I had a chat the other day in my office with one of the students in one of the labs that I support. We were discussing the maintenance (cleaning) of the cappuccino-maker in that lab, and how it can be improved.
It’s a Jura Impressa X9. It’s one of only a handful across the University, or so the technician tells me when he’s in to take a look at the machine. This is rare, actually. Since I started working in this department, I’ve only ever called the technician twice. So that works out to one call every five months. On each of these visits, he has remarked that our machine is the best kept machine he’s seen, in spite of it also having the highest usage.
In the same building that I work in, there is another lab that has one of these machines. Their students maintain this machine. Neither the profs nor their administrative assistant do the work. This I know because I do a lot of cleaning for this lab and have wondered why it is the case that I am the only admin I know who does this. I was told by their admin and students that the students in that lab take full responsibility for the maintenance of their machine. They have a system of shared responsibility for performing the cleaning, and maintaining inventory. They use it. They clean it. They order supplies to maintain it. They have an established system that was in place from the outset where responsibility is in the hands of the users, all users buy-in to the program, and the program moves forward by inertia.
…but back to my machine. We have no system. It is not required of me, but I stop in every morning to rinse out the machine, stock up the supplies, take inventory for items to be ordered, then order them when I return to my desk. According to the Profs in this group, the students shouldn’t play a role in this, but they do. This is what I was discussing with the student that day. He and several other students felt that they were the only ones cleaning the machine. In hopes that others would pick up the slack, they took a “strike” from cleaning it. It did not happen. I was and am not surprised. I felt similarly and took a “strike” of my own last Spring.
And so, he and I discussed what we can do to encourage more users to actively participate in the cleaning. We discussed how difficult it would be to now enforce a new system where responsibility rotated among the users. The reason was that not all members of the lab use the machine equally, and so those who do not use the machine or just use it rarely would not want to take on more responsibility. We discussed implementing a “clean as you go” policy, and how difficult that would be to enforce without any punitive action that could be taken for offenders because we wouldn’t be able to identify them. It is a machine kept in a shared space (the lab’s kitchenette). It is not under surveillance. So, we decided to just post more signs, and talk to more people to perhaps assist with the situation. If we can’t overhaul the system, then we may as well aim for something reasonable. But here’s the thing: our machine is still the best-kept machine across the university. We have a subset of the students in the lab using the machine, a subset of that group cleaning the machine, and of those people we have some who clean well, and some who do not. And the result is the best-kept machine on campus. The best-kept machine with the greatest usage. The best-kept machine, the greatest usage, and the least-happy users. Each cleaner feels gypped.
A (non-) system that is effective. That’s what I have. It beats a system that fails, right?
Regarding the lab and its cleanliness, I came across this article today: Man held in student’s murder clashed over lab cleanliness. In a momentary lapse of judgement, I considered posting this story by the cappuccino-maker, but quickly came to and realized that it may be misconstrued as a threat.