Property as Community

[lydy]

I've been working at the Abbott Northwestern lab for...about two years, I think.  Not sure.  Close to that, at any rate.  I don't like disposable stuff.  Partly it's environmental concerns, but mostly, it's aesthetic.  So, quite early on, I bought a plate and bowl at Goodwill, and went to Target and got a 12 piece cutlery set for just under ten dollars.  I brought in two of my favorite coffee mugs, and a couple of plastic tumblers, as well  There's a common kitchen, and a cupboard labeled "Sleep Lab" that the day staff are not supposed to go into.   I store my mugs and so on in there.

I work nights, so I see the people who work on my floor for a few moments in the morning, if that.  They often leave dirty dishes in the sink.  If I have time, and I often do, I wash them.  I make sure that there's a clean towel for the dishes to dry on.  I fill the coffee maker with water if it needs it and I remember.  I clean out the microwave pretty regularly.  I bought dish soap and left it in the kitchen, and people used it.  I like the feeling of being a part of the community, of doing things which promote the common good.  I know that people use my dishes and my cutlery because they often end up in the sink at the end of the day.  This is just fine with me.  I wash them cheerfully.  I think it's great that people use durable rather than disposable stuff.  And I feel great about contributing to the common good.  I have little imaginary conversations in my head where people thank me.  They don't, of course.  (Except once.)  But we're Minnesotan, so that's pretty normal.  

However, over the course of two years, I have lost 10 spoons, 4 knives, and 8 forks.  I have, at this point, purchased that same 12 piece cutlery set 3 times.  And, my friends, this is not a lot of money.  It is entirely trivial, in fact.  But I am really, really upset by these thefts.  I have left at least three carefully worded notes in the cupboard, saying, "Please borrow my stuff.  Please return my stuff.  Not returning it turns it from borrowing into stealing.  Please don't steal my stuff."  I've been very friendly about it, but the cutlery keeps on disappearing.  

In some ways, it's the pettiness of it that really offends me.  The flatware cannot under any circumstances be considered an attractive nuisance.  While nicer than plasticware, it's really only one step up.  It's functional, but neither pretty nor rare.  It's fucking cheap!  If you really took a shine to it, you could buy it at Target for almost no monies.  And unless people are just throwing them away (which strikes me as unlikely) it has to be easier to just dump them in the sink for me to wash than do whatever it is that people are doing with them.  Taking them home?  Hoarding them in their offices?  Why would you do that?  Why, why, why are you stealing from me?  

Here's the thing.  The thefts have broken my feeling of community.  They have destroyed my happy thoughts of people being grateful.  Right before I left for vacation, I took my remaining cutlery, and put it in the cupboard in my office, which is not accessible to the other people who work on my floor.  And I no longer fill the coffee maker, wash down the microwave, or wash their dishes.  When their dishes are in my way, I put them on the counter.  I am angry, and I am done.  And I feel bad when I don't wash out the microwave.  I feel bad when I don't wash their dishes.  And I feel worse when I do.  I really hate this.  

And it was never about property.  I genuinely don't mind the money, and would happily buy more cutlery if I thought that people would use it with the same sense of community with which I made it available.  But I feel weirdly violated by this.  Not because money, not because property, but because trust.  

Comments

[graydon]

Adults able to do their own dishes who don't have non-trivial character flaws.

At a guess, dishes are female-coded and it's beneath them to care.

[lydy]

Well, almost everybody who works on my floor is female. Most are nurses. And I have always assumed that the not doing dishes thing was just a matter of being busy and not managing to fit it into their day. Nurses are chronically overworked, and I assume they shave time out of their lunch breaks to catch up with shit, both personal and professional. It is possible that they think doing their own dishes is beneath them, but it doesn't happen with the consistency that I saw when working with doctors, or with computer professionals. The pattern really fits people who just ended up a little too busy one day. The theft, though, doesn't fit with that. The thefts are...just fucking odd, ok?

[graydon]

If it's inconsistent, yeah, probably not the "this is not my problem" problem.

A metal spoon in a disposable cup will get tossed in the trash pretty regular. (This is an issue for recyclers; neither paper nor plastics digesters like lumps of stainless steel...) I've seen the same thing happen with paper plates and metal cutlery, so I would think there's a possibility that this is what's going on. There's also the possibility (if it's the kind of health facility that feeds patients) that the patient kitchen has a sort of cutlery gravity and anything left in a patient room is
at risk of winding up there.

