[Noisebridge-discuss] OMG Problems!

[Shannon Lee]

On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 12:01 PM, John Magolske <listmail at b79.net> wrote:

> While it would be good that a cleaning person not be adverse to
> picking up bottles & half-eaten burritos, I feel strongly that members
> should not leave these items around, and that we as a group should try
> to find constructive ways to help each other not be so sloppy (and
> gross, especially the burrito stumps!) Also, if the cleaning person
> comes once or twice a week, food laying around in that interim will
> feed the rats & roaches. We don't need to wait for the problem of
> random abandoned food-trash + rats & roaches to happen before we solve
> it -- this is already happening. Let's engage our creativity to adjust
> our system (in a friendly way) such that these problems are mitigated.


We've gone out of our way to build a non-coercive system of self governance.
 The "leaving your goddamned bottles around is a MORTAL SIN" discussion is
just another example of a social problem which is harder than it looks, and
which can cause immense problems when it's tackled naively.  In another
thread the discussion of how we can systematically solve the
abandoned-burrito-problem has resulted in a proposed NoiseBridge Police
Force -- something that nobody would countenance over a safety issue, we're
OK with discussing over ucky beer cans.

People are messier than they think they are.  This means that everybody
under-estimates the amount of mess that they make, and over-estimates the
amount of mess that everybody else makes.  Consequently, when there's a
discussion of how to fairly clean up our mess, everybody thinks someone else
should do it ("I clean up my mess, why can't everybody else?").

The solution to this problem is to approach it as a Task To Be Handled (eg,
cleaning up) rather than as a Behavior To Be Enforced.  We can either form a
Janitorial Crew, who handle this on a volunteer basis, or we can hire
someone to do it.  In the past, we've hired someone; I think we should do so
again.

--S
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