Implicated by inaction

"Are these yours?" I asked the colleague in the kitchen, indicating the dirty plates and cups in the sink.

"No," he replied, a little defensively. "I didn't leave them there."

I raised an eyebrow and drew a breath. He withdrew, my feelings on work kitchen hygiene having been often, and strenuously, aired.

But technically, I found myself thinking at his retreating back, you did leave them there. You saw them, and you could have cleared them away. But you didn't. You're as guilty, as responsible, as the people that used them, implicated by what you didn't do rather than by what you did.

Then I sighed a little superior, self-righteous sigh, and put the dishes in the dishwasher, and said my little Thank-You-For-The-Chance-To-Make-A-Positive-Difference.