Bin-gate

While I’m enjoying my new surroundings here in the office there are a couple of things that have begun to grate. Well you’re never happy are you? They could present us with gold plated desks and nubile virgins that serve coffee to you 24/7 and we’d still complain the desk wasn’t the right shade of gold or the coffee hot enough – you get used to a certain level of luxury and after a while you’re too acclimatised.

I overheard someone bitching about the new bike racks and lockers. They have created a room within the building for people to secure their bikes. Access only to employees with a bike, camera’s everywhere, state of the art bike racks and a free locker each. Plus company showers with hair dryers, a drying room for all your rain soaked kit and places to hang towels etc. This woman was moaning that the showers didn’t stay on long enough and the lockers were too small. Er excuse me, one month ago you parked your bike outside with all the other pikeys, had no locker at all and had to stick your head under the hand dryer to sort your hair out! Count yourself lucky, most people get changed in a mank toilet cubicle at work and fight to sort their hair in the one cracked mirror over the sink…tsk.

I myself am very happy with the bike rack arrangements, especially after purchasing a new expensive bike which I can now park at work in the knowledge that no thieving gypsy will be trying to hack saw their way through my D lock. I’m also fine with the showers and the drying room and my work colleagues are very happy now my stinky bike coat lives in a locker in the undercroft and not off the back of my chair.

However there are some changes I could do without. Everyone fears change (we learnt that lesson with Crapbags) but sometimes it’s the little things that can be the most annoying. Take bins for example. We now live in a bin-less office, well not completely of course that would be pretty disgusting, but we are not allowed bins at our desks. Instead we have 4 in the kitchen area: 1 for food waste, 2 for recyclables and 1 for non- recyclables. So the idea is when you have a piece of rubbish you walk to the kitchen and put it in the correct bin. Simples.

There is only so long one can go for with a pile of rubbish on their desk. While I’m not a lazy a-hole who can’t be bothered to walk to the kitchen, having to do so every ½ an hour can become fairly time consuming so it tends to build up. By the end of the morning the pile can be quite big and frankly looks feckin’ rank sat there amongst my post-it notes and files and when you pick it all up to take it to the kitchen of course you’re bound to lose a stray piece of orange peel or scrap of paper or old staple on the way….

We have started to combat this in Team Weird by fashioning our own mini bins out of every day office paraphernalia. I found a small cardboard box, as did Gunner, Kirstie was using a small bowl from the kitchen and some other people had been even more creative. The idea was to use this in the interim and then empty the contents at the end of the day. However this plan was thwarted when the cleaners started ‘cleaning away’ our makeshift bins. My box went missing (easy), then Kirstie lost her bowl and soon we were binless once again. I guess you can forgive the cleaners for thinking I might not want an old cardboard box any more so fair do’s, they didn’t know I’ll find something else.

Then we moved up a notch and people have started bringing in ‘designer bins’! Poundland jobbies, tuppaware, small swing bins, tin flower pots, the lot. I personally have a small, plastic basket sitting on top of my computer under my desk that does the job nicely. Tidy desk, rubbish recycled, everyone happy. But now the cleaners seem to be taking a stand and removing the designer bins and this is a step too far… Kirstie came in on Tuesday morning to discover her very pretty tiny multicoloured bucket bin had gone missing over night and unless we have some kind of bucket thief we think the cleaners have got to it. I think that might be taking the whole bin-nazi element a little too far but I suppose they are just trying to make a point. A complaint has been made but now we have taken to hiding our mini-bins in our cupboards at night. It’s getting to be a bit ridiculous now.

Harvey has gone one step further and managed to nab some contraband (or should that be contra-binned? Thank you, I’m here all week…) – an old bin from the other office! He keeps it in his desk cupboard at night in case he’s hauled up on charges of illegal dustbin smuggling.

So far my plastic basket is still safe and sound but I’m considering getting some kind of CTTV system set up just in case, perhaps an ink bomb I anyone tries to remove it or some mace spray disguised as a hole punch?

This is war.