Alistair Dabbs describes most office kitchens I’ve encountered over my career:
Talking of timeslip, there is a wormhole in every shared office kitchen. I’ve experienced it at each of my clients’ premises so I guess it may be true everywhere.
When I arrive early in the morning, non-specific-gender-fascist swot that I am, I stride past the kitchen or kitchenette, admiring how spotless and twinkly it is from the deft attentions of the overnight cleaning contractors. Not for long.
It only takes a few seconds to pick my hot-desk location for the day since it’s always the same one, i.e. the only hot-desk not already baggsied by someone else the night before by leaving a spare jacket/cardigan/set of false teeth hanging on the back of the chair, i.e. the shitty desk next to the fire exit door that doesn’t quite shut properly and lets the weather in.
Pausing only a moment to brush away the mini snowdrift that has accumulated next to the power block, I put down my backpack and head straight back to the kitchen to brew up some chai.
When I get there, barely a minute after I passed it earlier, the kitchen has transformed into a disaster zone. Spilt milk, coffee and various puddles of water cover every level surface. Brown liquid of different shades are splattered artistically across the walls. The floor is carpeted with a layer of granulated sugar and broken mug handles which crunch unpleasantly underfoot.
Torn cardboard boxes and heaps of scrunched sheets of kitchen towel are arranged around the edge of the vast but glaringly empty dustbin. A cupboard door is swinging open on its only remaining hinge. The cutlery drawer has been pulled out and is now face-down in the sink. The kettle is on its side. The microwave is on fire. Where the dishwasher used to be is now a smouldering hole in the floor.
No worries, the cleaners will be back overnight to put it all shipshape again, wipe down the surfaces and shovel away any charred body parts.
As I have mused in this column on previous occasions, it makes one wonder what people’s houses must be like if their workplace kitchen etiquette extends to the personal domicile as well. This isn’t meant as a “bah dropping standards etc” whinge but a genuine interest in what the otherwise sane and talented individuals I meet in offices get up to in the privacy of their own homes.
