Kitchen duty

Everyone in the office takes a turn at kitchen duty. We rotate through alphabetically, taking week-long turns. The main idea is to have someone who will wipe the counters off, dust the lunch room and pick up the mail that is misdirected to the main desk at the residence tower.

After just a day and a half of kitchen duty this week, I've decided there is an urgent need to post reminders of several things in a very visible place in the kitchen (OSHA regs prohibit stapling said reminders to people's foreheads). What follows is a rough draft of the reminders.

Kitchen Reminders

1. The coffee is made with 2 scoops of coffee. Please, please do not use more than 2 scoops. Management is not responsible for possible ill-effects of over-caffeination, including, but not limited to, shaking, babbling gibberish at high speeds, eye twitches, glazed eyes and/or decimation of entire office staff by staple gun.

2. Please close all cabinets and drawers, making sure they stay closed. The lower corner of upper cabinets standing open is exactly at eye-level for some of us; you would think we would see it before running into it, but we often don't.

3. If, while rinsing out your lunch dishes, you happen to let leftover pieces of your lunch (curly noodles, kidney beans, spare mushrooms and the like) flow into the little metal basket covering the drain, please empty said basket immediately. Ratatouille does not work in our kitchen; we do not need to leave things out to feed his clan.

4. Do not skip entrees that are in the "microwave line". If the owner of the entree in line ahead of you is not present when the microwave becomes available, please attempt to locate said owner. Please remember that we have two microwaves; using the older one will not render you unable to bear children. We think.

5. If you spill something, wipe it up. If you splash water all over creation, wipe it up. Note that spills may be forensically traced back to their source, and offenders will be caught and their personal workspace subjected to numerous, daily spills of sticky, wet, potentially staining substances.

6. When using the office dishware or flatware, remember to wash it when you are done. Simply placing it in the sink "to soak" is not acceptable. The kitchen duty person is not your mother, and has no problem publicly embarrassing you and scarring you for life.

7. Leaving exactly one-half doughnut on the tray or one-half cup stale coffee in the pot is just as rude as walking away from the copy machine when it jams. Clean up the mess, wash the tray or make a fresh pot of coffee.

With 2 scoops.