A10| Wednesday, March 11, 2020 THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.

that went unwashed for a week

in the office kitchen, Alex Bor-

delon, 25, printed up an art gal-

lery-style label and affixed it

with tape. “Dirty Mug, 2018.

Anonymous (b. ????) Mixed

media and ceramic,” it read. “It

could have been a commentary

on the workplace and who’s ex-

pected to clean up after you,”

Mr. Bordelon says. The mug

was cleaned after that.

The question of who does

the dishes often has a gender

component. Karla Anderson, 29,

Putin Backs

Proposal to

Keep Power

Don’t forget about me

works for an energy-consulting

firm of around 50 people.

Just when he thought the

situation couldn’t get worse, it

would deteriorate. Someone

started cooking broccoli in the

toaster oven, and it smelled.

Salad leaves got caught in the

sink strainer, and the basin

filled not only with dirty dishes,

but inches of greasy water as

well. A campaign to discourage

food-related messes by calling

the area a “breakroom,” not a

“kitchen,” was unsuccessful.

“That’s when dish wars started

happening,” Mr. Ducusin says.

Mr. Ducusin’s colleague, ad-

ministrative associate Erin De

Leon, 25, also joined the fray.

She started spiriting away un-

washed dishes and utensils and

hiding them in a box at her

desk. “I thought they didn’t de-

serve to have dishes anymore,”

she says. She gathered a couple

dozen items that way.

During a staff meeting last

year, she showed colleagues the

box and implored them to do

better. “They laughed,” says

Ms. De Leon. Still, she says peo-

ple do clean their dishes more

regularly now.

Though encrusted dishes are

never an uplifting sight, they’re

especially galling when workers

are stressed, says Melissa Mc-

Clure, manager of corporate

programs at software company

CloudBees in Raleigh, N.C.:

“That single dish in the sink is

going to be the moment you

crack.”

Ms. McClure has taken to

sending out photos of dirty

dishes in company Slack chan-

nels, and even messaging indi-

viduals when she notices they

have left items unwashed. She

says she tries to use humor,

joking about the “science ex-

periments” growing in the sink.

Others have tried more cre-

ative tactics. In New York City,

after getting annoyed by a mug

says the Nashville-based com-

mercial real-estate company

where she works is “an office of

guys, and a lot of them just

don’t care.” The company’s

marketing director, Ms. Ander-

son has printed out signs ask-

ing people to clean up, includ-

ing a Martin Luther King Jr.

photo captioned “I have a

dream that one day the dishes

will be done.” (She hung it next

to a sign affixed by the woman

who previously held her job,

which read “Every time you

leave a dirty dish in the sink,

GOD KILLS A KITTEN.”)

Dirty dishes tend to snow-

ball. At a recent job in Oakland,

Calif., Issac Kelly, a 32-year-old

software engineer, noticed that

when one person would leave a

dish in the sink, other trans-

gressors would swiftly follow,

and soon the sink would be

overflowing. As dishes prolifer-

ate, so, too, do the kitchen signs

exhorting people to clean up.

One of Mr. Kelly’s colleagues

taped up a flowchart explaining

dishwashing procedure. Others

chimed in with their own signs,

thanking colleagues for their

cooperation. (“The thanking got

more aggressive,” he says, as

notes appeared in all caps.) In a

few months, the number of

signs doubled from two to four.

Nate Smith, a 42-year-old

microinvesting company em-

ployee, has seen a rapid-fire

evolution in kitchen signage

during the year he’s spent at a

co-working space in Wilming-

ton, Del. “The signs kept get-

ting bigger and more elabo-

rate,” he says. Still, he’s

hopeful: a sign introduced ear-

lier this year, he says, took a

more effective tack, addressing

kitchen users as “members of

our community.”

