The staff room is the place where the staff members sit when they are free. They have their lockers there, so that they can keep their stuff there. It is expected that they treat the place as their home away from home, rather than the waiting room at a railway station. I am happy that most of us treat our staff room as such. There are some exceptions to this generalization, though I do not know who, since they never own up after they mess up. When they leave the table dirty after a meal, the servant cleans up the mess. So the room remains clean. But when they throw their junk, like literature given by medical sales representatives, empty wrappers of drug samples and stuff, the servant does not throw those things away because he thinks they could be important. The stuff looks terrible on windowsills, tables, tops of lockers and cupboards or the fridge. I requested people in meetings to throw away their unwanted things in the dustbin rather than scatter them about the room. But the things continued to remain where they were. Finally I got bugged and put up a notice in the staff room. It read as follows.
"Feel free to throw unwanted stuff here. It is OK. Most idiots do so."
Now new stuff is not being thrown around there. I have left the notice there as a continued reminder to people not to litter, and also to the person(s) concerned that they are idiots in my opinion. I think I have been fair - I gave adequate notice before doing such a thing.
