Our design office has about fifteen people, and quality coffee is an absolutely essential fuel for all of us as we work daily on drawings and technical reports. In the kitchenette, we have a large, professional automatic bean-to-cup coffee machine that management bought for us so we’d feel comfortable. Such a modern and expensive device, however, requires regular maintenance. Every day, the drip tray needs to be emptied, and especially on Friday afternoon before the weekend, it’s absolutely necessary to clean the entire coffee machine thoroughly—remove the brewing unit, rinse the milk nozzles, and above all, empty and wash the container for used coffee grounds, known as the puck.
To keep the maintenance running smoothly, we introduced a fair weekly duty roster in the office. Every Friday, one specific employee was assigned to take apart, wash, and dry the coffee machine before heading home—a task that takes about ten minutes. We all respected this and took it for granted. All except our colleague Veronika.
Veronika works in administration and loves to make herself a large cappuccino with lots of foam in the kitchenette—sometimes five times a day—but any duties related to cleaning shared spaces were a complete taboo for her. Whenever it was her turn for Friday coffee machine duty according to the schedule on the noticeboard, it was a hundred percent certain there would be a problem. Veronika always had a dramatic excuse ready. Exactly when the end of the workday approached around half past three, she would pack her things, put on a panicked expression, and announce to the whole office that her train to the cottage leaves in seven minutes, her doctor’s office is closing, or a pipe burst at home, and then she’d loudly say goodbye and dash out of the building.
Of course, she always left the coffee machine in a completely disastrous state. Over the weekend, when the office wasn’t heated—or in summer, when the room was hot and stuffy—the damp coffee grounds stayed sealed in the plastic container. The result was always absolutely disgusting.
On Monday morning, when the whole team looked forward to the first coffee before a demanding meeting, we’d be greeted in the kitchenette by a hygiene disaster. As soon as someone opened the coffee machine, a heavy, musty stench of rot would hit them. The entire grounds container would be covered in a thick layer of white and green fuzzy mold, which would even grow into the brewing unit’s seals and the machine’s inner plastic walls. Instead of starting work at eight, one of us had to put on rubber gloves, grab a brush and disinfectant, and spend half an hour scrubbing mold off the machine we were supposed to drink from.
When Veronika arrived at work around nine on Monday, smiling, her colleagues confronted her with the ruined coffee machine. But instead of apologizing, Veronika put on an offended tone and angrily defended herself, saying it wasn’t her fault—she simply had to catch her train, and surely we wouldn’t lose our minds over a bit of old coffee. She claimed she wanted to clean it on Monday morning, but we were just too impatient and didn’t give her a chance. The same scenario repeated itself a month later, when she left the machine on with sour milk still in the tube.
Our patience finally ran out last week. On Friday, Veronika once again performed her rehearsed dash for the train, and on Monday morning, the coffee machine was once again completely covered in mold. This time, however, none of us took on the cleaning. Our project manager took out his phone, photographed the moldy mess in detail, and sent the pictures to HR and the branch director with an official complaint about gross violations of hygiene standards and damage to company property.
When Veronika arrived at her desk, she found an invitation to the director’s office waiting for her. The director told her, without any sympathy, that if she refused to respect the team’s rules and kept letting the coffee machine get moldy, the company would hire an external cleaning service for every one of her Fridays—and the full cost would be deducted from her personal bonus. On top of that, she was ordered to clean the coffee machine every single day for the next month, regardless of the schedule.
Veronika did complain in tears about everyone being out to get her, but since then, she’s been in the kitchenette with a cloth and brush by half past two every Friday. For our whole office, it’s been a huge relief—on Monday mornings, we finally have fragrant coffee, and no one has to clean up disgusting messes left by an irresponsible colleague.
