5 ms·

It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not convinced it’s a good one. Office managers (or any kind of managers, really) are hired to remove a class of problems, so o

by exitb 2y ago

It’s an interesting idea, but I’m not convinced it’s a good one. Office managers (or any kind of managers, really) are hired to remove a class of problems, so other people can focus on their job. This is outsourcing bits and pieces of your responsibilities to random coworkers. That being said, none of it is uncommon in modern corporate workplace.

daveguy 2y ago
Kasia, the person who placed the note and requests its return, is the office manager. Giving someone an easy visual cue and task for keeping things running smoothly seems like great office manager work and organization rather than shirking any type of responsibility.
mystifyingpoi 2y ago
Agree. I dig the idea, really cool, but quoting the article: > it becomes a pain to check the cupboard with milk reserves every now and then If freaking glancing into the shelf once a day (or more like once a week, because this milk has months of shelf life) in scope of full time office manager job is "a pain", maybe that office manager should rethink their employment there.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- analog31 2y ago
  >>> maybe that office manager should rethink their employment there. A near-universal feature of office managers is that they are continually rethinking their employment.
- daveguy 2y ago
  Or maybe if putting a piece of paper on someone's desk for precise restocking is too much of "a pain" to the person who drank the milk, then they should rethink their employment there.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    I'm interrupted in the office a hundred times a day. It is guaranteed to happen that as I grab the paper and walk to the person's desk, something more important comes up as somebody sees me, and then I have a meeting, and the piece of paper simply isn't important enough to remember next to my other responsibilities. Employees are paid to do the work they're best at. It's a bad use of resources to have them tracking office supplies, emptying their wastebins, vacuuming their floor area, restocking toilet paper, or alerting the office manager when milk is low. For a tiny, cash-strapped startup they might have to do all those things, but generally it's not optimal. Edit: just to be clear and in response to downvotes, this isn't an ego or self-importance thing. It's just the fact that when in conflict, it is genuinely more important for the company for me to address an urgent technical issue, and show up to an important meeting on time, than to finish running across the office to drop off a post-it note about milk. I already never have enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to get done for my job, and everything is a question of prioritization. I'm just trying to give a realistic perspective here, that we separate out job responsibilities for a good reason.
    - analog31 2y ago
      We outsourced all of those things. The office managers are gone. There's no milk. Also, anecdotally, my dad worked at a place where, if you needed something to be plugged into an electrical outlet, there was a person whose job was do do that. And if that person needed tools, there was another person whose job was to carry his tools.
      - beachy 2y ago
        Decades ago my first real job was as an IBM engineer fixing computers at a heavily unionised timber mill. One of their many rules was that nothing could be plugged into any electrical outlet on site unless the device had been inspected and signed off by a union electrician. In a hurry to diagnose a problem with a printer I furtively plugged my non-approved oscilloscope in to a wall outlet. But then I inadvertently grounded a power line with the scope probe and caused a circuit breaker to trip somewhere on the main board. Shit! A pompous electrician appeared and told me they would be shutting down the entire mill (10K+ workers) while the union decided how to punish me for my rule breaking. It took much begging and pleading before he relented. My only leverage was that the printer was also used to print pay slips and he would not have got paid that week unless I fixed the printer.
- CraigJPerry 2y ago
  That’s all the more reason to go event driven right? If the milk needed replenishing more often, maybe polling the shelf makes more sense - hey the rate of consumption is higher today, I’ll re-order early. That high throughput optimisation doesn’t really shake out if you’re always just waiting for the replenishment event to fire.
- ctm92 2y ago
  If its only milk, then this polling might work. But might be also coffee, printer paper, pencils, whatever and you end up doing nothing else than checking shelves all day
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
flail 2y ago
Wow! This escalated quickly. In this whole sub-thread, I see quite a lot of signals along the lines of: - that's someone else's job, I shouldn't be bothered - I'm doing valuable work, others should make it easy for me - (all sorts of) managers are to make some problems inexistent for me I'm not saying that's all in the original thread, but I read such sentiment. So here's something that we do that may be unusual. We respect everyone's roles and work. As much as Kasia wouldn't jump on a project as a developer, none of our developers would take her seat and handle all the stuff she deals with daily. Heck, she routinely helps people dealing with all sorts of paperwork that, especially for foreigners, are major pain in the butt. Which is "funny" because it's just "simple paperwork anyone could do." And before someone throws at me that anyone can order milk online, that's like a hundredth priority or something like that. Anyway, starting from a place where we all respect each other and everyone's work, dropping an index card on someone's desk on the way to one's own is a non-issue. I acknowledge, though, that in an environment where people don't respect others' work because whatever (they have a less prestigious role, they're paid less, etc.), folks may totally perceive that a problem. And yes, establishing such respect is so much harder than making sure that milk is in a frigging cupboard.

