That's my mug!

Today I am going to tell you a story about how the small things can really annoy the hell out of me! We have facilities to make tea and coffee in the office. There is a cupboard full of mugs that anybody can use to make tea and coffee. This started out as any ordinary day where I took a random mug from the cupboard.

I had just made my second coffee of the day and left the mug on the counter while talking Pete. One of our support people came round the corner, approached the counter and just said, "That's my mug." I pointed out that I had taken from the cupboard that was full of mugs like I always do. Again he said, "That's my mug." I said that I had taken from the shared pool where all the mugs were that were for all staff to access. He then repeated, "That's my mug, we have a shortage. It always ends up in there".

Stuck in a strange rut I decided not to be a complete douche about this and grabbed another one from the shared cupboard and poured the contents of "his mug" into the new one. He then grabbed "his mug" and made himself a cup of something. Funny thing was I don't think he had realised that I had already drunk one cup of coffee out of it, he even left the spoon in. Ungrateful git didn't even show any gratitude.

Now to clarify what usually happens here.... cleaners come round and clear ALL mugs from desks and put them in the dishwasher. They then get put in the shared cupboard once clean. People who have their own "special" mugs wash them up by hand at the end of the day and then put them in their desks as they aren't shared mugs, they are theirs. Lazy gits apparently leave their mugs to be tidied up and cleaned by the cleaning staff!!!

This whole saga really irked me. It got right under my skin as it was something so petty to make a scene about. He doesn't even always get that mug as I've used it before as have countless others. First ones in get first choice of mugs in our place!

Noticing the effect that this had on me, Pete then decided to get lots of our other colleagues to come to my desk, point at the mug there and say, "That's my mug". Some of them did it and didn't even know why or what the story was. At one point I had a post-it note stuck on the one I was using that said My Mug. By the end of the day the windup had continued and I was known as the stealer of mugs!

Paul very kindly sent me this little gem:

We then talked about buying lots of mugs the same as his and filling the cupboard with them just to really confuse him!

So there you the saga of the mug and how sometimes it's the stupid little things that can really grind our gears rather than the bigger more obvious ones. Still, it certainly makes a good story! Sadly I didn't manage to get a picture of the offending article for this blog but I might tomorrow if I am in early enough ;)