Office water cooler broke down on Tuesday and nobody knew who to call about it.

Watched three managers argue over the service contract for 20 minutes while everyone else just went thirsty, and I ended up finding the number on an old sticker behind the machine - has anyone actually kept track of who handles maintenance at their workplace?

3 comments

3 Comments

michaeltorres3d ago

Same old story. Nobody takes ownership until it's a problem. Someone always has that sticker though.

jennifer8333d agoTop Commenter

...and that sticker usually ends up on the person who was just trying to do their job while everyone else looked the other way. I've seen it so many times where everyone sees a problem coming but nobody wants to be the one to flag it because they don't want to get blamed. Then when it finally blows up, suddenly everyone's pointing fingers and that one person who has the sticker gets saddled with the whole mess. It's a lousy system that rewards people for staying quiet and punishes the ones who actually speak up. Wish more folks would just step up before things get bad instead of waiting for the fallout.

avery_jackson2d ago

Three weeks ago I had the filter change kit for our crew's cooler sitting on my truck seat for four days because nobody remembered who ordered it. Same old story - someone always ends up being the de facto fixer because they're the one who actually looks at things. Best advice I got years ago was to stick a laminated card with the service provider's number right on the machine in plain sight so there's no excuse for the next person. Next time just print that number in big letters and tape it there yourself. Saves you the headache of watching managers argue while everyone's thirsty.

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