There’s a war going on in our office.

As the financial meltdown continues around us, we at The Fool have been getting our priorities straight.

So, this morning as I sat down at my desk, I opened an email sent to the whole office.

The subject?

The state of our kitchen.

You see, our resident kitchen goddess has gone on holiday for a couple of weeks, leaving the rest of us to fill her shoes while she's away. Now, you’d have thought it would be a relatively simple task. But there's a bit of history to this debate.

Over the past year that I’ve worked here, I’ve seen emails cursing the person who left their unfinished meal in the sink, damning those who left their mugs laden around the dishwasher and condemning those who dare to leave wet rings on the table where their mugs have sat.

There’s also one particular crockery vigilante that sits in our office. I’m not going to name any names, but this morning he threatened to, and I quote, ‘curse you [sic] PC’ if you didn’t leave the kitchen spick and span on his 'day' of kitchen duties.

To be fair, he has a point. There are some serial offenders here. Take, for example the person who leaves a spoon on the water dispenser every, single, morning.

Or the person who continually throws their spoon into the sink. I’ve been reliably been informed who you are. Then again, it must be due to the early onset of arthritis preventing them from bending down to the dishwasher.

Vigilante, have a heart.

Kinda reminds me of when I was at uni and the word ‘hygiene’ didn’t exist. I didn’t dare use anything in my kitchen halls. The kettle alone had things growing inside it that scientists would only find on Mars.

At least here it's clean. And as much as I may jest about the email, the injection of fear has meant I could almost see my refection in the tabletop today.

Who says threats don’t work eh?