Am I guilty for letting the shop become disorganised?

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There are times when I'm at work and see the state it is in. The stockroom has still got lots of boxes of stuff and boxes of mess and old stock which has been left, the staff room has a lot of boxes on one side of the wall and rubbish on another side, another store room looks an avalanche in there with stuff on the floor and it's hard to squeeze in there, the office is full of boxes as well and mess on the floor, food packets and wrappings and stuff, the back of the counters have lots of stuff on floor like torn off labels and ripped up sticker strips and the bin just gets overfilled with stuff and I end up nearly always the one to take the bin bag out and fill in a new one. Even the shelves and tables look messy and disorganised and I feel bad because I continue to do other tasks at work without asking if the store needs tidying or don't use my own discretion to do it without asking so it doesn't get done. I seem to feel like not wanting to go into that cupboard and unload the mess in there and take it out on the shop floor to get it out of the way while I'm in there tidying.

My assistant manager himself has been finding it stressful and I've heard him sighing, shouting and swearing at the back of shop expressing his frustration with things and is seeking counselling for it.

Are you guilty for letting the shop become disorganized?

From an employment viewpoint, the answer is no. You're not a manager. You're an employee. My guess is that you're a shop clerk.

Having said this, if you can think of ways to improve the shop, why not mention them to the assistant manager? If you're given the go ahead, you could put your ideas into action.

Is it your job to organize and tidy it? If so, then yes.

If it isn't anyone's explicit job to do, then it's everyone's job to do and no one is going to complain if you take the initiative to put a little time and effort into tidying things up UNLESS you neglect to do your job duties while doing this instead.

You Could ask your manager, but it isn't truly necessary and would reflect better on you if you simply used idle time to do some cleaning. If it's every shift, great, if it's here and there but it's more than you did before - still an improvement. Things will get tidier and coworkers stress levels will fall and you'll feel a bit more accomplished for having achieved something more vs. just let time pass for the sake of it.

When I worked at McDonald's as a teenager they had a saying "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean." It rings true in every business no matter the type of workplace, really. If there's idle time to sit around or chit chat or do nothing waiting for a customer/phone call/email etc then that time can be used to get rid of garbage, clean something up, organize a closet etc.

^This

If your workplace is understaffed and there aren't enough people to do all the work that needs to be done, that is definitely not your fault.

At work, you have certain duties, and the management should make clear what they are. If something is not your duty, you can ask if you want to help with that task, if that's what you want, but you should not do it out of guilt. You are not guilty if you are not doing something that is not in your job description and you have not been asked to do.

Taking initiative is usually frowned on, in my experience. If you want to do it, I would ask your boss first. If you don't want to do it and it's not part of your job description, then just don't do it.

While I agree it's management's role to instruct others to clean and tidy if they haven't - and that is their fault.. I disagree that taking initiative is usually frowned upon. Maybe if you're taking someone else' job or not doing your own or taking on a task that you have no business doing, but cleaning/tidying etc is not one of those things where someone is going to get scolded for assuming it's their role to do and just doing it. Not unless it's a union environment and there are people who's entire job it is to clean and you're taking that from them - then maybe.

It'd be different if there was a no hire and he assumed it was his role to train them up on how to do things but was never asked to do it and no one wanted him to do that, then taking initiative to do that might be frowned upon.. but not for tidying up. Chances are the manager isn't very good at asking/telling people to clean up for whatever reason and would appreciate that things got cleaned up bit by bit without him/her having to get out of their comfort zone and instruct people to do it regularly.

To me, it seems like the assistant manager needs to take the initiative, and take people off their normal duties to do some "housekeeping" on the stockroom for a while each week.