[dreamshark]

I can certainly see why it would upset you that people are not only not thanking you but apparently persistently stealing from you. Yuck.

But I have to say that the cutlery in my own house disappears at almost the same rate as you are experiencing in your lab, and THERE ARE ONLY THREE PEOPLE THAT LIVE HERE. I just can't imagine where it goes. Between the cushions of the couch? Under Thorin's bed? Maybe under furniture in the attic (which is also the TV room)? Or into some other dimension, where it is hanging out with the missing stuff from your lab??

[bibliofile]

Are you sure you don't have The Borrowers or fairies or some such living in your house? It's such a nice house. (I've been there for at least one party.)

[lydy]

Honestly, cutlery does not disappear in my household. On occasion, a fork gets left in an unfortunate place for a day or two, but it always finds its way back to the kitchen. If this is unusual, then perhaps I am judging more harshly than I ought.

[dreamshark]

From the information you have provided, it seems unlikely (to me anyway) that your colleagues are deliberately stealing from you. If all the silverware disappeared at once, or one place setting at a time over a period of weeks, it could be someone who just decided this was a good way to furnish their kitchen drawers. But random disappearance of one item at a time (and mostly spoons, the item that is both smallest and most commonly used for coffee breaks) it sounds more like people being persistently careless. Still annoying, of course.

[bibliofile]

I'd be ticked off, too. Have thought about leaving a note about doing your own [cuss word here] dishes? or being tired of having your stuff disappear?

I have worked in offices, not hospitals, but both types of places employ lots of humans. I've noticed people coming up with plausible explanations (with or without documentation posted, which people often don't notice) for what is there and what happens to it. My guesses: Assuming that the stuff belongs to the hospital and not one kind individual; assuming that "the cleaners" had been doing all that work; taking things home by accident; leaving things in their own spaces for hygiene and/or convenience. Basically, mostly ways to assume that it's magic and absolving themselves of responsibility. It's human nature in these times in the US.

Finally, it's always hard when you're having these transactions with people you don't really see, much less talk to about these things. Too bad you all aren't on Dreamwidth and could post a poll, to find out what really happened to your stuff.

[mrissa]

This is exactly a thing I would do and a reaction I would have to it. Yep.

Sometimes when you demonstrate community feeling and community behavior for people, they pick up on it. They say, oh, neat! community! I can do that! And they do. And sometimes they...just don't. For whatever reason or reasons. They don't. They assume that the paid cleaning staff are doing the dishes as part of their paid work, rather than a community member to make things nice for each other. If they think about it at all, which mostly they don't; mostly communal things are like rain, happening at about the right amount, only worth noticing if inconvenient in one direction or another, certainly nothing to do with an actual person and work. I can't spot which times are which, I just know that sometimes it just...doesn't sink in.

The only explanation, which is not an excuse, about the cutlery disappearing is that it is small. I think it's easy for people to tell themselves that it's no big deal, that if they take a spoon in their instant ramen cup and take it out to their car with them and then, shit, what is this non-disposable spoon doing in the car when I'm cleaning out the car at home, whose spoon is this...because it is a spoon, they are not motivated to identify it the way they would a sweater. If they found a sweater in their car they would canvas their friends: whose sweater is this? did you ride with me after we had lunch at Pat's? was it after Angie's party? this is a whole entire sweater and it is not mine, whose is it.

Some of them. Some of them would just shrug, try on the sweater, give it to Goodwill or their niece if it didn't fit or let the cat sit on it. But a lot of them would look around for whose sweater it was. But "hey whose spoon is this": if they wanted to put in the time and effort, they could identify: this is a work spoon. I took this spoon from work. I should return it to work. But it is small, so they let themselves...not.

And: they are used to identifying things AT work WITH work. So even if they think "this is a work spoon," they are probably letting themselves think "work spoon" rather than "co-worker's spoon." And I bet they feel better about stealing a thing from "work" than they would from "that one specific person at work."

As I said, I don't think this excuses it. I think you're absolutely right to feel that it breaks community, it's inconsiderate and sad and they shouldn't. But that's my best deconstruction of what is likely going wrong in their heads and what will likely KEEP going wrong in their heads. I'm sad that I think it will. I wish it wouldn't.