“It’s like, we think a lot of

you, please don’t let us down,”

he says. The tide of dirty dishes

has ebbed, he says—for now.

porate kitchen a little break.
For those still showing up, the
war against germs means
more ammo to call out the
mess-makers.
The ubiquity of smartphones
and messaging software like
Slack has made it easier for
put-out colleagues to try to
shame their dish-dodging co-
workers. In Oakland, Calif., Jun
Ducusin, 28, recently began
taking photos of his office’s
dirty dishes and sending them
out in irritated all-company
emails. “It had gotten really
bad,” says Mr. Ducusin, who

Continued from Page One

Dishes

Stack Up

At Work

him one of the longest-ruling
leaders in Russia’s history.
Mr. Putin, 67 years old, has
held power in Russia since
1999, as either president or
prime minister, though his
popularity has begun to flag in
recent months amid U.S. sanc-
tions over Russia’s conflict
with Ukraine and low oil and
gas prices, which have bruised
the economy and living stan-
dards for Russians. The corona-
virus outbreak and the recent
fall in oil prices have presented
further challenges for him.
In a speech to lawmakers
punctuated by frequent ap-
plause, Mr. Putin said he would
back the changes if the coun-
try’s constitutional court didn’t
object. They would be part of a
wider package of constitutional
amendments to be put to a na-
tional plebiscite in April.
“Russia has had enough
revolutions,” Mr. Putin said.
“The president is the guaran-
tor of the constitution, and to

Continued from Page One

say more simply, the guarantor

of the security of our state, its

internal stability and internal

evolutionary development.”

“I am fully aware of my re-

sponsibility to the people, and

I see that the people, or at

least the majority of our soci-

ety, are waiting for my per-

sonal assessments and deci-

sions on key matters of the

development of the Russian

state, both now and after

2024,” Mr. Putin said.

Tuesday’s amendment would

allow Mr. Putin to serve an-

other two back-to-back, six-year

presidential terms until 2036.

With his conditional ap-

proval of the amendment, Mr.

Putin is giving himself more

options for after his term ends,

said Konstantin Gaaze, a Mos-

cow-based political analyst and

former government adviser.

“Putin is convincing himself

that he is irreplaceable,” Mr.

Gaaze said. “So he re-estab-

lished himself as a personal

guarantor of the elite’s future.”

In his speech, Mr. Putin fo-

cused on the need for stability

in Russia in the face of mount-

ing global challenges.

“We see how difficult the

situation is in world politics,

in the field of security, in the

global economy,” Mr. Putin

said. “The coronavirus also

flew to us, and oil prices

dance and jump, and with

them the national currency

and the exchange rate.”

In January, Mr. Putin pro-

posed constitutional changes

aimed at redistributing formal

powers among the president,

prime minister and parliament.

Mr. Putin also shuffled the

government, removing long-

time ally Dmitry Medvedev as

prime minister and putting the

former head of the tax service,

Mikhail Mishustin, in charge.

The constitutional changes

fueled speculation that Mr. Pu-

tin was seeking ways to con-

tinue to wield political power

after 2024. Mr. Putin, how-

ever, has denied that he wants

to remain in power, saying he

isn’t in favor of the Soviet-era

tradition of having leaders

who die in office.

A national vote on the con-

stitutional amendments is

scheduled for April 22.

While Mr. Putin’s

plans to overhaul politics in

Russia haven’t been met with a

significant rise in public resis-

tance, several thousand people

attended a rally in the Russian

capital in February, ostensibly

to mark the murder of an op-

position leader, in what they

said was a rebuke to Mr. Pu-

tin’s plans to stay in power.

Late Tuesday, dozens of

people protested in Moscow by

organizing individual pickets,

which are legal in Russia and

don’t require authorization.

Across the globe, some auto-

cratic leaders have changed na-

tional constitutions to remain

in power indefinitely. So far,

however, Mr. Putin has fol-

lowed the letter of the law. In

2008, he stepped down as pres-

ident and became prime minis-

ter while Mr. Medvedev served

as president for four years.

On Tuesday, Valentina Te-

reshkova, a lawmaker and the

first woman to have flown in

space, proposed to scrap presi-

dential term limits to allow Mr.

Putin to run for re-election.

“In fact, this isn’t about

him [Putin]; this is about us,

citizens, and the future of the

country,” she said.

Mr. Putin rejected the need

for early parliamentary elec-

tions, another idea being de-

bated at the Duma. Elections

are scheduled for 2021.

Valentina Matviyenko, the

speaker of Russia’s upper

house, said that whether Mr.

Putin decides to run again in

2024 or not, the election will

be competitive and that “noth-

ing is predetermined.”

Opposition leaders ap-

peared unconvinced. “It’s all

clear: There won’t be early

elections. Putin will be presi-

dent for life,” Alexei Navalny,

Russia’s most prominent oppo-

sition figure, wrote in a tweet.

Russia’s constitution currently prevents President Vladimir Putin from seeking re-election in 2024.

ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/TASS/ZUMA PRESS

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