You're tricking yourself into a false comparison here. It's your responsibility to clean up after yourself. You spill coffee in the break room, go get a paper towel and clean it up.

It's not your responsibility to clean for your company. Unless you applied to an unusual job posting, it never was. Vacuuming the hallways and scrubbing the office toilets is not cleaning up after yourself. It is cleaning up for your company.

> my job is to write code, not to spray cleaner on a toilet bowl.

There's nothing snooty about this. How do you think a janitor would react if their first day on the job they were sat down in a call center and told to answer phones?

Your company doesn't care about you and your job description has changed. Time to head for the exit.

EDIT: obviously if you're a partner in the company as Michael mentions things are different, but it certainly doesn't sound like you are.

I'm not, and I have no equity in the company.

It's not an unreasonable request to you, in that the company buys your time and this is what they want you to do. It's a fantastically unreasonable request if they're actually in business to make money and you should take a good look around at the company; this could be an early warning to jump ship. Be assured that other people are already thinking this, and that in such situations the people leaving first are the smarter, better employees; as each one leaves, the company will struggle a little bit more.

Edit: As I read your post, I heard this low blaring horn kind of noise, getting louder and louder, much as during Heath Ledger's scenes in Dark Knight. :p

I reckon you could probably have a go at estimating the new cost of cleaning by estimating how much time everyone spends cleaning and what their hourly rate is - this might give you a better idea of how badly things are really going. It might be really scary :)

I disagree here. His company almost certainly hired him for a stated purpose, and that stated purpose almost certainly didn't mention a part-time stint as a janitor. The company doesn't (IMO) get to change the bounds of the employment agreement on a whim.

Personally, as for having to clean a bathroom shared with 30 people at work? No way. Not unless I own the place, and can fire the bad ones who mess it up.

Having someone who can turn off your income and damage your professional reputation tell you that you have to drop everything at 4:00 and clean a toilet is a different thing altogether. That's ridiculous.

Again, if you're a real partner/owner (0.05% equity does not count) you do a bunch of undesirable work (including cleaning toilets, if it makes sense) because the buck stops with you. If you're an employee, you simply should not stand for this.

Oh, thanks, now I know what I would do in that situation: pay some professional cleaner to come to the office when it's my turn.