Whose job is it to remove cockroaches from the office?

They say the number 18 bus in London is infested with cockroaches. Not just little bugs but supersized, kebab-fuelled mega cockroaches which hide underneath the seats and the ducts of the bus. Apparently people riding on buses and especially night buses drop copious quantities of food down the backs of seats and on the floors and this fertile territory has attracted this most enduring of insects. Having travelled on that particular bus I must say the thought of sitting on a seat full of cockroaches sends a few shivers down my spine.

I have always been a non-lover of cockroaches. Keen on wild life yes but certain insects do bring in to question quite why they are there. Cockroaches, wasps and mosquitoes all fall very naturally into that category.

As a housing lawyer I often come across clients who rather apologetically describe their flats as damp, unheated, and, finally, infested with cockroaches. Indeed as a student I inhabited a rather grim furnished room in South Kensington, paying a rent of some £3 per week and having to keep a bucket of water at the bottom of a pipe that the cockroaches tended to fall into, and in the morning the bucket was black with the drowning creatures on the top of the bucket.

The problem with cockroaches is that they simply don't die. They seem immune to drowning; I remember in my old student bar when the beer pumps were blocked and had stopped working it was discovered that a huge community of cockroaches had moved into them. Not dead cockroaches, but very much alive ones that were extremely difficult to kill and seemed to have a liking for Young's Bitter.

Unwanted guest

So, what of a cockroach in the office? Don't get me wrong, we inhabit modern, clean, purpose-built offices in Notting Hill. We don't have a history of infestation. Imagine my surprise the other day when a rather glossy, long-antennaed cockroach was seen in the centre of the office. So large was it that this was not a situation where one could simply squash it as this would cause major carpet cleaning problems. This was a problem that required removal, and specialist removal at that. The problem is, whose job is it to remove cockroaches from the office carpet?

We all have a job description. Job descriptions are rather popular at the moment and in my forthcoming Lexcel audit I'm sure I will be asked questions about my staff's job descriptions. Job descriptions can be all-encompassing but they stand or fall by their usefulness, and at this particular time it became increasingly obvious to me that the task of removing cockroaches was not the job description of anyone in the office.

Putting together an accurate job description for a member of staff is important. Whether you get it right or not depends on how much stuff falls between the cracks of the job description. Clearly if you have an assistant solicitor part of his job will be to see clients, ensure their cases are well handled and that certain targets are met, but is it his job to remove a cockroach from the office?

Not a job for a labrador

In other offices we have had similar difficulties. If an upset client is sick in reception, who mops it up? Tough stuff but somebody has to deal with it.

On this occasion even Cosmo slunk away with his tail between his legs, realising that attempting to eat this rather tasty morsel would probably give him bowel problems for several weeks. This was not a job for a labrador.

In the end a rather accommodating paralegal took on the role of office hero, picking up the insect and taking it downstairs to relocate it.

Even as we speak it is almost certainly making his/her way back up the two flights of stairs, central heating ducting or howsoever he/she came to be here in the first place.

But the point remains that job descriptions need to be detailed, inclusive and not just dealing with the obvious but the stuff that really matters. Unless you have job descriptions that we can rely on there is not much point in having them in the first place.