biscuits, the person wanting them has to bring in their own supplies.

I work in an FE college and never mind supplying milk and coffee - I had to buy my own fridge 😂

They also close down the refectory during the summer break. Non-teaching staff are still working as normal though, so there is no food or hot drinks available on campus for six weeks and the closest shop that sells sandwiches is a 15 minute walk away. God help you if you forget your lunchbox!

On the last day of term, we get a "helpful" email from senior management reminding us that there are vending machines in the foyer if we're hungry 🙃

At the time I left our Council, it was spending £20-30,000 per year on tea and coffee as it had thousands of staff members. The coffee they supplied was very cheap and some people disliked it enough to bring in their own. They didn't provide a wide range of milks, but did have one non-dairy alternative. It all proved extremely controversial, but I preferred this to the previous system where we all had to supply our own.

We used to get visits from MPs, leaders from other Councils and other local bigwigs and I remember one MP had very exacting tea and coffee requirements, including for an extra large mug. I would have loved to have seen his face if he'd been told he had to bring his own! But of course, in reality, showing basic hospitality to our visitors didn't cost much and helped everything run more smoothly.

I now work for a university and they also supply free tea and coffee. I'm not even sure who pays for it.

We have a suite they use for training that has token coffee machines but you need head of service authority to get the tokens (I’d arranged some free training from an external firm with clients in attendance and it was embarrassing as they wouldn’t give me tokens as I didn’t realise - luckily I got H of S to ok it)
We don’t get tokens for internal training.
We have a canteen (not subsidised) and would buy someone a cup of tea there if need be from my own money.
For interviews if I’m not in training suite which has glasses to fill with water, I’ll bring a bottle of water and plastic cups from home.
As for manager paying on our local government pay structure managers start on same pay as top of staff so we are aren’t on much more money usually.
We have microwave, fridge and boiling/cold water provided. I do tell new starters they need to bring own supplies.

I couldn't make heads or tails out of this post. What is an Ea or an SLT? What on earth does a "milk monitor" do?

There are schools who are paying £32000 per annum, equivalent to a staff member, towards free school meals. Why would you be proud of further impacting on a school budget because staff are too lazy to make their own flask?

This sounds bizarre.
The EA for SLT isn't the default milk monitor for the entire company. Was that in your contract?

For starters is tight AF that management don't just supply tea, coffee, sugar and milk and take it as an office expense.

If there is no milk etc supplied then each team or individual person should arrange it amongst themselves.

Sorry, I'm not actually telling you how to decline it. I've been an EA and I would simply say I can't add that to my workload. Maybe I can do a little research and offer options of milk delivery and the cost? Obviously in paid time.

Then leave it to management to sort out.

Where did you get staff being too lazy to make a flask, from? That poster has said no such thing, nor has she implied that was her reason for putting the finance in place.

I used to work at a local council. When I first started they had biscuits for all the meetings and coffee/tea etc all supplied and paid for by the council - ie householders - just the Kit Kats alone for the meetings worked out at £14,000 a year!!! 😬😬😬😳😳😳 so funnily enough once the costs were worked out how much the public was paying for their biccys and drinks they had to start bringing their own in!

Tell them that your current set up works well but let them deal with milk, including collecting the money and transporting it. They'll soon get fed up saving a few pennies.

“What a brilliant idea, do we use your email to send the request?”

Use ChatGPT to write something appropriate !

I think you have answered your own question in your opening piece.

I wouldn't bother with being 'polite' but just say a firm NO. It took me some years and therapy to be able to assert myself and establish boundaries, but I have no problem now! You'll have to accept feeling uncomfortable if you don't normally assert yourself (I did at first) but that soon passes. Also be aware they may ask someone else to do the whole thing and you won't have a role in the tea business any longer.

I work in local government and we all supply our own milk, tea, coffee, sugar and biscuits. The council tax payers haven't supplied us with refreshments for decades! We also pay for any Christmas parties, celebrations etc which is why I no longer participate. I just have a quick drink with colleagues I really like.

I guess you could ask subscribers to set up a standing order to the milk account, check them off and chase the stragglers.

And you could organise regular deliveries.

It probably could be made a one-off project that would more or less run itself thereafter. And you could seek another volunteer to deputise when you're away or too busy to monitor the operation.

And add this to your CV.

But what would have made me spit feathers is that the new SLT member didn't think to run the proposal by you before she volunteered you for a 1000% increase in your workload. To me, that would justify a polite but unsmiling "that would be a hard no."

What would annoy me most about it us the new person taking it upon herself to ask all the other teams without checking with you first, the assumption of asking everyone before you who would be stuck with all the witk. If there's any push back from your email I'd just say it's on them now to organise even for your team and let everyone know

Just say sorry that would be too much, each section will have to do their own. If they do not like it tough.

Just say you don't have the time. So if he wants to do that he will have to organise it

I would stand down and
let the new member of staff take over. Her idea, let her deal with the workload. She will wish that she had never opened her gob!

I have never worked anywhere where it's been supplied everyone had to buy their own coffee and tea. Unless there was an informal arrangement with the team