A new law of office life

I posted my Three Laws of Office Life a long while back. Subsequent experience has revealed another one: Every office kitchen which has a sign reminding people to do their washing-up has a concomitant large pile of unwashed crockery and dirty cutlery.

People wash their own mug and cereal bowl, but are less rigorous with the crockery from the kitchen cupboard. This phenomenon will be familiar to anybody who has shared a house during their student days or later.

Don't think that installing a dishwasher will change anything: it merely transfers the problem. Someone who won't wash up a mug is even less likely to unload a dishwasher. There is only one workable solution, and that is to have no office kitchen at all. (Although this creates a new problem, as vending machine coffee is universally vile and the tea unspeakable.)

So the Pile of Washing Up constitutes an ineluctable law, but it is the fourth law and we all know that the canon only admits sets of three laws. One must go. Since I first formulated these laws cost-cutting in the enterprise has more-or-less abolished the practice of providing biscuits at meetings. Hence the old Second Law no longer holds, and creates a neat vacancy.

Here are the revised Laws of Office Life:

First law: For every situation there is an equal and apposite Dilbert cartoon.

Second Law: Every office kitchen which has a sign reminding people to do their washing-up has a concomitant large pile of unwashed crockery and dirty cutlery.

Third Law: The bloke with the most annoying laugh is the one who finds everything funny.