Pet hates - A spiralling obsession

I've spoken about my workplace's communal kitchen before, but for the benefit of those who haven't read previous blogs, it's usually a bit of a state and in a constant state of disrepair. This is usually down to the mutant tramps who use it.

Instant coffee is strewn over sides, the bin is open and festering with yesterday's lunch, and flies are not uncommon.

What really gets to me however, is the way people handle their teaspoons.

There is a constant shortage of metal teaspoons in our kitchen. This is down to the way that they are misused. Bare in mind here, unless you want to stir your coffee with a fork, there is no alternative.

Here's my spoon-handling routine when making a drink. See if you can spot the points vital to kitchen preservation.

• Grab a spoon (Sometimes not always possible)
• Make drink using said spoon
• Rinse spoon under a tap
• Dry spoon using tea-towel
• Place spoon back in drawer

This routine takes a maximum of about 46 seconds (so what if I timed myself? Who are you to judge?).

Because the majority of office staff ignore those basic rules that amount to about 8 seconds of their 46 second routine, teaspoons are left in often precarious situations.

One such situation commonly seen is when a spoon is left in our sink, sometimes covered with some filthy scum's hair. It's not going to get used again.

Sometimes it's dumped into a substance that resembles milky coffee, but nobody really wants to take the chance and expose their skin to it in the process of spoon-retrieval.

Why not rinse the sodding thing off? Would you do it at home?

Maybe they do. Maybe it's part of their ritual. Maybe they're the polar opposite of obsessive compulsives, who insist on using a spoon only once before ensuring that it will never be used again.

Maybe they're just untrained filthy gits. You probably know them as a species about as much as I do, so I'll leave the choice up to you.