A kitchen duty roster for the office kitchen

Small jobs, every day

An office kitchen falls apart in tiny ways: a dishwasher full of clean cups nobody unpacks, a sink of teaspoons, no milk at 10 am. None of those jobs takes more than ten minutes, which is exactly why nobody does them unless their name is on a list.

The template splits the day into three duties. The dishwasher person starts it at 4:30 and unpacks it first thing the next morning, so one person owns the whole cycle. Friday is the heavier day, with two people and the fridge.

A few rules that make it stick

• Put the roster where the job is, on the inside of the cupboard above the sink, not on the intranet.
• Include everybody who uses the kitchen, from the receptionist to the managing partner.
• Part-timers take duties only on days they’re in. Don’t put a Tuesday-Thursday person on Monday.
• Rotate Friday separately: it’s the one people try to avoid, so keep a tally of who has done it.
• Run it for four weeks, then ask what’s not working. Usually it’s one duty that needs splitting.

At Coastal Legal in Wollongong, nine staff share three duties. Each person ends up with roughly one or two duties a week and a Friday about once every two months.

When the office grows

Twelve people, three duties and five days a week means the sheet needs a fresh draw every month. In a FairTurns kitchen roster, each duty is a position, and each weekday is a date that repeats every week (“Every week on Monday”, and so on), and Fill gives each one to whoever has had the fewest turns. Part-time staff mark their days off as Away regularly, and they’re only rostered on the days they work. Everyone sees their next duty on their phone, and the roster prints from the calendar if the cupboard door still wants paper. Free, whatever the size of the office. For the whole-office clean, see the cleaning roster template.

Questions