Memo From The Management

[cabinetman]

This is an actual memo that went out to all employees at an office:
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Hi Everybody,


I’d like to just do a quick review/reminder about coffee spillage in the
hallways. It has picked up a bit lately. I probably didn’t mention this
before but for those who aren’t aware there are two types of "full" when
it comes to office coffee. There’s sitting safely at a caf table full and
walking full. The sitting safely at a caf table full is the full we are
mostly familiar with, about ¼ inch or so from the brim. Walking full
however is a minimum of ½ inch, preferably more, from the brim to account
for sloshage. Studies have been done at The Institute for Office Coffee
that have shown that ½ inch reduces hallway spillage by 93% which is more
than acceptable to the facilities community. If in the event of hallway
spillage even after employing the ½ inch rule, a quick dab with a Kimwipe
when it’s fresh is a lot easier than chiseling it off later when it’s had
time to set. Actually the ½ inch rule is a generalized rule of thumb for
safe coffee walking practices. There is a more detailed chart showing the
fill level to walking distance ratios but our building is under the 75,000
square foot minimum required for these advanced practices.

[Pappy]

How did you get your hands on a Postal Management memo? Certainly sounds like the kind of 'facts' they use for employee stand up talks.

[vaking]

No, this is not postal management. This is probably "Google"-management. Another option - it came from one of those virtual companies where everybody works remotely.

[cwsmith]

Funny how such things can be long and drawn out, rather than simply stating, "Don't spill coffee in the hallways" or "If you spill coffee, please clean it up immediately".

On the other hand, sometimes such things can be grossly understated. This reminded me of the set of rules that I ran across several years ago when I was a sub-contract writer at a major NE industry. It was a pretty nice place to work and quite modern in its surroundings. However they did have this set of "rules" that were distributed to us sub-contractors. All of them had serious meaning, but the way some were worded were quite funny.

In the rules, subcontractors were referred to as "outsiders". The entire office area was carpeted in this rather nice green carpet and in areas where work might be of a confidential nature, the carpeting was a darker color green. Instead of marking these areas with signage, to restrict intrusion, the applicable rule was simply stated as, "Outsiders are not allowed to walk on dark green carpet!"

CWS