The Coaster (just for fun)

How using technology from your Nana's living room put a stop to annoying, productivity-draining intraoffice emails.

The problem

By 2014, with our growing size, we were seeing literally hundreds of all-staff emails like this:

"Missing my favorite mug!"

"Would love it if you could drop off my mustache mug at my desk!"

and "It's the mug in my bio photo, if you're seen it, I'd like it back!"

The emails sometimes got a little out of control. And our IT department was not loving the new load on our email system.

We eventually realized what was happening: it wasn’t our coworkers accidentally swiping our mugs: It was our friendly, wonderful cleaning crew. The crew took the cups because that’s their job.

The Solution

Our great cleaning crew would come through, see the cups, and in the name of hygiene and doing their jobs, take cups off the desks, put them in the washing machines in the kitchen.

To stop the emails, we would need to stop the mugs from being taken.  We decided on a “red light/green light” so colleagues could be in charge of the whereabouts of their mugs.

We made these coasters, a few pennies per coaster to print and they stopped the emails forever... (Not quite but really close).

Coda

A whopping three months went by before another mug went missing. Now when you walk through the office - you can see these on the desks valiantly keeping people's beloved mugs safely, dirtily on their desks. <muffled sobbing>

In collaboration with: Patty Ni, Chris Fredbeck, Elizabeth Archer