Not my job

[Dave A]

I get quite irritated at times about the "not my job" malaise I see around me so often. For the most part it's petty stuff really, like:

• Who is supposed to dispose of the old toilet paper roll core when the toilet paper is replace? Or do you just toss it on the floor until someone who has "put used toilet paper roll cores in the rubbish bin" in their job description turns up on the scene.
  
• If you make yourself a cup of coffee in the company kitchen and spill coffee, sugar etc. on the working surface, do you clean it up? Or do you leave it for a cleaner with "wipe down and clean all kitchen working surfaces" to arrive on the scene?

Recently I got quite frothy when someone had spat out their chewing gum in a urinal at the office. And there it sat for a few days until "urinal cleaning duty person" arrived. Maybe that's something slightly different - I was after the one who put the gum there in the first place and expected someone else to clean up for them. But still, it's an unwillingness to go the extra mile, or at times just the extra foot or two.

Well, the culture of "not my job" has finally turned fatal.

Four Metro cops may be in hot water for passing rocks placed on the N1 highway, where a Johannesburg man was ambushed and killed, police said on Wednesday.

"An internal investigation has revealed that two metro police patrol vehicles passed the rocks that were placed on the N1 highway, between the Malibongwe and William Nicol offramps," said Superintendent Wayne Minnaar.

He said the patrol vehicles passed between 1.13am and 1.42am on October 2, when Arren Mahabir, 32, was shot and killed.

Mahabir's car hit the rocks placed by robbers hiding in the nearby bushes around 2.40am.

He was shot and killed as he and his fiancee, Valesh Naidoo, got out to change the burst tyre on their vehicle, after hitting the rocks.
full story from IOL here