Kitchen Duty

When I was assigned kitchen duty for the week at work, I'll admit I first grumbled to myself. After all, I rarely use the kitchen. I occasionally make a cup of tea, and afterwards put my cup in the dishwasher. I have extremely infrequently brought my lunch and used the refridgerator. I don't really use the dishes, other than the occasional mug, and I have even loaded others' abandoned dishes that were left in the sink into the dishwasher. Apparently, not everyone was doing this -- or even at the least, cleaning up after themselves -- and we got a calendar with weekly assignments of kitchen duty. We have a small office here, and I still am grateful my company allowed me to move from NYC to Austin, so I didn't grumble publicly. This week was my week. I like to approach life and situations with two values in mind: I try to leave things better than I found them (or at the least, not worse), and I do my best when I take on an assignment. This is the way I was raised. Monday through Thursday: not a big deal. I ran the dishwasher a couple times and emptied it. Wiped off the counters. Friday: on the list of tasks to do is clean out the fridge and microwave. This is supposed to happen EACH FRIDAY. Yeah, right. The microwave had stuck-on food that had to be scrubbed off. I don't think anyone has ever cleaned that thing. I used bleach wipes and washed my hands afterwards. And then I opened the fridge. Cleaning up after other people like this really gives you a whole new opinion of them. There were plastic bags with containers of food that had mostly been consumed and what was left was dried up and shrunken. There were condiments that expired 6 months ago. And there were some really interesting science experiments going on in there, mold of various color and shape. Again I used bleach wipes and washed my hands afterwards. It is definitely in MUCH better shape than when I entered.