Do the Damn Dishes
Among the many high-class problems of the modern startup is the scourge of dirty dishes — a byproduct of the ubiquitous free meals that have become an expected perk. Almost every startup has a sign near the sink in the office kitchen imploring employees to do their own dishes. Often the sign is reinforced with snarky Slack comments flaming @here with pictures of unwashed dishes piled into the sink intended to shame the anonymous perpetrators.
Nobody likes to do dishes, especially someone else’s dishes. I get it. But the infighting strikes me as indicative of a larger problem at many startups: nobody wants to do the grunt work. Doing dishes — or configuring IT systems, or making cold calls, or debugging code, or answering customer complaints, or so many other menial, but necessary, tasks — are somehow beneath many employees.
News flash: 90 percent of a startup is grunt work. To carry the kitchen analogy forward, not everyone gets to garnish the final dish at the restaurant before it's ceremoniously presented to the diner. It takes an army of grunts cutting vegetables, prepping ingredients, ordering produce, defrosting meats, whisking sauces, and, yes, washing dishes, to get that meal ready. Even the chef in the clean white toque getting all the glory spent years toiling in the bowels of the walk-in freezer before delivering that final garnish. And it’s his or her ass that’s on the line if the customer fails to be impressed by the final meal.
The best companies I’ve been a part of knew that. Everyone understood the importance of their role and did everything in their power to excel at it. If they noticed something not being done, they leaned in to make it right, without pointing fingers or ranting on Slack. In other words, they were a team.
So if you’re an employee at a startup, do your own dishes. If you’re the most junior employee, do someone else’s dishes without complaining. Show you’ll do whatever it takes to make the company successful. If you think someone else should do your dishes, or if you think you’re above doing the dishes, maybe you shouldn’t work at a startup. There are plenty of big companies in the Valley with dedicated staff tending your every need, so you don’t need to lower yourself to washing your own coffee cup.
Of course, if you’re at a startup, you also need to prioritize. The more efficient you can be at minimizing grunt work and focusing on the activities that accelerate your progress and increase your value, the better. But a company’s success is a product of the collective efforts of the team. So know your role, help each other, and be prepared to do anything and everything. Including the dishes.