Sans Fig Leaf
w
"Making a..."
28 February, 2008
There was a time, in the
old office, where I began to define a "great day" as one in which the
number of cups of coffee I drank was greater than the number of pots of
coffee I started brewing. Most days there were several times I would go
to the mini kitchen in our corner of the office to find the pumper-pot
empty.
The part that irritated was that seldom did I get a partial cup, thus
indicating that the person before me had not realized the pot was
nearly empty. Usually it was completely empty. So I'd start a new pot
brewing and, depending on whether I'd had a complete cup yet or not, I
would either head back to my office, meaning to come back in about five
minutes to get a cup, or I'd head to the next closest coffee station
(the main kitchen) and hope to find some coffee there.
One time I had found empty pots in both the kitchens three times in a
row. I had made at least four pots of coffee, but hadn't yet had a
single cup. So I stayed at the main kitchen until the pot was full,
then I took the second pot and started it brewing, and while I was
there, someone took the last half cup of decaf from the third pot, so I
waited until the second one was full, and started the decaf brewing for
the third pot.
A couple of co-workers stopped to talk to me, and I explained why I was
hanging out in the kitchen making coffee. Several of them had similar
stories to tell.
The next day when I went to the mini kitchen for some coffee, there was
a sign posted on the wall, scoldingly explaining that if you find a
coffee pot empty, you need to make a new pot. Identical signs had been
posted at each of the coffee stations throughout the office.
Unfortunately, the person who had made the signs had also committed a
couple of grammatical errors in the sign--in an office full of
professional writers, editors, engineers, and quality assurance testers.
So the signs had corrections marked on them. Soon comments and
sarcastics remarks were added. Responses to comments were not far
behind, of course. Which prompted ever-more flippant and mean-spirited
remarks to be scribbled on some of the signs. The person who had made
the signs--a former receptionist only recently promoted to Office
Manager--felt humiliated, so her boss felt obligated to try to
diplomatically point out to the entire company that the original intent
of the signs was correct: if you drank the company-provided coffee, you
had a responsibility to make a new pot whenever it was empty. Which,
much like the sign, made a certain number of people feel they were
being lectured like children because of the actions of a few
thoughtless people.
I felt a little guilty for the molehill becoming a mountain. If, when
someone asked me why I was loitering in the kitchen, I had simply said
I was waiting for fresh coffee, it's possible the hasty signs wouldn't
have gone up. The co-workers who felt the signs were condescending
wouldn't have taken offense. The office manager wouldn't have felt
disrespected, and so on.
Except, of course, that eventually a similar series of events would
have almost certainly played out. A significant number of the
coffee-drinkers in the office were not pulling their share of the
weight in the coffee-making department. I was, by no means, the only
person who kept finding all the pots empty and was getting irritated
about it. The word had spread to the office manager not just because I
hung out in one kitchen for longer than usual one day, but because
several of us had shared similar stories with each other, and those
stories had been repeated and overheard.
One thing that struck me in the whole affair was how the word
"thoughtless" was tossed around by people on both sides of the issue.
People who left the empty pots weren't thinking about their co-workers,
they said. Or, the people who posted signs weren't thinking about the
feelings of all the people who had been doing their share.
The problem wasn't really a lack of thinking, but rather an imbalance
of caring. Some folks cared more about their own convenience than
whatever inconveniences they caused others. Some folks cared more about
rules than about processes. Some people cared more about (their
perception of) the rules of grammar than about inconvenience, feelings,
or morale.
And an argument can be made that those of us who expected everyone to
pitch in cared more about some egalitarian notion of fair play than
about fiscal priorities. Maybe the people who were skipping out on
making coffee really did have more important things or more valuable
things to do with their time in the office, the argument would go.
I have trouble buying that argument. A person who doesn't respect his
colleagues enough to do a bit of office housekeeping is not likely to
respect customers or vendors any more. Or anyone else, for that
matter. And if you don't respect people, you don't do the right thing
by them.
In other words, the difference between making a pot of coffee, or
leaving it for someone else, has a lot in common with the
difference between making an honest buck, and the other kind.
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can
do him absolutely no good.
--Samuel Johnson
.