Kitchen Mis-Design

The New Employer moved into this building last summer, everything all new-designed and spiffy and fresh.

The kitchens are a disaster.

They’re huge, certainly — forty feet long, a dozen feet wide. You could hold a small party in here.

Entrances on either end, so traffic flow of that sort is okay.

One wall is taken up with fridges and food/drink you can buy.

But it’s this wall there’s a problem.

“But Dave,” you say, “it’s broad and spacious. Lots of drawers. Lots of cabinets. Lots of microwaves. Two dishwashers! A coffee machine! A water machine!”

But …

Everything is along one counter. So any activity that takes more than one spot means crossing along, across, around, behind, through anyone else who’s at the counter. Like, for example, getting coffee from the coffee machine, then adding half-n-half and sugar and stirring it, then throwing the stirrers and half-n-half container away. Or working at the counter on your lunch or tupperware container or something, or monitoring the toaster — and thus either blocking the tea/coffee creamer/sugar station, or blocking the trash cans drawers.

Want a paper towel? There’s someone putting stuff into the dishwasher who’s blocking your path. Rinsing out your coffee mug? People have to work around you.

If there’s more than one person in this kitchen, one of them will inevitably find someone else in their way. Which seems just crazy for a space so large. Something, anything … an island would have been a fabulous idea. Extending the counter along that short wall would have helped a lot.

Kitchen design usually calls for a “triangle” of locations people move between. This kitchen is just one line. It’s poorly designed.

(It doesn’t make me regret taking this job, of course. But it is a constant low-level irritant.)