Yesterday saw a new shift at my office. No more individual waste baskets at our desks. And it is extremely annoying. Sitting on my desk right now are the remains of my breakfast because I'm already procrastinating getting up and walking the 50 feet to the centralized trash repository. And you have no idea how many times I've gone to throw something into my trash only to realize after I've thrown it down that the trash isn't there!
BigFinance leases my office space so I can't even blame my own company. No, instead it is the facility management that came up with this plan that will supposedly save about 70K in expenses across the country in total for the next 3 years. So doing this for my office saves them like $100 a year. Thanks, guys! Here's the method behind the madness. First of all if the janitorial staff doesn't have to empty individual trashes it takes them less time to clean. OK, I buy that. The second piece to the change is to start having our office space cleaned during the day rather than after work hours. Yes, that does include vacuuming. The reasoning? It will save money because now when people go home for the day there is no one in the building and the lights go off earlier. So not only is it saving electricity money it is also more "green." Don't you just love how they threw that one in? Plus apparently this allows us to get to know the cleaning staff better and communicate our specific cleaning needs. Yeah. That's going to happen.
So far I don't mind the day cleaning. What I do mind is not having my own trash can. I would be more than willing to empty my own trash into a central repository. Now I don't even have that option as they have donated all trash cans to some homeless shelter. I wonder what that place is going to do with hundreds of trash cans?
Has anyone else had any changes like this at work? First it was not providing paper cups or plastic utensils. Now it's trash cans. People have compensated in the past by bringing personal items into work to replace those originally provided. I wonder if I should do that here or if they will keep removing my trash can every night. Could get expensive...
Hey, It's Okay
2 days ago
6 comments:
My company did this a few years ago, while I still worked in Chicago. Also got rid of deskside recycling, individual printers, and you need special permission to have multiple workstations.
One thing I found interesting was we have a supply depot. We have to fill out a form to get any kind of supply, even a pen. They found they saved $100K on supplies a year by making people sign it out rather than do it on the honor system.
We still have deskside recyling but like you we also eliminated individual printers and multiple workstations years ago. Ditto on the office supplies. Pens, pencils, file folders and notebooks are available, anything else needs to be ordered online and delivered (with manager approval). I'm sure that BigFinance saves a ton of money on office supplies with that last one!
The lock & key of the supplies makes me feel like I'm a criminal, LOL. Although I must say my home department is pretty good, then again there aren't that many of us there.
I got rid of my deskside trash can this year in an effort to be a zero waste cubical. Being in the environmental field it was all in a effort to make our office greener. You'll get use to the lack of a desk side trash can. Just think of the extra exercise you will get during the day :)
What is to stop you from getting a trash can from Kmart and writing your name on it in really big lettering? Maybe add some glitter or other bling to make it your own! You can empty it into the central trash once a day or as often as you need. I doubt they would take something that clearly belongs to a person. Especially if they are cleaning during the day, presumably you'd be at your desk to say, "hey, that's mine."
That would be odd not to have a trashcan by you. Can you buy your own or is that frowned upon?
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