A Place For Everything and Everything In It's Place

Don't you hate it when you get to the office, the phone's ringing, there's work to do from the day before, customers coming in, you haven't had breakfast (or even so much as a cup of java), and you can't find a thing? The boss (or other employees) just throw things wherever, don't put things back where they found them and noone seems to care but you. You spend some of your free time organizing, cleaning, and wiping things down only to find world war 3 the next day.

Didn't they teach us in early childhood how to put things back where we found them? I think it's totally disrespectful when someone else goes behind you and totally wrecks what you have broken a sweat trying to make neat. What to do? I have come up with a few solutions to end this headache. I've been trying this around my office and it has been working more and more.

1. Stop cleaning/organizing, throw down what you are doing and loudly say, "screw it, why bother, people are just going to come behind me a mess it up again."

2. Once you are done cleaning/organizing, make this statement out loud, " i'm not going to do this anymore if it gets messed up again."

3. When asked to do some cleaning/organizing, say, "why should I? noone else does." or "why, so someone can go behind me and tear it up?"

I have tried these things around my office lately and it has been working. The boss and his wife are even wanting to bring in a new shelving system to organize spare parts and supplies. Make your headache known around the office enough and you will see results. Remember, a closed mouth doesn't get fed.