A reader writes:
We have about 25 employees, and prior to Covid, we had a somewhat-contentious compost bucket under the sink in our staff kitchen. It was always gross, full of flies and rotting food, and rarely emptied by the people who used it.
Recently, a colleague decided to reinstate the compost bucket and messaged the group chat to inform everyone that they would be emptying it at least twice a week. Of course, that didn’t happen, and it quickly got disgusting — several weeks’ worth of rotting, smelly food and hordes of fruit flies. After maybe two months of this, another coworker got fed up, made an executive decision, and tossed the bucket entirely.
And so “compost-gate” began. Some of us agree with removing the bucket; since it’s rarely maintained, it quickly becomes a health hazard in our shared kitchen. But the handful of people who do use it are upset, and telling the other colleague it wasn’t okay to get rid of it and it needed to be a group decision.
What do you think?
If the people who used the compost bucket wanted to keep it, they should have ensured it didn’t become a mess of smelly, rotting food and fruit flies.
They didn’t, so now there’s no compost bucket.
In theory, yes, the coworker who tossed the bucket could have given a warning that he was going to toss it unless someone started maintaining it (and if we had a time machine, that’s what I’d recommend) or could have appealed to someone with authority to manage the situation rather than just tossing the thing … but it’s not hard to understand people getting fed up with it and just removing it.
“Sorry, but having a bucket of rotting food and flies isn’t tenable in a shared workplace” is a reasonable stance to take.
If the rest of you are in the mood to compromise, you could agree that the bucket can come back as long as there’s an understanding that it will be tossed again if it’s not maintained … but frankly if I were the decision-maker here, I’d write it off as a project that has already proved impractical and not invite it back in.
