It’s big fork staff in all places.
As staff return to their offices, cutlery is disappearing from workplaces around the world at a shocking rate, reports the Wall Street Journal.
It got to the point where atypical people like Ben Stiller, who works for the Canadian National Truck League, became deputies of the “fork police” in their offices.
He uses sending shameful e-mails to his colleagues in an attempt to get what he calls “fork thieves” to return metal goods.
Still, his efforts were about as effective as trying to eat soup with a toothed tool.
“All of them got here back and two weeks later they were all gone again,” Stiller, who had grown bored with seeing only spoons in the office, told the newspaper.
“We never solved the problem.”
Meanwhile, Nicola Williams, head of the London office, orders around 100 recent municipal cutlery every six months or so – on a good week the office only sees around 125 staff.
“I sent out emails saying, ‘We’re missing a couple of forks,'” said Williams, who works for financial media firm PEI Group.
The fork blood sport inspired product manager Jennifer Ta to come to work sooner than her co-workers once a week.
She immediately runs to the kitchen to grab a fork in addition to a cup and spoon, simply “because the whole lot in the kitchen is hot commodity,” said Ta, who has been left high and dry over and over without an eating device at work.
“I’m not taking any probabilities,” added Ta, who occasionally took home items like a fork.
One other essential factor is the eco-friendly practices implemented by offices around the world – according to a 2021 survey conducted by Captivate 60% in the US and Canada – which eliminated many single-use plastic utensils, thus leaving demand for reusable products.
“I used to walk around the constructing searching for a fork,” said Mike Williams, a Sydney-based documentary and podcast producer.
After inadvertently collecting 20 office forks (which his wife told him to return), Williams described the bizarre phenomenon as “a canteen crisis across the country.”
“While you get a fork, you inherently want to hold it,” Williams said.
Cookware stragglers were even studied in a 2020 article published in the Medical Journal of Australia.
Researchers at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital were unable to give a concrete answer to where the utensils in the medical facility’s break room had gone, and even suggested radio frequency identification chips as a way to keep drawers full.
Nonetheless, as with Williams, the honor system prevailed in some cases as researchers observed the return of some forks. According to the study’s lead creator and Royal Brisbane’s chief medical officer, Mark Mattiussi, they simply didn’t come from the hospital’s break room.
“That is the fork resurrection phenomenon,” he said.