SPOONS
Written by James Ward
I briefly alluded to the tea-making facilities in the office where I work in the introduction to this post about a sudden craving I had for square teabags, but there is another key issue which has an enormous impact on the work-time tea-making experience. Spoons.
Regularly, when I go to make a cup of tea in the kitchen at work, there are no teaspoons in the cutlery drawer. Usually there aren’t any tablespoons either – they have already been used by other tea-makers looking for a teaspoon substitute. Forks are not really suitable (risk of tearing the bag). Some people, out of desperation, use a knife, although I do not really feel comfortable with this method. As a result, I am often reduced to using my fingers, like a savage.
Here, the square bag really comes into its own. Through careful pouring of water and milk, you can ensure that one corner of the bag rises above the surface, like a miniature paper iceberg. This means you don’t have to dip the tips of your fingers in the boiling water. A round teabag is useless in this situation.
The issue of the missing teaspoons is one which is particularly troubling to the facilities team who have been forced to buy new spoons at an alarming rate. A recent email from the head of facilities outlined the problem:
As of Wednesday night we only had 80 tea spoons in the whole building!
In just over 18 months we have spent nearly £500 replacing disappearing cutlery
336 Tea Spoons, 276 forks and 192 large spoons
But no knives have gone missing!!
What can be happening? Here’s some ideas:
Q: Are some being hoarded in desk pedestals?
A: If so let’s have an amnesty and please return them to the kitchen for use by all.Q: Could they be being thrown away with breakfast bowls/ salad boxes etc after use?
A: If this is the case please don’t. They cost money and the cleaners do not sort through your bins to extract them. Return them to the kitchen.Q: Could someone be taking them home?
A: Surely not. We only buy budget items so if you are please don’t as it wont impress your friends!We will top them up at further cost to previous levels but if this rate of loss continues we will have to go to plastic disposable items to solve the problem. None of us want that! It doesn’t look good, it isn’t a very green approach and it still costs money.
As you can tell from the amount of exclamation marks used by the head of facilities, this is quite a serious problem.
In Richard Wiseman’s book Quirkology, he describes an investigation into the topic carried out by Megan Lim, Margaret Hellard and Campbell Aitken of the MacFarlane Burnet Institute For Medical Research in Melbourne:
The team secretly marked seventy teaspoons, placed each of them in one of eight communal kitchens at their Institute, and tracked the movement of the spoons over a five-month period. Eighty percent of the spoons went missing during this time, with half of them disappearing within the first eighty-one days. Additional questionnaire data revealed that 36 percent of people said they had stolen a teaspoon at some point in their lives, with 18 percent admitting to such a theft in the last twelve months.
I’m not wishing to suggest that the people at the MacFarlane Burnet Institute For Medical Research are unusually dishonest (although by their own admission, a third of the staff there are thieves), but I struggle to accept the suggestion that all teaspoon loss is due to theft.
I believe that the truth lies somewhere between the first two suggestions put forward by the head of facilities. Although with both of his suggestions, there seems to be an implication that people are acting maliciously. “An amnesty” for people “hoarding” teaspoons, implies that people are deliberately keeping a number of spoons in their desks (a pre-emptive strike, ensuring a private supply of spoons while at the same time making the problem worse for everyone else. It’s this kind of “every man for himself” mindset which usually gets you killed first during a zombie attack, so be warned, you selfish bastards). Similarly, the “return them to the kitchen” comment at the end of the second suggestion, implies that people are simply throwing the spoons in the bin because they can’t be bothered to go to the kitchen.
My belief is that the spoons are going missing through simple absent-mindedness. Who here has never accidentally thrown a spoon into the bin whilst dropping an empty yoghurt pot into the sink? We should show patience and understanding during these troubled times, not condemnation. Let he who is without sin, cast the first spoon.
EDIT: Oh, I should have mentioned an ironic twist to this whole teaspoon affair. On those few occasions when I go into the kitchen at work and am lucky enough to find a teaspoon in the drawer, I usually have a cup of coffee instead of tea as while forks and knives can be utilised when needed to strain a teabag, they are not suited to measuring out instant coffee granules.
JAMES WARD: I LIKE BORING THINGS 
Just ask yourself: “What would Perec do?”.
At one point during the plans for Boring, I was going to produce a newspaper through Newspaper Club and include that Perec quote about teaspoons, then I was going to buy two hundred teaspoons and put one in each goodie bag. In the end, the paper didn’t happen and spoons without explanation would have seemed weird.
Quite obviously, the proper solution is for each member of staff to be issued with a teaspoon – preferably during the induction process. Then none need be kept in the kitchen at all. The spoon would be returned on leaving the organisation, or the cost deducted from the severance package. The admin office would have a supply of spoons for issue to visitors, to be signed for by the staff member who has ownership of the visit.
