Thought for the day: clearing up everyone else's mess

My hubby and I went to Costa today for a coffee and walked into something that was more akin to a student house the day after a house party rather than a cosy, welcoming place to sit and enjoy a morning brew.

Every table was piled with dirty trays, cups, and the various detritus you'd expect from a cafe. It was also full of people. People sitting amongst the filth, people queuing to get served and people waiting at the serving area to receive their cake and drinks.

Where were the staff? Well, behind the counter were two Costa employees doing their best to serve everyone. You know, the usual 'take orders, make orders' sort of thing.

Seeing as I am a person of boundless optimism I, like everyone else in the the queue, wasn't put off. I put an order in and looked around for a place to sit while we waited. Except I couldn't just sit and wait.

The two baristas were clearly struggling. If they stopped taking orders to clean up the queue would get out of hand. If they stopped making the orders then those who had already ordered would start to complain.

As I looked around at everyone just sitting and watching the situation get worse I literally could stand it no longer (I'd lasted a good 5 minutes by this point). So I did the one thing I knew I could do - I went to help. I'm an absolute miracle worker when it comes to putting things in piles.

I started approaching people sitting amongst the crap and taking the trays away, piling plates together, sorting the rubbish etc etc.

So far, so uninteresting right? That's fine, this isn't a story about cleaning or my own mini-obsessions about not being able to see a mess and not do something about it. It's about what happened next.

As other people saw me doing this, they started to take part too. They brought over the trays and old cups that previously they'd just been sitting next to, hoping the coffee fairy would visit and whisk it all away. They grabbed some napkins and wiped down their tables. People who had just finished their drinks brought them over to add to the growing piles.

In just a few minutes we, an entire group of strangers, had made the place look like a normal cafe again (as long as no one looked round the side where we'd put everything!). And we'd done it without any animated animals popping up or anyone launching into song.

And I've not stopped thinking about it since.

All it took was one person to step up and make a start. And I wondered, what if we applied the same approach to our work? How many times do we spot a problem but just sit back and wait for the allocated people to sort it? How many times do you hear a colleague complain about something but then refuse to do anything about it because its 'not their job'?

I'm not suggesting we all become experts in HR, finance, engineering, health and safety or any other specialism required to sort something, but I think if we start with the question "What one thing can I do to help make this situation less messy?" then perhaps we can inspire others to join us and, together, make things better.

#justathought