by exitb 2y ago

daveguy 2y ago

Kasia, the person who placed the note and requests its return, is the office manager. Giving someone an easy visual cue and task for keeping things running smoothly seems like great office manager work and organization rather than shirking any type of responsibility.

mystifyingpoi 2y ago

Agree. I dig the idea, really cool, but quoting the article: > it becomes a pain to check the cupboard with milk reserves every now and then If freaking glancing into the shelf once a day (or more like once a week, because this milk has months of shelf life) in scope of full time office manager job is "a pain", maybe that office manager should rethink their employment there.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
analog31 2y ago
>>> maybe that office manager should rethink their employment there. A near-universal feature of office managers is that they are continually rethinking their employment.
daveguy 2y ago
Or maybe if putting a piece of paper on someone's desk for precise restocking is too much of "a pain" to the person who drank the milk, then they should rethink their employment there.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  I'm interrupted in the office a hundred times a day. It is guaranteed to happen that as I grab the paper and walk to the person's desk, something more important comes up as somebody sees me, and then I have a meeting, and the piece of paper simply isn't important enough to remember next to my other responsibilities. Employees are paid to do the work they're best at. It's a bad use of resources to have them tracking office supplies, emptying their wastebins, vacuuming their floor area, restocking toilet paper, or alerting the office manager when milk is low. For a tiny, cash-strapped startup they might have to do all those things, but generally it's not optimal. Edit: just to be clear and in response to downvotes, this isn't an ego or self-importance thing. It's just the fact that when in conflict, it is genuinely more important for the company for me to address an urgent technical issue, and show up to an important meeting on time, than to finish running across the office to drop off a post-it note about milk. I already never have enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to get done for my job, and everything is a question of prioritization. I'm just trying to give a realistic perspective here, that we separate out job responsibilities for a good reason.
  - analog31 2y ago
    We outsourced all of those things. The office managers are gone. There's no milk. Also, anecdotally, my dad worked at a place where, if you needed something to be plugged into an electrical outlet, there was a person whose job was do do that. And if that person needed tools, there was another person whose job was to carry his tools.
    - beachy 2y ago
      Decades ago my first real job was as an IBM engineer fixing computers at a heavily unionised timber mill. One of their many rules was that nothing could be plugged into any electrical outlet on site unless the device had been inspected and signed off by a union electrician. In a hurry to diagnose a problem with a printer I furtively plugged my non-approved oscilloscope in to a wall outlet. But then I inadvertently grounded a power line with the scope probe and caused a circuit breaker to trip somewhere on the main board. Shit! A pompous electrician appeared and told me they would be shutting down the entire mill (10K+ workers) while the union decided how to punish me for my rule breaking. It took much begging and pleading before he relented. My only leverage was that the printer was also used to print pay slips and he would not have got paid that week unless I fixed the printer.
CraigJPerry 2y ago
That’s all the more reason to go event driven right? If the milk needed replenishing more often, maybe polling the shelf makes more sense - hey the rate of consumption is higher today, I’ll re-order early. That high throughput optimisation doesn’t really shake out if you’re always just waiting for the replenishment event to fire.
ctm92 2y ago
If its only milk, then this polling might work. But might be also coffee, printer paper, pencils, whatever and you end up doing nothing else than checking shelves all day
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

flail 2y ago

Wow! This escalated quickly. In this whole sub-thread, I see quite a lot of signals along the lines of: - that's someone else's job, I shouldn't be bothered - I'm doing valuable work, others should make it easy for me - (all sorts of) managers are to make some problems inexistent for me I'm not saying that's all in the original thread, but I read such sentiment. So here's something that we do that may be unusual. We respect everyone's roles and work. As much as Kasia wouldn't jump on a project as a developer, none of our developers would take her seat and handle all the stuff she deals with daily. Heck, she routinely helps people dealing with all sorts of paperwork that, especially for foreigners, are major pain in the butt. Which is "funny" because it's just "simple paperwork anyone could do." And before someone throws at me that anyone can order milk online, that's like a hundredth priority or something like that. Anyway, starting from a place where we all respect each other and everyone's work, dropping an index card on someone's desk on the way to one's own is a non-issue. I acknowledge, though, that in an environment where people don't respect others' work because whatever (they have a less prestigious role, they're paid less, etc.), folks may totally perceive that a problem. And yes, establishing such respect is so much harder than making sure that milk is in a frigging cupboard.