Yvonne LamShared whiteboard markers as synedoche for what happens when people don't take care of a shared common resource.
(No, I don't know why people don't throw out the markers that don't write, but they don't.)
I don't think it's inevitable, but I also have no idea what is going on in people's heads when they put the non-writing markers back on the whiteboard tray.
Preston Austin@yvonnezlam Oddly, I looked into this. I ran a co-working office in Madison for a decade and buildup of dry markers was a chronic nuisance. Ultimately I resolved it by just testing them all on the regular, but I did ask around and it came down to "I wasn't sure others wouldn't use it still" plus there wasn't a place to put it other than the trash 🗑️
Everyone had a personal standard for "this marker sucks" that they believed too strict, so they didn't want to trash markers good enough for others
@yvonnezlam so basically, people leave drying markers in the tray in an effort to be better people 😅
Lyall@gl33p @yvonnezlam Do you think the solution would be to give people a process for replacing markers with a fresh one?
... I can already imagine this would lead to complaints about wasting markers by replacing them too frequently. I think that's a separate problem though.
@LyallMorrison @gl33p I would adopt @gl33p's 2-pronged solution of testing markers regularly and providing spares, because no casual whiteboard user wants to deal with a more complicated process.
@yvonnezlam @LyallMorrison We often left a cup of good markers in each room, across from the whiteboard. So there was a tint friction around using a new one that biased people towards the ones at the board. But markers did thus flow through the workspace at a steady clip 🚰
The thing about common resources was that efficiency, in the sense of having just enough, tended to increase waste. Individuals would redundantly BYO items of uncertain availability, but would rely on things we kept abundant
@gl33p @LyallMorrison Once again, it turns out that systems work better when there's a certain amount of slack...
Marsh Gardiner 🌱🐝@gl33p @yvonnezlam While I'm pretty reliable about throwing out dry markers when I find them, I usually catch myself wondering if they're actually out of ink… or maybe there is some kind of disruption in a capillary chain that might be restarted, like with isopropyl alcohol?
I can imagine others having to overcome that friction of giving up hope of possible repair.
@gl33p In my own struggles with shared equipment, I've pretty much landed on, "someone is going to have to check this stuff on a regular basis and deal with the bits of shared gear that don't work. Or we continue to live in the hell where it looks like we have working gear but we really don't."
@gl33p There is definitely a similar dynamic of "someone else might be able to make it work, so who am I to say it doesn't?" For various reasons, I'd rather apply a strict standard of "it doesn't work" and let the few people who are inclined to dink with things to see if they can make them work do it at their own risk than pass the same piece of nonworking gear around for weeks.
@yvonnezlam 💯 emphatically agree - it's just so much lower interpersonal friction and better quality of outcome for most things to proactively and regularly check and stock all the things hotel snack fridge style
The other thing I did was get spares in advance for _everything else that wears out_ and store them right next to things. So there is always an unopened ream of paper, a toner cartridge, a fuser, next to each brother printer, and so forth
Alex Sikora@gl33p @yvonnezlam I wonder if you had a dry marker rehydration bin labeled (actually trash) people would feel like they're doing a good thing rather than wasteful.
@yvonnezlam @axxl “We send them to a young couple in Middleton who refill markers and inkjet cartridges and stuff” 😁
@gl33p @yvonnezlam the equivalent of "they go to the marker farm up state"?
Cameron Watters@yvonnezlam I've generally considered it evidence of difficulty making a decision when the relevant norms are not well-understood.
Like, if one doesn't know where / how to find replacements? Insufficient sense of agency or a culture where permission-seeking is the norm?
A surprising number of people are reluctant to discard things that have been exhausted of their usefulness, even if that reluctance is sub-clinical (not fully fledged hoarding).
@yvonnezlam little signs explaining such norms sometimes help.
Dawn Ahukanna@yvonnezlam … because if they they put the non-writing implement in the bin, they’d have to find it’s replacement?
@dahukanna @yvonnezlam oooh, great point… plausible deniability. Ooof.
@earth2marsh @yvonnezlam I’ve observed similar “not my ‘paid job’ to clean up & provide the replacement” behavior in office setting with people:
- putting virtually empty milk cartons back in the fridge rather than replacing it
- putting virtually empty coffee pots back on the plate rather than brewing a new one, etc.
Making the effort to “replace used marker with new one” situation is more of the same “taker” attitude.
Give & take Book-https://adamgrant.net/book/give-and-take/
TED talk-https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_grant_are_you_a_giver_or_a_taker
@dahukanna I am Team "I'd rather be able to tell at a glance that there are no whiteboard markers than find out the hard way that while there appear to be whiteboard markers, none of them write."
0xC0DEC0DE07EA@yvonnezlam @dahukanna yes! 100%
@c0dec0dec0de @yvonnezlam me three and comes right back, full circle to the never ending story of “housework”.