Posted to my site, which I thought people might find a light Friday morning read :)


A study important to any office or business owner was published on December 24, one showing a disturbing statistic: The half-life of a teaspoon in an office environment is only 81 days.

In a longitudinal study of teaspoons in a business of 140 employees, 80% of all teaspoons went missing oer a five month period, equaling a required replacement rate of 250 teaspoons a year in company this size.

I'm not sure how to react to the responses of interviewees, and not sure what to think of why the hell anyone would want to steal a teaspoon!

Anyhow, the study can be found at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/331/7531/1498, or in PDF format at http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/reprint/331/7531/1498. A highly recommended read :)

Actually, that sounds about right.

I'll see how long it takes until our shiney new teaspoon goes missing.

There is no spoon. 8-)

i bring my own cutlery in from work and leave it in my pen holder. when my fork went missing, i wasn't happy. i still havent found out who took it

Yeah I bought my own from a cheapy $1 shop and hide them in my desk because there's like 1 teaspoon for our team of 30 people

i buy numerous spoons in the expectation that that they will all be lost.

That's why my ex workplace gave us all plastic cutlery

Teaspoons go missing cause you work with thieves

Massive amounts of coffee/tea/milo drinkers at my work and I just checked with who replaces broken/damaged/lost stuff and we haven't had to replace any teaspoons and there is actually more teaspoons than the 12 piece set that was purchased.

It may or may not have something to do with the fact that every person who works here has to be subjected to a criminal history check before they can be employed or not, who knows...

I call shannigans on that report

coffee makes you absent minded i reckon, coz all the coffee drinkers here leave thier spoons & cups everywhere & then forget about them & go & get anothery.

^ dammit demon, I was going for top three thread posts an you ruined it..
No wait, this should do it =)

my work experience (which I haven't been back to in several months because of uni etc) has all my stuff on a desk including coffee mugs, teaspoons etc

i'm actually been worrying about it because I haven't had a chance to go back and collect my stuff and it's probably long gone

i never thought i'd give two s***s about that stupid Dilbert-esque wage donkey crap

We have a stack of teaspoons here (small office though) and none of them have gone missing; there's always plenty of them on the sink. Worst case scenario for us is someone has taken one or two in their mug (cough, like me), but none have actually vanished. I could see it being a problem in a big office though.

nice to see your company is trying to cut back on waste kat

demon i love you and your sig

Sachets of sugar and wooden stirrers..

We care not for the environment.

the firm i work for dosn't have issues with teaspoons, but forks. the damn things just disappear, we currently operate on 3 forks, have been for about a year now. i guess they figure the last time we had 12 forks the went missing quickly so with only 3 forks, it is easier to keep track of.

People probably just accidentally toss them out with their instant food containers.

heh, ive taken the odd teaspoon home (absentmindedly, its not like im building a stash to take to cash converters or anything)

i also have a few spoons on my desk, but they could be mine from home, i cant remember

last edited by Spook at 13:22:24 20/Jan/06

yeah my work has sugar in packets and popsicle sticks to stir it in! tea spoons i need not!

we have a box of about 100 after a few of us complained there were never any teaspoons.

looking around my office now I count 4 that I've used today and not yet returned.

What i want to know is where the hell do all my pens go!

me too! mine are always disappearing.

1. Steal Pens
2. ?
3. Profit