Dirty Dishes as a Proxy for Organizational Health
Feb 27, 2024
I have a pet theory that you can tell the health of an organization by the state of their communal sink
Disclaimer: in my limited experience of small, 100-200 EE companies that don’t have dedicated cafeteria programs but do have microwaves and kitchenettes
Oftentimes, mugs and dishes pile up in the sink throughout the day. Sometimes certain civic-minded employees will take it upon themselves to transfer some to the dishwasher. But it inevitably becomes a Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout situation
The org (and specifically Management) has a couple of places to intervene, and I believe you can gather signal from their choice:
Hire cleaning services to do the dishes
There’s absolutely a smart capital allocation aspect to this choice: we do not want people whose fully loaded salary is $500K+ spending time doing dishes
Gaps:
Someone still needs to replace the dishes after the dishwasher cycle
Employees may keep dishes at their desk, so there’s always some non-zero number of dirty dishes that get into the sink basin anyway
Given the office population, dishes still pile up during the day, and probably require a reset in the middle of the day, thereby obviating this as a real solution
Implement some sort of expectation and cultural norm
This may look like a rota on a team basis, or a person-by-person basis. Alternatively, making it a responsibility of Office Managers or Reception
Cons:
High maintenance. Additional admin load for people swapping PTOs and outages
Even then, no guarantee that each person will have the same standard of “clean”. What happens if someone “does” the dishes and leaves soap or smudges? Are you gonna PIP them?
Might be unpopular
Breeds resentment
Chalk it up to Individual Responsibility
This requires the lowest thought and maintenance, and perhaps there’s a capital allocation choice to be made here as well: time spent toward this isn’t nearly as important as XYZ business motion
Cons:
- Dishes are absolutely going to pile up—it’s just human nature
I think this is a useful lens to apply because this surfaces a lot of small but revealing things:
Humility
- Nobody should be above doing their own dishes, and yet, puzzlingly, there are some folks who won’t
Discipline—-and lack thereof—-compounds
- As the saying goes: “How You Do One Thing is How You Do Everything”. A culture that abides a dirty sink probably isn’t very clear with their bug backlog
Having productive conflict
- Conflict is necessary, but is often avoided. That’s poison for the longterm success of the company. Obviously, unproductive and mean-spirited conflict is also poison. But if you choose to shy away from this conflict, odds are you will choose the easier path out in any future, higher-stakes conflicts
Management’s awareness and responsiveness to day-to-day pain
A good Management team is on the lookout for pain of the employees. The Manager’s job is to fine-tune and maintain the Machine that creates value for Users
So after a while, that “there are no dishes and the sink is gross” actually does become a problem to the Management sphere. Same as “toilets are broken”. These are net detriments to the operation of the Machine
Substitute in “I have to clean up other peoples’ garbage code before merging my own” and I hope you can see where I’m coming from
Addenda:
Refilling the coffee pot is another good litmus test
This has some connection to roommates and long term partnerships, but note that you do not have the same locus of control over the culture of these relationships