Ice Etiquette and Defensive Driving

Are ice etiquette & defensive driving mutually exclusive concepts? Not necessarily, where I work

Who would think that your office actually needs a posted description of "Ice Etiquette"???

Evidently mine does. Okay, we have a staff kitchen that has 2 microwaves, a stove, a table, vending machines (which by the way never have enough chocolate in them but plenty of Nekots and Pork Skins), a filtration cooler to purify our tap water, and a full-size refrigerator. Unfortunately this fridge didn't come equipped with an icemaker. By the way, I have found after moving into my new house and buying my own fridge what a lovely invention the automatic icemaker is. Anyway, my work fridge has about 20 blue plastic ice trays and two bins to fill up with ice. Now, it really isn't in anyone's job description to make ice. It used to be our receptionist would make a big batch in the morning,but that seems to have dropped off. Now we're on our own and are forced to make our own ice.

The problem is that people don't quite get the "make your own" philosophy and have resorted to one of two cruel tactics:

1. Taking only a few cubes from the tray and putting the tray back in the freezer minus the cubes they have so slyly taken.

2. Empyting the entire ice tray in one of the bins, taking the cubes they need, and leaving a few cubes in the bin and an empty ice tray in the freezer.

I'm not sure which one is worse. C'mon people this is just plain lazy. And inconsiderate.

We now have an Ice Etiquette sheet posted on the fridge with guidelines like Wash Your Hands Before Handling Ice, and Use a Papertowel to Pick up your Ice Cubes or Shake them Out of Bin to avoid touching the ice, Don't Put Empty Trays Back in the Freezer, and Use Filtrated Water to Fill up Ice Cube Trays.

Has this helped? Not really. There are still empty trays or partially empty trays being put back in the freezer. I work in a non profit agency that focuses on children & family issues so you'd think that the menality of our average employee would be to help each other out and all pitch in. Afterall, we want to be the change we want to see in the world if I'm to believe the slogan posted in our kitchen.

I think we need an official company policy in order to make this stick. This is usually how our agency operates. First, something happens, then a company policy is drafted followed by a training session to reinforce the policy, and a statement signed in your blood attesting that you have read & understand the new policy. We're rather reactive. And usually the one person who instigated the policy in the first place is left feeling responsible.

For example, Children in the Workplace Policy is my doing. Shortly after giving birth, I had asked if I could bring my daughter in for an hour a day since my husband & my work schedule overlapped by that amount of time. He would swing by after getting off from his job to pick up our daughter & I would work my shift. This went on for about 4 months and finally was halted when the Children in the Workplace Policy was rolled out. Now we can still bring our children in a pinch, but not on a consistent, regular basis and if we do we have to sign a waiver of release form in case our child get's injured the company is not responsible.

The Automobile Usage Policy is a result of some poor schmoe who used to work here who ran into our HR Director's BMW when parking his 1980s Chevy Caprice and lo and behold his insurance had lapsed. So now we must present proof of insurance and a valid driver's license every year.

Internet Usage Policy? Some guy who was an amatuer filmmaker who worked here was evidently recruiting female actresses from questionable websites, so now we have to solemnly swear we will not visit any porn site, and can't use other email systems because someone else brought a virus into our network using some other email service.

So what does all of this have to do with Defensive Driving? Well in conjunction with the already popular Automobile Usage Policy, we now must attend this mandatory video training to help us better understand Defensive Driving.

So, what I "modestly"propose is that we institute a company-wide ice etiquette policy that must be signed by each employee punishable by a flogging if one should violate, followed by an ice etiquette training session to drive the point home.

And we don't have to limit it to ice etiquette, we can also cover bathroom etiquette too. Don't get me started on that one. Is it so hard to pick up the paper towel that you just dropped? Or are you that oblivious that you didn't see it not make it into the wastebasket, or worse does the world revolve around you?

Or is it because we pay some guy to clean the bathrooms anyway? Even worse.