And a “large spoon”.
I like this suggestion.
Just buy some spoons and keep them in your desk.
Yes, but then once you’d used the spoon, you’d need to wash it and if someone saw you surreptitiously return it to your desk supply, they might think you were a spoon thief. Of course, you could explain that you had bought some spoons, even providing the receipt as proof, but then you would look like a freak and be avoided by your colleagues and former friends.
If only David Thorne knew of this.
(I will forward this problem to him, however, on your company’s behalf.)
http://www.27bslash6.com/missy.html
at my office, our policy is bring your own spoon. I keep a bit of my own flatwre stashed in my book-bag in case I need it.
I don’t understand. Why do people take the spoons out of the kitchen at all? Don’t people complete the tea making process in the kitchen? So surely there’s no need for any teaspoons to leave the room.
Google really wants to help – there was an ad for disposable wooden cutlery at the bottom of the page when I read this.
there are an awful lot of knives in our kitchen drawer, and not many spoons (tea/table/other) or forks. i actually counted them a few weeks ago with the intention of composing some witty alanis-based tweet but i got distracted by something – probably by the fact that i had a hot drink, actually. but it is interesting that knives do not go missing where you are, as that would seem to be the case here.
i think the knife issue is pertinent. the most commonly used item in th office kitchen cutlery drawer will be the teaspoon (cups of tea/coffee, possibly yoghurts) then, i expect, a close tie between the tablespoon (cereal, occasional soup) and the fork (pasta salad, pot noodle).. knives rarely get a look in. sure.. some folk will use a knife to butter some bread or somesuch, but they probably just leave it in the kitchen when they’re done (unwashed, on the side, if they work here) whereas the other implements likely often get taken out of the kitchen to be used.. and once it’s out of the kitchen the chance of loss is much greater, be that via malicious, careless or other means.
i have just checked my drawer and i have no spoons in it, but i do have three staplers.
I have a younger brother who is a hoarder. He actually takes my mother’s cutlery from the kitchen and stashes them in his bedroom. Once when my mom and I were snooping, I mean when she was cleaning, we found a fork in his dirty clothes hamper.
But I am sure your co-workers are not hoarders. I am sure it is just laziness. I, personally, used to use the blunt ends of forks in times of desperation at uni. However, now that I am in America where only health nuts drink tea, and everyone else has a coffee maker, and because I drink my coffee black, I no longer have a need for spoons unless I am eating yogurt.
I wonder if the employer might provide disposable wooden stirrers for tea-makers. Those have almost no other use so the stirrer stocks are not likely to be abused.
Wooden Stirrers!! but still leaves a problem for coffee.
I remember once handing my own used-but-rinsed teaspoon to a flatmate and bringing up a similar issue, saying something to the effect of “why do all the teaspoons go missing? Unless it’s caked in egg yolk or smeared in some kind of pudding i.e. yoghurt or mousse, the uses to which you put a teaspoon will not usually soil the spoon sufficiently to warrant a full wash, so why does everyone sling them into the bottom of the washing-up bowl?”
My flatmate replied “Yeah, don’t take two seconds to wash a teaspoon does it?” as he dabbled the spoon in the filthy washing-up water and dried it on his filthy T-shirt.
i had a glaswegian vegetarian flat mates years ago. his name was Desmond Paul. we called him Desi P. he ate nothing but cheese pizza. over a period of 3 months, the majority of knives and forks disappeared from the cutlery drawer. meanwhile, a neat pile of empty pizza boxes mounted up in the corner of his room. upon a treasure hunt one evening, i dared to open the highest perched pizza box discarded in his room. one knife, one fork staring back at me – cock-eyed. the second box contained the same contents, as did the remaining ten boxes.
Desi was an odd character though…i explained to him once that i found it dangerous crossing roads with my earphones up full volume because i got too distracted and didnt pay enough attention to on coming traffic when i crossed the road. he said he wore his earphones all the time to block out the voices. out of concern, i asked him how many voices?? he said ‘just the one’. i said ‘ u mean your own voice?’ he said ‘yes’. i said ‘ u mean hearing yourself?’ he said “i guess so. do u get that too?” i said ” it’s called ‘thinking’… he said ‘oh. i often wondered what it was. i asked my mum when i was younger but she told me to go and ask the priest so i didnt bother.”
besides, a vegetarian these days has many more options than cheese pizza.
That is fantastic. Thank you.
I have all of the spoons. Please leave £2,000 in unmarked bills in the drawer under the sink next Tuesday and I will consider returning them.
James, you are avoiding the real question. Whilst you rightly identify using one’s fingers to remove a tea bag as the behaviour of a savage, you perhaps assume that your readers wouldn’t notice the real hallmark of savage behaviour contained in your post. Namely: drinking instant coffee.
To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld: ‘James! We’re trying to have a civilization here!’